Crossing the magic $1 billion milestone for the first time, Brooks Running reported a 31 percent sales increase to $1.11 billion in 2021. Brooks EMEA added that its turnover in the region grew by 25 percent in terms of local currencies, despite retail closures and other challenges, with France, Italy and Spain posting the biggest gains.
The brand achieved a 43 percent increase in France, accelerating its performance due to an increased focus on trail running. Both Italy and Spain went up by 28 percent. Brooks’ sales rose at a lower pace, but still by more than 20 percent, in the DACH and Benelux countries.
Brooks EMEA reported healthy growth in all the distribution channels, including its brooksrunning.eu website, specialty retail and general sporting goods stores. Franchise styles like the Ghost, which grew by 21 percent, powered the brand’s performance. The company also mentioned the Adrenaline, Glycerin and Cascadia lines and the introduction of the carbon-neutral Ghost 14. Apparel sales jumped by 35 percent, led by the Run Visible collection for night-time running.
In North America, Brooks’ revenues rose by 33 percent to $889.1 million, with a 149 percent jump in e-commerce, according to an article in Footwear News, which also said that the brand gained market share from Nike and Adidas in the women’s performance category, based on data collected by the NPD Group. According to NPD, the running shoe market grew by 20 percent in value in 2021, and Brooks remained the leading brand in the U.S. running specialty channel, while growing its share of the adult running market by 4 percentage points to 28 percent.
Brooks’s revenues have doubled since 2017. Last year’s sales increase came after a jump of 27 percent in 2020, in spite of Covid-related market disruptions.
The total number of pairs sold by Brooks globally grew by 25 percent in 2021, indicating an increase in average selling prices. About 40 percent of last year’s sales were generated online, evenly divided between Brooks’ own websites and third-party web stores. Brooks only has three physical mono-brand stores and an outlet store in the U.S.
Quoting the company’s CEO, Jim Weber, who is about to release a book on his journey with the formerly bankrupt company, FN said that Brooks has been “working really hard on adding capacity and diversifying our factory base across countries and partners” to cope with factory shutdowns in Vietnam and China. “Because of that work over the last two years, I think we’re going to weather this storm really well.”
