Frank Dassler, general counsel of Adidas Group, was unanimously elected to a three-year term the new president of the Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry (Fesi) at its annual meeting in Paris yesterday. The 54-year-old manager takes the place of Horst Widmann, 70, who ran the European organization for six years and continues to work for Puma.
Widmann will continue to sit on Fesi’s executive board, which has remained unchanged except for Luca Businaro, the chief executive of Novation who recently replaced Giancarlo Zanatta as president of Assosport, the Italian sporting goods industry association. Businaro will act as one of the four vice presidents of Fesi, but one of them has yet to be elected. Claudine Reynes of Fifas, the French sporting goods industry federation, and Rory McMillan of Nike continue in their roles as vice president. Alberto Bichi remains as secretary general of the European organization.
A member of the third generation at Puma, Frank Dassler worked for the family company in his early years, notably running the brand’s U.S. operations, but left the company in the late 1980s to work as an independent attorney. In 2004 he joined Adidas to take care of its legal matters as well as social and environmental affairs. He was recently placed in charge of compliance and risk management as well.
Dassler has been a vice president of Fesi for the past three years. He will continue as a vice president of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry, representing Western Europe, until the election of a new president for the world body, most likely from Asia.
Dassler says his guiding principles at Fesi for the next three years will be to “focus and unite.” The work of Fesi’s ten working committees will concentrate on the most essential issues for big and small companies. Internal and external communication will be improved, with the committees releasing more frequent executive summaries and Dassler himself putting out a letter to all the members every other month.
He wants Fesi to speak out more frequently on important issues such as the European anti-dumping duties on leather shoes from China and Vietnam, considering that they should be abolished for many reasons, including the fact that the duties inflate the prices of products that should be made more accessible to all the population under the the EU White Paper on Sport, recently adopted as part of the Lisbon Treaty.
Dassler wants Fesi to work more closely with major sports organizations and with sporting goods retailers, including major buying groups and private chains, and to intensify R&D efforts that could benefit companies of all sizes. Plans are to expand the membership of Fesi, and possibly to extend its coverage to other industry segments.
Fesi has 25 regular members including 11 trade associations and 14 individual companies. It has a number of associated members, including the European Outdoor Group, and sustaining members.
