Pro Clubs Sports (PCS), a Dutch sports retailer, wholesaler and licensee, went into insolvency at the end of last month after the collapse of its wholesale business. However, the company’s prominent electronic store, Plutosport, will be continued under another entity, Plutosport Europe. Regarding the European license held by PCS for Body Glove, the international water sports brand, negotiations are ongoing to keep it in the hands of managers who have strongly improved its European distribution in the last two years.
PCS’s retail unit had up to four Plutosport stores in the Netherlands and three in Germany, along with the electronic store. Last year this unit was downsized with the closure of the German stores and all but two of the Dutch stores. These two remaining megastores in Enschede and Ter Aar are loss-making and should be quickly closed down as well. Furthermore, PCS had its own sports brand, High Road, which it will continue to use occasionally as a private label for its electronic store.
However, the largest part of PCS consisted of a trading unit that was buying stock lots off from leading international brands. This unit achieved annual sales of up to €25 million and was generating more than enough cash to finance other activities in the group, but the trade almost evaporated in the last 18 months, as economic instability began to hit and stock became altogether undesirable.
Gert Gruppen, the largest shareholder of PCS, remains the leading shareholder in Plutosport Europe, the entity that has restarted the Plutosport electronic store. Bastiaan Dammers, business unit manager and a smaller shareholder, is pulling out of the business.
Meanwhile, talks are under way between Body Glove International and investors who want to take over the European license for the water sports brand. This has been expanding rapidly in the last months after Rob Van Ginkel, European sales manager, entirely reviewed Body Glove’s European distribution network, appointing several new partners and building up a range of apparel to accompany the brand’s more technical products.
Among the distributors who started last summer are Pure Action Sports, a company in Barcelona that has its own kiteboarding brand, Best, and that obtained rights to sell Body Glove products in the Benelux countries, France, Spain and several other countries, along with Body Glove equipment only in Italy and Poland. Another is Typhoon, a British distributor specializing in diving, which took over the distribution of Body Glove for the U.K. and Ireland. Hellenic Flame was appointed for Greece, Cyprus and most of the Balkans, and PCS sealed a partnership with Extreme You for distribution in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal was covered through a PCS office. With this expanded coverage, the Body Glove licensee was targeting sales of about €2.5 million this year, growing to €4.5 million in 2011.
