Latest Headlines – Page 325
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Smarter sports bracelets appear on the market
The new entries by LG, Polar and Garmin in the area of wearable technologies are offering new functionalities as compared to the latest version of Nike's Fuelband and other bracelets recently released by the Swoosh and other sports brands including Adidas and Puma. They were among the highlights of last ...
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PrimaLoft announces its hybrid insulation
At least 20 brands have adopted PrimaLoft's new Performance Down Blend Insulation for use in their autumn/winter 2014/15 collections. Announcing this new hybrid insulation product ahead of the Ispo Munich show, where it will also present its new corporate image (see the next article in this issue), PrimaLoft stresses that ...
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PrimaLoft rebrands
Coinciding with its 25th anniversary and the launch of its new hybrid insulation technology (see the previous article), PrimaLoft is coming out with a new, sharpened corporate identity, an optimized branding framework and a stronger marketing staff, which will be showcased at the Ispo Munich fair at the end of ...
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Adidas has a row with SDI over Chelsea shirts
Sports Direct International (SDI) is at loggerheads with the Adidas Group over the German company's decision to quit supplying the leading British sports retailer with replica shirts of the Chelsea football team for the next season. Adidas said another dozen U.K. retailers had been removed from its customer list for ...
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SDI outperforms
The Chelsea jersey row was publicized by Sports Direct International (SDI) just as it was discussing another impressive performance for the half-year until Oct. 27, with soaring sales and underlying profits – even better than the company itself had predicted.The entire group's sales advanced by 23.5 percent to £1,345.1 million ...
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Nike’s European and Chinese rejigs pay off
The Nike group is enjoying a rebound in Western Europe and in China, two regions where it reorganized its business in the last two years. They both contributed to the ample gains achieved by the Nike brand for the three months until the end of November, in sales as well ...
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Intersport returns to profitability in Switzerland
Intersport PSC registered a consolidated turnover of 201.1 million Swiss francs (€164.2m-$224.6m) in the fiscal year to Sept. 30, 2013, down by 5.0 percent as compared to the previous year. The Swiss-based buying group returned to profitability, posting net profit of CHF0.9 million (€0.7m-$1.0m) against a loss of CHF3.3 million in ...
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Head may stop listingin Vienna
About 22 million shares of the company are publicly traded on stock exchanges in Vienna and New York. Head announced on Dec. 13 a conditional offer to repurchase up to 22,429,265 shares of its capital at a price of €1.90 each, in a process that may lead the company to ...
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Billabong maps out future strategies
Neil Fiske, who became the chief executive of Billabong International three months ago, outlined a seven-point turnaround plan covering brand management, product, marketing, multi-channel retailing, supply chain management, organization and financial discipline at the company's annual meeting earlier this month. It is similar in some ways to the plan that ...
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Rossignol gives a boost to its apparel
As indicated in the previous issue of SGI Europe, Rossignol is coming out with a very technical new line of compression garments for cross-country skiing. Called Infini Skiing, it consists of eight pieces of underwear and outerwear. It uses a dynamic gradient compression technology, patented by Rossignol, covering the optimization ...
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New directions at Fusalp
Fusalp is the French sports apparel company that pioneered the so-called “fuseau,” a highly technical style of stretch ski pants attached to the foot in the early 1950s. They were worn by many famous champions like Jean-Claude Killy in the 1960s, leading Fusalp to become the biggest supplier of skiwear ...
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Premium positioning pays off for Moncler
Moncler, which started up in France in 1952 making sleeping bags, has become the third-largest luxury goods company on the Milan stock exchange after Luxottica and Salvatore Ferragamo. The king of the down jacket is now trading with a stock market capitalization of around €3.7 billion, or nearly 40 times ...
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New Swiss-born CEO for Lululemon
Lululemon Athletica has appointed a new chief executive, Laurent Potdevin, to take the place of Christine Day, who served notice of her resignation last June. Observers were quick to speculate that the fast-growing Canadian brand of yoga-inspired apparel will develop more quickly outside North America and that it may bring ...
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A new women-specific retailer, Anima Athletica
A young French entrepreneur, Alexia Romanet, has opened her second women-specific store under the new Anima Athletica brand in Paris. She has been unable to buy any clothing from Lululemon Athletica because of the brand's insistence on a direct retailing mode in Europe, but she has obtained exclusivity on some ...
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Russell and Spalding change tactics in Europe
While repositioning both brands on a global basis, Fruit of the Loom is switching to a different business model for the distribution in Europe of Russell Athletic and Spalding, which it bought in 2006 along with Brooks Sport. Fruit of the Loom has decided to work with local players for ...
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Scott buys Powderhorn
Scott Sports is acquiring Powderhorn, a ski apparel brand from Switzerland that was previously owned by Christian Bättig, owner of Chris Sports Europe and Chris Sports Switzerland, two major distribution companies based in Germany and Switzerland. Chris Sports Europe sells, among other brands, Qloom Sports, a cycling apparel brand, and ...
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Johnson’s net doubles
Net income grew by 90.7 percent to €19.3 million at Johnson Outdoors for the financial year ended Sept. 27, mainly due to a lower tax rate. The gross margin went up by 0.3 percentage points to 40.1 percent. The operating margin improved by 0.8 percentage points to 6.0 percent for ...
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Ispo launches new Open Innovation platform
Messe München International, organizer of the Ispo shows in Munich and Beijing, is launching a new, independent “Ispo Open Innovation” platform to promote innovation in the sporting goods sector. The new platform, which is described as the first initiative of this kind by a trade fair organization, calls for the ...
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Bread & Butter will invite public on two days
From summer 2014, the Bread & Butter show in Berlin will be extended from three to five days, taking place on July 8-12 under the slogan “We are Bread & Butter. The global hub of modern lifestyle.” While the first day of the show will be only for members of the ...
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Quiksilver explores new paths after big losses
Quiksilver reported big losses for the fourth quarter and the full year ended Oct. 31, but the company’s new chief executive, Andy Mooney, assured investors that the numerous measures taken in the past year will start bearing fruit during the current financial year.Among these actions, the group divested its snowboard ...
