Marker and Völkl, the brands of skis and bindings owned by K2 and ultimately by Jarden Corporation, are going to be distributed together with Dalbello’s ski boots in several important markets, effective January 1, 2010. The two groups will also be looking for additional synergies in product development, marketing and promotion.
For the past 16 years, Marker and Völkl has had a similar strategic partnership with the Tecnica Group, reinforced by the fact that Tecnica held a stake in Marker. Now that it owns two strong brands of skis and ski boots, Blizzard and Nordica, the Italian group has been pursuing a more integrated policy of bundling the distribution of its own brands.
On the other hand, Marker says it will continue to act as OEM supplier of ski bindings to the Tecnica Group’s ski brands.
Dalbello, which is based like Tecnica in the same area near Treviso, claims to be the world’s largest independent ski boot manufacturer and the Number Three in the global market, with an annual production of about 480,000 pairs. The first place is occupied by the Tecnica Group with its ski boot brands Nordica, Lowa and Tecnica. It is followed by Salomon, which is owned like Atomic by Amer Sports.
Dalbello sells its boots into some 50 different markets worldwide. It has already had distribution deals with the Völkl connection in some secondary markets such as Chile, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lithuania. To begin with, Dalbello will now share the distribution with the Marker-Völkl couple in important markets such as Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Japan and the U.K. – directly or through their respective distributors.
The new marriage between Marker-Völkl and Dalbello obviously calls into question the latter’s former tie-up with Elan, which has been its strategic partner in many countries. The move leaves the Slovenian company somewhat barefoot, so to speak, notably in Canada and Germany. In these two countries Elan and Dalbello have shared the same distributors.
As of now, Dalbello will keep its partnership with Elan in at least 11 countries: the U.S., France, Spain, the Benelux countries, China, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Elan’s home market, Slovenia.
