The extension of Peak Performance’s golf range has contributed to the Swedish brand’s robust sales rise for the financial year ended on June 30, up by 5 percent to 941 million Danish kroner (€126.4m-$187.0m), as reported by its Danish owner, IC Companys. Underlying growth was even more impressive, reaching about 10 percent in local currencies.
This was obtained by adding layers to the existing golf and ski ranges, while continuing to build on the brand’s appeal and its sales of casual garments. The golf offering, which made up about 8 percent of Peak Performance’s turnover, was segmented to contain three ranges: Essential, Supreme and the last range, Classic, with classy narrow fits. On the ski side, Peak Performance launched “Heli”, a high alpine range of ski apparel.
Yet still, Peak Performance’s most convincing growth came from the casual range, which has come to represent more than 35 percent of the brand’s turnover. This has benefited strongly from the opening of ever more Peak Performance stores, where casual garments are sold all year around and make up about half of the offering.
Peak Performance ended the year with a network of 75 stores, all but four of them in Europe, and 33 of them fully owned by the company. The strategy should be accelerated in the current financial year, with no less than fifteen openings planned in Europe. The opening of more franchised stores in German-speaking countries has contributed to outstanding growth in this region.
While Peak Performance is already distributed in most of western Europe, it is starting to explore the eastern parts of the continent, as well as Asia. A trademark case with a Chinese sports apparel company, Peak, was settled earlier this year as the Swedish firm slightly altered its name representation to include the full Peak Performance name. This conveniently came about as it was giving its brand identity a facelift, with a fresh logo and a refined logotype, with the words Peak and Performance attached.
Further growth will come from the footwear range that will be launched under license with the Hamm group of Germany. The range is to hit the shelves early next year in nearly all European markets where Peak Performance apparel is available. The offering does not include any technical ski or golf footwear, but all the more casual styles to be sold in a selection of independent fashion stores, fashion footwear chains or the more fashion-oriented sports stores.
The results enabled Peak Performance to shine at IC Companys, which otherwise contains a slew of fashion brands and suffered a sales decline of 4 percent to DKK3.601 million (€483.9m-$715.5m). The Danish group’s operating profit went down by 54 percent to DKK162 million (€21.8m-$32.2m), although this included non-recurring costs of DKK115 million (€15.5m-$22.8m).
However, things are likely to get worse for the group since its orders for the winter were down by 18 percent in local currencies and by 24 percent in Danish kroner. The board of directors therefore decided not to pay any dividends to shareholders, and to use any excess cash flows to reduce short-term debt instead.
