Strong growth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) markets has led The North Face to reinforce its sales and management teams in that division. It has taken on a new sales director for the EMEA region, new managers in the UK, Italy, Poland, the Nordic countries as well as a new sales manager dedicated to emerging markets.

The company posted a 26 percent increase in full year revenues in the EMEA region during 2007, compared with the previous year, and in the 4th quarter they rose by 23 percent. Full-year revenues grew strongest in France and the UK, by 25 and 22 percent, respectively.

Over the past year the brand has launched 10 new retail partnership stores in the EMEA region with locations ranging from Leeds in England, Freiburg in Germany, and Tel Aviv in Israel. The brand added 42 new locations to its shop-in-shop program during the period, and expects to start 6 additional retail partnership stores during 2008 using an updated design concept. The first such store was opened in Barcelona at the beginning of the year.

The European headquarters for the brand, located in Pederobba, Italy, has increased the number of its employees to 130 from 102 the previous year. Meanwhile, five internal changes were announced for TNF’s sales team covering this region. A major restructuring of the division’s management team already took place, and it was covered in one of the recent issues of SGI Europe (SGI Europe #19/1+2).

TNF will increase its sales efforts in Italy, a key market, and in several emerging markets. To this end, Fabio Marangoni was appointed as sales manager for the emerging markets, a position which has been newly created by the company, and will be based in Italy. Marangoni was in charge of distributors on the Italian market for various brands at VF Corp. before his new position.

Gianluca Pandolfo, who was country manager for Italy only on an interim basis, was confirmed in this position. He will focus on developing sales in that country alone and will work with Andrea de Lauso who was promoted to the newly created position of Italian sales manager. Along with the two positions, new focus targets have been drawn up for the Italian sales team.

On other European horizons, the brand has appointed Rafal Tyskzkiewicz as country manager for Poland. This position was recently created in order to develop sales in the country and raise the brand’s notoriety level. Sales took off in the country over the past year. Tyskzkiewicz was previously a sales manager in Poland for various brands in the VF portfolio.

In central Europe, Udo Heyder has been confirmed in his role as country manager for Switzerland, Austria and Germany and will work out of the company’s sales office in Munich. Heyder was previously an interim country manager for the Austrian and Swiss markets, and country manager for Germany.

The new country and region managers will all report directly to Timo Schmidt-Eisenhart, the sales director of TNF’s EMEA team.