An extraordinary general meeting of Intersport International Corporation (IIC) has unanimously appointed a 49-year-old executive of Amer Sports, Victor V. Duran, to succeed Franz Julen in the delicate and demanding job of chief executive of the world's largest sporting goods retail organization. Moving to its head office in Bern, he will become a member of IIC's executive management on Oct. 1, and after a transition, he will take over full operational responsibility from Julen on Jan. 1, 2017.
Duran has been acting since 2010 as Amer's senior vice president in charge of marketing and business-to-consumer operations, with global responsibilities. Based at the Finnish company's office in Geneva, he is also a member of Amer's executive board. In his current position, he is also in charge of retail and e-commerce, an area in which Intersport, its licensees and their affiliated retailers around the world have yet to find their best possible positioning. Under Duran's leadership, Amer and its brands – Arc'teryx, Atomic, Precor, Salomon and Suunto – have developed a strong and profitable retail business and a multi-brand e-commerce footprint.
Jussi Mikkola, chairman of IIC, says the retail organization's board was impressed by Duran's international experience, his knowledge of four languages, his human skills and his track record in areas such as retail, digital operations, e-commerce and marketing.
Working through the international recruitment agency of Egon Zehnder International, IIC has found a new CEO who should help it to deal with the major new challenge coming from the digital world, who knows the sporting goods industry well and who has an excellent multi-cultural background that fits in well with Intersport's international scope. Like Julen, he is also very sporty.
Duran speaks English, Spanish, French and German. Born in Mexico, he moved to the U.S. at the age of 11. He studied economics at West Point and graduated with an MBA in international business and marketing at the University of North Carolina. As an American citizen, he performed his military service as an officer in the U.S. Army, where he was stationed in Germany for three years.
Before joining Amer, Duran worked for five years as general manager of Caterpillar for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He then spent seven years with Procter & Gamble in Switzerland and the U.S. He subsequently worked for two consultancies, Hothouse in Switzerland and Zyman Group in the U.K.
Mikkola said he wanted to express the whole group's gratitude to Julen for the great work he has done for the organization in more than 16 years as its chief executive. He will leave the group with a great track record, more than doubling its retail sales and expanding Intersport's presence from 16 to 65 countries.
After his retirement on Dec. 31, Julen will continue as a board member of Valora Holding, a big publicly traded Swiss retail company that has more than 2,300 kiosks, convenience stores and coffee shops in Europe. He will also become a board member and then, in 2018, chairman of Zermatt Bergbahnen, the biggest cable car and skilift company in Switzerland, which services the big ski resort of Zermatt, where Julen grew up. He will add a couple of other non-executive board positions.
