While launching the first store under its name in Europe, Vuarnet, the French brand of winter sports apparel and sunglasses, wants to return to the sportswear market and to open stores around the continent in the coming years.
The company that runs Vuarnet licenses is based in Switzerland and is managed by Alain Vuarnet, the son of the ski champion who gave his name to the brand.
Just over two years ago he attributed a license for Vuarnet ski equipment to Innovaski, a French company partly owned by Bernard Liatti, a former Rossignol executive. Covering skis, helmets and other accessories, the license is formally in the hands of a company called Vuarnet Sport, near Albertville. This agreement led to the launch of the first range of Vuarnet skis early last year.
Last July, Vuarnet Sport's license was extended to include Vuarnet activewear, consisting of apparel for skiing and sailing. This range was previously licensed to Sport Gear in Italy. Vuarnet remains partners with Sonoma, the Romanian manufacturer that made the Vuarnet garments for Sport Gear, and that retains distribution rights for Vuarnet activewear in the Italian market. Vuarnet's activewear is strongest in this country, where it is sold in more than 250 stores, compared with just 30 in France.
The deal with Vuarnet Sport is meant to rapidly expand sales of activewear in other countries, particularly in Germany and Austria, where Vuarnet has been distributed since last year by Lesport. Among other feats, Vuarnet has obtained the endorsement of ski instructors in Kitzbühel. Vuarnet is also an equipment partner of the Russian ski federation until and including 2014, when the Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi.
On the back of its expanded partnership with Vuarnet Sport, Vuarnet just inaugurated its first mono-brand store in Val d'Isère, the French ski resort. For the last two years the brand had exclusive space of about 60 square meters within a larger sports store, but the new mono-brand outlet of 120 square meters is a stand-alone store.
Until last week Brazil was the only country where Vuarnet had mono-brand stores, due to the fact that its licensee in the country has turned Vuarnet into a lifestyle brand with a wide range of sportswear. The licensee, Setor Participações, runs 18 Vuarnet stores in Brazil, which were all entirely revamped five years ago. Vuarnet regards this as an example of what could be done with sportswear in Europe.
Alain Vuarnet estimates that the Vuarnet brand reached wholesale-equivalent revenues of about €40 million in 2011. About 80 percent of that was generated in Europe, where Vuarnet products reach about 1,500 stores. Some 60 percent of the turnover comes from apparel, against 30 percent for eyewear and the rest for equipment and a flurry of other licenses.
Once it has spread its activewear range, Vuarnet wants to expand into sportswear through a European license, then others in Asia and North America. It would then study ways to replicate the Brazilian retail project, with more stores in France as well as in other European countries.
Separately, a range of optical eyewear is to be launched this year for the Vuarnet brand, after its decades-long licensee for eyewear, Sporoptic Pouilloux, was acquired just over a year ago by Alain Mikli International.
The takeover should considerably reinforce the Vuarnet eyewear range through Mikli's support in terms of financing, design and distribution in the optical retail part of the market.
Vuarnet once ranked as the leading brand of sunglasses ahead of Ray-Ban, after the French brand teamed up with the organizers of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
