Zumiez reports that Blue Tomato, the Austrian-based online and offline action sports retailer that it bought at the end of 2012, has been enjoying continuous quarterly sales increases on a comparable store basis since its acquisition. Blue Tomato was responsible for most of the growth of 9.7 percent to $162.9 million posted by Zumiez in the first quarter of 2014, ended on May 3. With action sports described as less trendy than basketball and other categories in the U.S. at the moment, the U.S.-based retail group achieved an overall sales increase of only 1.8 percent on a same-store basis, but Easter sales were strong. The operating margin inched up by 0.5 percentage points to 2.2 percent of sales and net income came out flat at $2.5 million. The group finished the quarter with 558 stores in North America and Europe, up from 503 a year earlier. It plans to open 55 new stores in the course of the present financial year, including five more in Europe and seven in Canada.

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