Puma Develops Light Sports Shoes Market To Stimulate Sales

Together with bigger rivals Nike and Adidas, Puma's performance at the end of last year was strong.

However, analysts said they were surprised by the results, and sales, profits and revenues failed to achieve the average expected value.

"Compared with Adidas and Nike, Puma is in a weak point in the frontier of product innovation, and in many ways it needs to catch up with the others.

In particular, it once again won the advantage of the brand in 1990s.

BHF bank analyst Peter Steiner said.

Compared to almost 16% growth in the fourth quarter, the group said its sales increased by only 6.1% in the quarter.

Sales in the European market accounted for about 43% of the turnover, a drop of 1.7%.

Chief executive Franz Koch said the company will continue to invest in new products this year and expects growth in revenue since the second quarter.

When Nike and Adidas gained two digit sales growth in the Chinese market, China's increasingly wealthy and fashionable consumers are already buying European and American brands, while Puma describes its performance in the first quarter of the year in China.

Koch said Puma's sales growth in China was less than 10% in the first quarter, while its growth rate in India, Korea and Japan was two digits.

"This is related to the whole market environment, which is overwhelmed by the influx of local competitors."

Koch said.

Its opponents in China also include local brands Lining, Anta sports and plans to list in Frankfurt to promote their expansion plans in the French golden rooster.

Taking into account the interest of Chinese consumers in automobile brands such as Ferrari, BMW and Mercedes, Koch said that he would pay attention to lifestyle, running and training products in China, and hoped that the group's sports products could also achieve better results.

PPR, Puma's parent group, France luxury group, said its discovery footwear market was challenged in the first quarter and its sales fell by 2%.

In particular, sales of running shoes have picked up. However, the industry dynamics dominated by the United States, such as light sports shoes, are actually developed by Nike.

Koch said he had confidence in the new ArchiveLight shoes and added that Puma plans to launch a new high-performance footwear in 2013.

"We plan to focus on expanding the share of sales of running and training goods in the United States," he said. "We have been dealing with this matter, but we need time to rebuild relations with these consumers."

Overall, on the basis of sales of 820 million 900 thousand euros, Puma's net income fell to 74 million euros, a decline of 5%, which failed to reach the analyst's expected target of 77 million 600 thousand euros.