How Do European Outdoor Products Manufacturers Grow?

When the European economy has not yet fully recovered, outdoor products manufacturers are struggling to find new opportunities for development, launching fashionable functional products and developing new international markets, attracting powerful investors with financial influence.

In the past ten years, the global outdoor market has gone through a rapid development period. Europe is no exception, the growth rate is as high as 10%. Correspondingly, people's lifestyle has also changed, and spare time is willing to spend more time hiking, so as to decompress or forge body and keep healthy.

The two largest outdoor market in the world, the European outdoor market, has exceeded 12 billion euros (statistics from the European Outdoor Federation EOG), and the outdoor market in the United States has reached US $6 billion 500 million (statistics from Leisure Trends, and OIA statistics show annual sales of US $11 billion 400 million).

However, the development of the outdoor market in the Nordic and alpine areas has been a bottleneck for mountaineering and skiing.

For example, JACK WOLFSKIN, a Blackstone Group, eventually stalled at 351 million euros ($448 million 800 thousand) in 2012, an increase of about 23 percentage points over the previous year. But the largest outdoor brand in Germany is still slightly weaker compared with the competitive brand and The North Face of VF group, which has annual sales of 1 billion 900 million euros. Despite the depressed consumer environment in Europe, it still has plenty of power to open up the market.

Faced with this kind of competition, small professional companies like Hagloefs and Schoeffel have to think of new ways to make their products stand out and attract consumers.

In the case of flat sales in 2012 (9300 euros), Schoeffel, the family firm, took the courage to catch up and invest in new products, advertising and shop development at the cost of falling profits in the next 2-3 years, and launched a new advertising campaign in collaboration with Ogilvy (world famous media group), which has been launched on television, cinemas and the Internet. However, Schoeffel declined to disclose more details about profits or investments, but said it is still profitable.

　 Be fresh and innovative.

　　 Haglofs The outdoor brand, which started with backpacks, is about to celebrate its first centenary birthday. Since its debut in 2010, it has been steadily increasing by ASIcs 128 million 700 thousand, and its sales grew by 14% year-on-year.

"There are some difficulties this year," CEO Nicolas Warchalowski, Haglofs told Reuters. "Today's market, you have to constantly bring fresh and attractive products and ideas to consumers."

Experts say companies like Haglofs and Arcteryx (belonging to Finland Amer group) benefit greatly from the powerful parent companies behind them.

The design team of "ASICs Haglofs" doubled, and began to apply Asics's unique glue technology in hiking and off-road running shoes products. More importantly, the brand increased its efforts to expand the Asian market, and the share of sales increased from 5% before the acquisition to 10% today.

"Because of the improvement of shoemaking technology, our outdoor shoes are ahead of other brands," Warchalowski said. At the same time, Haglofs has launched a series of iridescent colors to meet consumers' dual needs for product functions and fashion. Outdoor shoes and clothing 。 Then

Wang Rui, a student at a North Face store in Frankfurt, says this is very important. "Generally speaking, I prefer products with functions and colors for outdoor equipment."

　　 Rejection letter

The German sports brand PUMA (France Group Kering Holdings) has begun to test the market through cross-country running shoes, which is more than its earlier Adidas, the traditional old rival's outdoor business development, and Canada's Goose has begun looking for new investors to help them develop and expand the market.

In recent years, the outdoor market has attracted many noteworthy acquisitions, including the Ontario teachers' retirement fund buying a majority stake in Norway brand Helly Hansen at the price of 350 million US dollars. The largest private equity fund Blackstone Group has bought Jack Wolfskin for 900 million US dollars, and Adidas 2500 has played the US dollar and purchased the climbing shoes brand Five Ten.

Of course, in this era of big, small, strong combination, there are still some outstanding enterprises "stubborn" existence. Peter Schoeffel, Schoeffels, the seventh generation head of the family business, has a ready-made rejection letter, sending his assistant to companies that want to borrow their own companies to enter the European market, whether they are private companies or overseas competitors. They say "No".

"This is an attractive market for M & A, sustainable growth potential, and its brand, but I will not sell it.

In any case, even if it is lower than expected, the outdoors will continue to grow.

"People like outdoors and outdoor sports are global trends," CEO Sportscheck, a sports leisure retailer, told Reuters that outdoor products account for 1/5 of their business.

According to Just-Style.com, an online information provider of textiles and clothing industry, by 2018, sales of functional clothing, which occupies half of the outdoor market, will grow from US $17 billion 500 million to US $21 billion 600 million, with a growth rate of nearly 25%.

"We are experiencing changes in the industrial pattern," Schoeffel told reporters. "We must realize that sales growth as an industry of 2% a year is not so painful.