What went down in sports, fashion & outdoors this week!
Welcome back to Virtua Weekly, where we break down the biggest stories emerging from inside Virtua and also the sports, fashion & outdoor industries each week!
Here's what you need to know:
杰尼亚 's minority stake in the Canadian technical running brand continues a growing tide of luxury fashion brands converging into other markets such as sports, street, and outdoor.
Norda Run is, in some ways, a surprising pick for Zegna. It’s an outdoor trail-running sneaker brand that makes rugged high-performance shoes for athletes.?Traditionally, Zegna brands ( Ermenegildo Zegna Group , Thom Browne, and soon TOM FORD FASHION ) are luxury fashion brands focused on formalwear and leather goods.
Norda’s outlier status also makes it a fit for the expanding Zegna (nearly $2 billion in annual revenue) if it wants to compete with its larger conglomerate competitors in the luxury space, like 开云 ($19 billion) and 酩悦·轩尼诗-路易·威登集团 (nearly $60 billion).?
Vestiaire Collective?names?Marie-Christin Oebel?(left) as Global Chief Marketing Officer, and?Samina Virk?(right) as CEO North America.
Vestiaire Collective continues to invest in strengthening its global leadership team with the appointments of Marie-Christin Oebel and Samina Virk. Both will be members of the Company’s Executive Committee.
Fanny Moizant, President and Co-founder of Vestiaire Collective said : “We are very excited to welcome Samina and Marie-Christin to Vestiaire Collective. They will be leading our global efforts in strengthening our visibility and brand development, especially in the US market. They perfectly embody Vestiaire Collective's values of women empowerment, dedication and greatness.”?
Total revenue for the brand reached $1.32 billion, a 13% increase in constant currency.
The North Face’s sales in the wholesale channel globally grew 7% in constant currency, while DTC sales jumped 18%. Both North Face stores and online sales rose double digits.
Regionally, Americas sales increased 9% in constant currency, while Europe jumped 13%. APAC reported a 29% increase in sales as the region continues to rebound from Covid lockdowns.
The North Face’s product and marketing highlights during the quarter included:
Calls to “overhaul” capitalism rarely come from the C-suite, but Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert doesn’t mince words. “Businesses for far too long have hidden behind this narrative that their number one role is to maximize shareholder wealth.
Last September, Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder, announced that he was donating the company to a trust and a non-profit that would use its earnings—some $100 million a year—to fund efforts to fight climate change. “Earth is now our only shareholder,”
Mr. Gellert, who arrived at Patagonia in 2014 and became its CEO in 2020, helped to create the new business plan and is now responsible for executing it. Under Mr. Gellert, the brand has maintained its political commitments. He has called on fellow business leaders to speak out against restrictive voting laws and to support corporate taxes to fund green infrastructure and innovation.
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Sustainability, he explains, isn’t simply a goal that a company can achieve and then move on to other things: “This is the work, forever and all time.”
Adidas’ decision to?terminate?its collaborative partnership with?Kanye West?last year continues to have a negative impact on the business side of things for the brand.
The sportswear brand shared its?financial?for 2023 today, confirming that it’s still reviewing how it plans to utilize its existing Yeezy inventory. If the brand choses to not repurpose its Yeezy stock it would decrease the company's operating profit by $537 million and wipe $1.29 billion of its revenue.
The brand also said it expects an unrelated one-off cost of $215 million for a strategic review which aims to improve 2024 profits.
“The numbers speak for themselves. We are currently not performing the way we should…We need to put the pieces back together again, but I am convinced that over time we will make adidas shine again,” Adidas CEO, Bj?rn Gulden, said in the press release.
We are conducting a salary survey using our extensive database across the sports, fashion, and outdoor sectors, and we want to extend the survey to our LinkedIn network!
It would be greatly appreciated if you could complete the survey to help us get as accurate information as possible (Link Below).
We have recently been appointed by a new client in the search for a Senior Strategy Manager to join their ever-expanding strategy team. Our client is a global leader in live sports media production, operating on an immense scale across 200+ territories and over 500m homes globally.
Virtua have?been retained by one of our long-standing clients in the sports/lifestyle sector in the search for a Head of Buying (European remit) to oversee their growing ecommerce business to be located out of Europe.
Virtua have been tasked by our client within the sports/lifestyle sector to find its next SAP Consultant specialising in O2C & DTC. Our client is at the forefront of the world performance sports market as undisputedly the leading footwear shoe brand for enthusiasts and professional athletes alike.
We have been retained by one of our clients in the outdoor/workwear sector to find its next UK Business Development Manager to grow the company and win new business within their work and agriculture channel.?
If any of the above positions are of interest to you please reach out to us for more information! If not applicable, we still get new roles coming to us each week and our network spans far and wide across our sectors, so we can reach out on your behalf and see if we can spin you in somewhere!