FEDAS General Meeting 2004 in Marseille

European specialist sports goods trade looks optimistically into the future

• Consistent customer-orientation with extensive consultation and after-sales service and an excellently structured range of brand-name goods create further growth on an extended market
  
  
• Concept stores – above all factory outlets – increasingly burden the relationship between the specialist trade and the suppliers
  
  
• Fedas goods group code has made its way on the market – Work on a new size code has been underway
  
  
• ispo summer and winter still offer the best survey being the sector’s biggest trade shows worldwide

Marseille – The European sports goods and sports fashion market keeps on growing. This was the satisfying conclusion drawn by the participants in the 2004 Fedas general assembly, which was held in Marseille from June 12 to 14, 2004 upon invitation of the French associate association, FPS, and which assessed the latest developments of the European market and examined them with regard to future-oriented trends. Fedas President Werner Haizmann from Stuttgart Bad Cannstadt, and Fedas secretary general Claude Benoit from Bern, along with their colleagues unanimously concluded during the meeting that the European Union with its now 25 members is opening up new chances and opportunities for the specialist sports goods trade. They stated that the trade has gained a firmer foothold again in the “old” EU states, too, so that a 4% growth in sales can be anticipated for the year in course.

The only downer in the Fedas analysis is the German sports goods and sports fashion market. It is claimed that German consumers have not or only very slightly dropped their reservation as far as the purchase of sports goods and sports fashion is concerned. As a result, the German trade will have to face declining sales once again this year.

In his quality as President of the German specialist sports goods trade, Fedas President Werner Haizmann pointed out that the German trade has nevertheless lost nothing of its proverbial optimism. Spearheading this development the corporate groups are trying to consolidate their members’ leading position on the market by offering constantly improving purchase and sales programs, cross-selling and a strengthened orientation to the customers and services. As before, more than 60 percent of sales on the German sports goods and sports fashion market are being attained by self-employed medium-sized retailers. However, the overall economic situation in Germany is a stumbling block on sales in spite of all their positive efforts. In this context, we should bear in mind that sales in the sports goods trade are anyway being determined by the weather.

Exchanging market data from the different Fedas member countries, the delegates from Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Spain discussed the changing relationship between the globally acting sports goods industry and the local trade.

Studying European-wide information about flagship stores, concept stores, performance stores, factory outlets and similar distribution channels of the brand-name industry in more detail, we will see that the sector’s big brand-name suppliers are increasingly developing from being manufacturers to being traders. Whereas factory sales were originally meant to foster the sale of unmarketable remaining stock, this need-born type of retailing has meanwhile brought about independent, professionally structured profit centers. More and more large suppliers are thus demonstrating to their shareholders that they do not primarily want to get rid of old stock, but that the outlets are instead designed to generate additional profit.

In the view of the representatives of the European specialist sports goods trade this situation involved a way of acting that is clearly making previous partners sharp competitors. The European specialist trade will have to respond to this development and will doubtlessly do so. This will, however, happen exclusively by way of means being available in the framework of a free European market economy. Quite certainly, mere appeals are the worst thing to be used here.

In Marseille, Fedas commented that the representatives of the globally acting suppliers will have to use the same yardsticks applied to the specialist trade in their current or future retail policies. In doing so, these brand-name suppliers will doubtlessly get aware of the risks involved, namely that brand-name manufacturers are luring consumers to factory outlets with ever lower prices and thus increasingly devaluate a brand’s value in the eyes of the consumers. After all, both manufacturer and retailer want to earn money with this brand on the market.

In the next few months, Fedas will continue to have a close look at the entry of the global manufacturers into the European retail trade. Their clearly defined goal is to take the strong brands, in particular, back to their roots, i.e. their core competencies. After all, no brand-specific retail trade will successfully attain consumers across the different countries whilst respecting the necessary yields.

Corresponding discussions are being held on various levels and with various sceneries in mind. Of course, ispo is offering an excellent platform for this.

Being a European trade association, Fedas is increasingly dealing with the problems of its colleagues in the ten new EU member states. At the federation’s traditional meeting in the framework of ispo summer, the possibility of founding a work group of the Central European specialist sports goods retailers will be assessed, who are now gaining weight as new EU partners without having the necessary own associational structures at their disposal that are indispensable in the new united Europe. People at Fedas are convinced to possess the necessary experience to build up their own retail structures for the sports goods sector.

One successful example is the cooperation between Fedas and its Spanish colleagues, whose representative Eduardo Moja from Madrid reported that further important steps towards the foundation of a federally structured pan-Spanish retail association have been taken.

The Austrian Fedas representative, VSSÖ vice president and diploma businessman Ernst Aichinger outlined his association’s activities in the framework of their lobbying work in Brussels. In this context, he dealt above all with the consequences of the guidelines on electric and electronic scrap for the specialist sports goods trade in the partner countries and with the consultations on the Community’s new chemistry guideline. Here he mentioned successful debates held at a parliamentary session in Brussels with the EU MP and expert, Karl-Heinz Florenz, together with Werner Haizmann.

In the framework of its future lobbying work in Brussels, which will be coordinated by Ernst Aichinger in the aforementioned areas, Fedas will mainly base itself on contacts with the members of the European Parliament from the Fedas member countries in question and will increasingly make use of the services of the specialist trade lobby, Euro Commerce.

Fedas secretary general, Claude Benoit informed his colleagues in great detail about the state of the application and further development of the Fedas goods groups code, which has meanwhile become an indispensable tool for the European sports goods sector. First working sessions have already covered the size code that has long been projected, and will present the current state of their work at ispo.

According to the wish of all Fedas delegates, and also of the federation’s president, Werner Haizmann, the successful cooperation with the world renowned trade fair ispo in Munich is to be extended further. Discussing the fair issue all delegates agreed that there is no comparable show worldwide to live up to ispo. And this will not change in the near future. Nevertheless, great attention has to be paid to the question as to what influence the changing markets of the “old” Europe and the markets of the new EU member states and in Russia will exercise on the development of the show. A split-up of trade information in hardly recognisable individual sections must, above all, be counteracted. As before, every European retailer needs to have a survey of the world market before being able to make purchasing decisions for his local area and his direct area of influence – irrespective of whether he is doing so with or without the help of a corporate group.