Amer Sports is expanding the distribution of its products through its own e-commerce solutions. After successfully piloting e-commerce in France with Salomon and Suunto, the company will gradually open new ‘web-shops’ in Europe and North-America.
With its own e-commerce platform, Amer Sports will ‘provide an additional channel for the consumer to interact with its brands. It also provides the consumer the opportunity to purchase the entire range of products from a brand.’
Sporting goods specialist Amer Sports owns a number of internationally recognized brands including Salomon, Wilson, Atomic, Arc’teryx, Precor, Suunto and Mavic.
“E-commerce is a good addition to the other channels where our products are being sold, such as sporting goods chains, specialty retailers, mass merchants and brand stores,” said Heikki Takala, President and CEO of Amer Sports Corporation.
“Own e-commerce offers us the opportunity to demonstrate our entire product range with the chance to explain the unique benefits and features of each product. Further, in e-commerce we can tell our brand stories through ‘sight and sounds’. This in turn creates stronger consumer awareness and desire for our brands.
“E-commerce is a logical building block to our group strategic priorities, enabling us to grow faster in softgoods, win with the consumer by following their habit changes in purchasing and information seeking, and expand our commercial footprint to new channels,” Takala continued.
“After successfully piloting with the two first web stores, we are now moving to expansion,” explained Victor Duran, who is in charge of Amer Sports’ Business to Consumer and Marketing. “The pilots resulted in the doubling of website traffic for our brands, driving incremental sales through our e-commerce sites while also supporting the sales of our retail partners. Indeed, our retail partners benefit from the increased awareness, as most consumers want to feel and try the product and hence prefer to purchase in retailers’ outlets.
“The strategy in Amer Sports Business to Consumer is to surround the consumer with a great brand experience, communicate the value of our brands and then let the consumer decide how and where to buy,” added Duran.
On top of the e-commerce expansion, Amer Sports continues to develop its direct retail sales to consumers. At the end of March, the group had 159 branded stores worldwide. The group’s current target is to have up to 10% of the Group net sales coming from own retail stores and e-commerce.
In September 2010, Amer Sports Corporation announced new strategic priorities. The group strategy emphasizes faster growth in apparel and footwear, excellence in consumer-centric product creation and brand marketing, and stronger commercial fundamentals through sales and distribution development, including own retail and e-commerce.
Operational excellence continues to be a key cornerstone. The strategy also defines internal financial as well as synergy and scale targets for each unit in the group portfolio.
