Or Maybe Zumiez is Going to Buy Them Oh, and Billabong Bought RVCA Okay, Zumiez is Out of the Picture Anyway, This is All Really Interesting- and Related As you know, Billabong made an offer on June 30 to acquire the Canadian action sports retailer West 49. Only July 9th, Zumiez said
Billabong Acquiring West 49 Read More »
As usual, we’re dealing with the numbers in the June 3 press release and the comments in the conference call rather than the actual quarterly filing with the Security and Exchange Commission that’s full of details. That just drives me crazy, and I want to explain why and what I think the result is in this
Quik’s Quarter Ended April 30, 2010- Sales Down, Profits Up. Read More »
Orange 21 (Spy Optic) has been through a lot. The recession and resulting economic conditions were enough, I’m sure we’d all agree, for any company to deal with. But since CEO Stone Douglass came in, they’ve also settled a dispute with former CEO Mark Simo and No Fear, done a rights offering (they raise about $2.5 million
Orange 21’s Results for Quarter Ended March 31 Read More »
Volcom filed their 10Q on May 10th. After I listened to the conference call and they said how well the brand was doing in Macy’s, I was determined to get into a Macy’s and see for myself before writing this. I’ve done that now, so we’ll take a look at the numbers then move on to what
Volcom 1st Quarter Ended March 31- Numbers, Macy, Inventory Management Read More »
The concept of the European Community and a common currency worked okay (though with massive misallocation of capital) as long as long as there was lots of growth and lots of money and lots of subsidies for poorer countries and low interest rates. For a long time, what you could earn on a German bond wasn’t
What’s Going on in Greece and Why You Might Care Read More »
Below is the handout I distributed at IASC’s Skateboard Industry Summit at the end of April where I talked about the evolving retail environment. These are quotes from recent fillings and conference calls by Billabong, Genesco (owners of Journeys), Nike and Zumiez about how they see the retail environment and their involvement in it. Except
What Are Big Brands Doing in Retail? It’s a Bit Scary Read More »
It was, by any measure, a successful conference and IASC did a great job putting it on. Attendance, at around 95, was up over last year, which was also up over the first year of the conference the previous year. The attendees were the senior people from the right companies. The food continues to improve (breakfast still needs
Notes from the Skateboard Industry Conference Read More »
Given that Vail says the snow up to about Christmas was the worst in 30 years, you have to say that they really did okay. But I think the most interesting thing in the whole 10Q was the disclosure that 13 holders of contracts to purchase Ritz-Carlton Residences had sued to get out of the contracts
Vail 2nd Quarter Results- Watching Real Estate Will Be Interesting Read More »
A sales decline of 2.4% for the quarter ended Jan. 31, 2010 compared to the same quarter the prior year, from $443.7 to $432.7 million isn’t what you’d like to see. Then you notice that their gross margin percentage rose from 46.7% to 51.3% and that their gross profit was up by 7.2% even with
Quik’s Quarter Ended Jan. 31, 2010; Great Tactics- What’s the Growth Strategy? Read More »
I was recently paging through a couple of Transworld consumer mags (Surf and Skate I think) and something caught my attention. I don’t know what made me notice it, but I suddenly realized there was not one non-endemic advertisement in either mag. Okay, maybe I missed one, but there was no Ford Trucks, Mountain Dew, AT&T or
An Interesting Advertising Observation; What Does it Mean? Read More »