Jarden’s September 30 Quarter And the K2 Rolling Stones’ Limited Edition Ski Collection
As you know, Jarden is a big, multi brand company that did $6 billion in its last complete year. They’ve got over 100 brands including Crock Pot, First Alert, Coleman, and Mr. Coffee. They also own K2, Ride, 5150, Planet Earth, and Volkl and that’s pretty much why we are interested in the company, though I think I’ve got a toaster oven one of their brands made.
The brands we care about are part of their Outdoor Solutions segment that did $707 million during the quarter (the whole company did $1.8 billion) and aren’t broken out from the rest of the brands in that segment. So we’re reduced to scouring footnotes and the conference call to see if we can find anything interesting.
Here’s the link to the 10Q. I’m not going to do my standard analysis of the income statement and balance sheet because the company’s pretty solid and I can’t really pull out any specifics that are relevant to action sports and youth culture.
Hiding in plain sight is the fact that Jarden is another big corporation that’s in our space and has been for some years now. Guess we should be used to it. That size and the extent of their operations gives them a perspective on the on the economy and business conditions that can highlights some things we are also thinking about.
One of those is China. Jarden management noted in the conference call that they expect Chinese wages and benefits will “…continue to rise by 15% to 20% annually as the Chinese economy becomes more consumer oriented and that the long-term trend in shipping and transportation costs will continue upwards.” As a result, they are bringing certain products back to the U.S. for manufacture. Time Magazine wrote about it as an example of an expanding trend. No snowboards or skis yet, according to the article.
A second is their focus on “achieving greater efficiencies from working capital.” That’s the stuff we’ve all been working on since the economy got tough; controlling inventories, being careful with credit, watching expenses. You know- all the operating stuff you do to try and bring a few more bucks to the bottom line when sales growth is a bit harder to come by.
With regards to the winter sports business, we did get a few pieces of information. They note that K2, Volkl and Marker have had strong early orders, especially in Europe. They think retailers are trying to replenish record low inventory positions.
There’s also a note about there being a Seattle K2 concept store that’s open on a seasonal basis. I haven’t seen it, but will have to track it down. Jarden has Rawlings and Coleman outlet stores. They say they are interested in doing more retail, but don’t offer any specifics.
I also found out that Jarden has an investment in Rossignol (size not specified) though they aren’t involved in running it.
Finally there are, in fact, going to be Rolling Stone limited edition skis from K2. I really don’t know whether or not I like this idea. I’d love to talk to the marketing guys about their rationale. I was relieved to see that it’s apparently not on any snowboards. Maybe it was the threat of putting Rolling Stones graphics on Ride that made Robert Marcovitch leave town.
As you know, Robert was the CEO of Ride and stayed with the company when it was acquired by K2 and when K2 was acquired by Jarden. He was running (very successfully I heard) the entire Jarden winter sports business until a bit more than two months ago, when he was promoted to CEO of Coleman and sent to their headquarter in Wichita, Kansas from Seattle.
Now the plot thickens. We learn in the conference call that, “…Robert and his senior team have been looking at Coleman on a global basis, looking at where our customers are, and how we need to be able to respond to a growing global presence…”
Out of this review came a decision for Coleman to put a facility in Denver“…that puts us closer to an international airport, puts us closer to people to work in the outdoor industries in our core consumer group and we think it’s a move that is going to kind of reinvigorate Coleman and put us on its next leg of growth over the next 10 years.”
Nice work Robert!! I don’t actually know any of this, but it just feels like he took the job, got to Wichita, and decided he needed to be back near the mountains. I’d love to see the Power Point he used to convince senior management.
On a serious note, I suspect that part of his new job is to get Coleman out of Wichita figuratively as well as, I guess, literally. This is a well-known brand that I think of as reliable, workmanlike, and venerable. In some ways it feels like a utility; it always works and it’s always there when you need it, but it’s definitely not cool. Robert has the background to make it cool and expand its market reach and I’ll bet that’s part of the plan. I think there’s a lot of potential there.
Should be fun to watch.
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