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Haglofs restructures to deal with future growth
Haglöfs is growing. Last years sales increased by 12% in Spain, 57% in UK and 78% in Italy, whilst Germany, which has the largest market share outside of Scandinavia, rose by 11%.
The sales already achieved for 2005 show even further growth on the previous year for all countries.After 5 years of developmental work, Haglöfs is now established as one of the most significant outdoor brands within Europe. "It is an immense pleasure to see how Haglöfs has achieved respect from customers and the outdoor industry as a whole in our new markets." Says Mats Hedblom,General Manager of Haglöfs. "We have a huge responsibility. We are not interested in
quick deals, but want to continue consolidating and strengthening our current markets before moving on to open new ones."
The central organisation of Haglöfs is now undergoing a restructuring to enable it to deal effectively with the demands for its products in the future. A simple, efficient structure of 3 management divisions instead of the previous 6 has been introduced: Sales, Production and Finance. A new role of Design Manager will ensure that Haglöfs design is consistent over the whole range of products. The recognized high technical level of Haglöfs products will thus be distinguished by an even clearer design profile compared with today.
The strategy is to not only to utilise the skills that we already have within our current workforce, but also to recruit experienced key people from successful international businesses, not necessarily with outdoor qualifications, but with the knowledge and an eye for what is needed to be successful long term in European and Global markets.
At the time of writing, Johnny Claus from Nike Europe has joined as Product Director and Richard Jagrud from Team Sportia Sweden as Business Area Manager for Footwear. Lennart Svensson has the equivalent role for Hardware and Henrik Ottosson for Clothing. Claes Broqvist, Sales Director, is now responsible for sales and marketing for all markets, and a Marketing Co-ordinator with good international experience is being recruited.
Mats Hedblom, "The idea of the new division of responsibility is to increase the playing surface of my co-workers so that I can support them more as a coach. I am certain that we have created one of the industries best organisations, with the ability to handle a considerably larger turnover than today’s."
