Amer Sports’ Footwear Focus Is Paying Off Via Arc’Teryx and Salomon Gains

Amer Sports is seeing strong gains from its growing Salomon and Arc’Teryx footwear businesses.

This spring, Arc’teryx launched its first shoe line designed and created in-house as opposed to relying on resources from Salomon. Arc’Teryx also opened a footwear office in Portland, Ore. in 2022 and expanded its footwear team to 12 people, up from just four last year.

Amer Sports’ chief executive officer Jie (James) Zheng said in a call with analysts on Tuesday that the company was “very pleased with the market reception” to its recent Arc’teryx shoe launch, which featured three performance silhouettes.

“Based on the enthusiastic response from consumers and the key wholesale comp, we are gaining early confidence that footwear can become a meaningful profitable growth avenue for the brand,” he said.

After the launch, Zheng said that footwear’s penetration of Arc’teryx’s total revenue went from 6 percent to 10 percent. And Arc’teryx CEO Stuart Haselden said in the call with analysts that throughout the 10-week launch period, Arc’teryx’s footwear revenues increased more than 100 percent.

“We believe that Arc’teryx has a future as a legitimate competitor in the athletic footwear space,” Haselden said. He noted that margin-wise, footwear is still a relatively small part of Arc’teryx’s business currently, but he sees the opportunity to grow it and make it more profitable.

As for Salomon, Zheng said that “footwear will be the key growth engine” for the brand, which has seen category growth in both China and APAC.

“We position [it] as a modern outdoor lifestyle brand,” Zheng said. “And we’ve also created a new category for outdoor sneakers, driven mainly by the sports style franchise. I think that part will really lead us to grow our business in both Europe and North America.”

He added that sales at the Salomon’s new footwear-focused store in Paris have blown past expectations, which Zheng said is a testament to the power of the brand’s new lines as well as its more established product.

Overall, Amer Sports, Inc. posted sales and profits ahead of its guidance for the first quarter on Tuesday morning, with growth largely driven by its Arc’teryx brand. Q1 revenues for technical apparel, which includes Arc’teryx and Peak Performance, were up 44 percent year-over-year to $510 million. The outdoor performance segment, which includes Salomon, saw Q1 revenues grow 6 percent to $400 million. The Ball & Racquet category, which includes the challenged Wilson brand, experienced a 14 percent year-over-year decline in sales to $273 million.