Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) CEO and President Tim Boyle spoke with Fox Business Network’s (FBN) Liz Claman regarding the company’s new flagship store in Manhattan, Black Friday results, and expansion of the company. On the recently opened flagship store in Manhattan, Boyle said, “It’s been great, “ and, “so far we are very pleased with the results we have had in New York.” On Black Friday results Boyle commented, “we don’t report results as it relates to any particular season,” but, “ I could tell you we were thrilled.” On recent expansion overseas in India Boyle said, “it’s really the last major market where the company has not been present,” and, “we’re thrilled with it.”
Columbia Sportswear CEO on Flagship store in New York City:
“It’s been great. Basically our company is a wholesale business and it’s a collection of brands and we want to make sure the merchandise looks collected and displayed the way we want to display it and the way we think our retailers frankly should display the merchandise, so that’s been a fun part of the whole flagship store business in terms of how we lay it out and our expectation is that this is going to be a big inspiration for our existing retailers. So far we are very pleased with the results we have had in New York.”
Columbia Sportswear CEO on Black Friday results:
“Because we are not a typical retailer we don’t report results as it relates to any particular season or metrics but I could tell you we were thrilled so if that gives you any indication, it was good.”
Columbia Sportswear CEO on the Columbia 860 Platinum Turbo Down jacket being a hot seller:
“It’s really about our focus on innovation, so the turbo down series, and there are several garments in that series and it just launched this year, is a combination of a jacket and a synthetic jacket we like to talk about it being a down jacket on steroids. Keeps you warm, has all the positive things about down insulation, but it has all the positives about synthetic insulation including if it gets wet it still has all its insulation capacity.”
Columbia Sportswear CEO on Sorel boot sales:
“What we have done with that brand, which at one point in time it was really a men’s work wear brand, it’s now been transformed into a women’s fashion performance brand and we like to talk about it, it’s the most adored fashion and the most fashion in outdoor. So when you want to be protected, you want to look good, especially in Manhattan you got to go to Sorel.”
Columbia Sportswear CEO on expansion overseas in India:
“We signed a distributor agreement, it is really our most recent distribution agreement that we’ve signed and it’s really the last major market where the company has not been present. So our distributor is very bullish on the brand, his first few stores were very successful, he was very pleased with the results so he is in the process of rolling out the brand in about 20 stores and we’re thrilled with it.”
Columbia Sportswear CEO on the expansion of the PrAna brand:
“Well PrAna right now is almost exclusively North American and you can argue that it’s just a U.S. brand and about 40 plus percent of our total revenues are outside the U.S.. So, our first expansion is going to be- let’s go to those markets where the Columbia brand is strong, where we have a strong highly capitalized distributor and we can take advantage of the relationships and what we think consumers in those markets will really appreciate as it relates to PrAna.”
