The agreement between Veneto Sviluppo Spa and Garmont International Srl was presented today at the offices of the Regional Holding Company in Marghera (Venice). Founded in 1954 in the Treviso area of Northern Italy and recently taken over by the entrepreneur Pierangelo Bressan, an industrialist with consolidated experience in the clothing industry, Garmont® is a premier international brand of performance footwear for mountaineering, hiking and other outdoor pursuits.
The operation with Garmont International is one of the most recent examples of those processes renamed industrial restart in which Veneto Sviluppo Spa participates through its own risk capital
fund, on a partnership basis aimed at corporate restructuring, relaunch and new positioning of the brand and product range, considering above all market trends.The challenges currently experienced by this company in the Montebelluna industrial district are in fact those linked to a new market identity within the high‐end segment of the outdoor market: product design and development should pay specific attention to novelties and the growing market demand for new creative and technical developments, aimed at increasingly combining lightness, function and aesthetics.
The company from Treviso, in addition to researching and prototyping new product lines, has therefore structured its 2015/2017 business plan with the clear intent of further stepping up export volumes (at the moment just under 80% of total sales, in 35 countries worldwide including China, the USA, Norway, Japan and Australia) by opening up new markets both via distributors and via subsidiaries for a direct control of sales.
Veneto Sviluppo will invest one million Euros in the company, which equates to the acquisition of a 25% share in the capital stock.
Garmont International, in 9 months of effective trading, ended 2014 with revenues of 7.7 million Euros and a gross operating margin of 606 thousand Euros. At 30 June 2015 the company had reached revenues of 6.6 million Euros and orders for delivery within 31/12/2015 of approx. 3.1 million Euros, reaching in advance the objective set forth in the business plan for the current year.
“This equity operation”, explained Giorgio Grosso, president of Veneto Sviluppo Spa, “is a further step forward in the strenuous defence of that Italian and, in particular, Veneto design which for decades has played a key role within the international sportsystem industry. We chose to invest in a “restart” operation such as that of the new Garmont, supporting and sharing the challenges of the new president Bressan, to continue in our mission of defending and relaunching that know‐how which is not just business but also the safeguarding of employment, research and technology”.
In fact the new company, now under the management of the majority shareholder Pierangelo Bressan, supported by the minority shareholder Terry Urio (who is also the company Head of Administration and Finance), continues with fifteen staff members whose existing brand expertise and know‐how has facilitated continuity and reorganisation of operations.
“We’re proud to have ended our first financial year with a positive result and to have reached our 2015 turnover objective, considering also orders in house for delivery within end of year”, declared Pierangelo Bressan, president of Garmont International Srl. “In particular the opening of a North American subsidiary in October 2014 and its three‐year development plan will be decisive for the relaunch of our brand and this strategic decision will see most use of the new financial resources from the operation with Veneto Sviluppo.”
INFO: Garmont
