Adidas shakes up Western European top management as results slump

By

Olivier Guyot

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Aug 29, 2018

Despite a positive quarterly result at the global level, the Adidas group’s performance in Western Europe stuttered in the second quarter of the current financial year. The German sport group’s senior management did herald a slow-down, but the latter seems to have been worse than anticipated. The group recorded a 0.1% decline in sales at constant exchange rates, reaching €1.420 billion in the quarter (-0.9% at current exchange rates).

“The levelling out of our results since the start of the year has been more pronounced than we forecast. This is due to the fact that both the product narratives we created and our consumer engagement initiatives were not as effective as in the past,” said Kasper Rorsted, the group’s CEO, at the presentation of Adidas’s latest quarterly results. “Accordingly, we acted and made changes to our Western Europe senior management team, to ensure that [strategy] execution will be more effective. We estimate that the trend will be virtually the same in the second half of the year, as we will abide by our disciplined approach,” added Rorsted.

As a result, on July 1 Arthur Hoeld, 48, was appointed General Manager Western Europe. Since February last year, Germany-born Hoeld was in charge of strategy and expansion for Adidas, as Senior Vice-President Global Brands Strategy and Business Development. From 2011, he had been in charge of Adidas Originals. A former decathlete, Hoeld joined Adidas in 1998 as Advertising Manager and subsequently climbed the corporate ladder within the group, taking on managerial posts in advertising, communication and marketing. He takes over from Alain Pourcelot, who was appointed General Manager in spring 2017, and remains with the group, taking charge of the Training department.

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At the same time, Guillaume de Montplanet, who stepped down from his role as General Manager France last year to take on a Europe-wide remit, was appointed Senior Vice-President Europe for the Adidas brand.