Trading ski industry brands

When I worked in the ski industry, we used to joke that “to make a small fortune in the ski business, we had to start with… a big one!” I just heard that Quiksilver finally received a binding offer to buy the Rossignol brands for about $150 million, about one quarter of the $560 million Quiksilver paid when it got the company from Laurent Boix-Vives. The latter didn’t do too well compared to the $1.6 billion Georges Salomon received when he sold his holdings to Adidas, but “Jojo” had really worked his way up bit by bit while Boix-Vives had been more calculated and opportunistic. Then, almost like Quiksilver, Adidas lost almost two-third of its purchase price when it sold that company to Amer. So what’s the morale of that story? Don’t trade ski brands in the hope to make much money no matter how prestigious and how well established they are. Bruno Cercley who heads the group “Chartreuse & Mont Blanc” that just acquired the Rossignol brands should remember that lesson and, unlike what he claims, will have to make sure to move all the manufacturing to China if he hopes to make it in that dog-eat-dog business!