Geox closes subsidiaries in China and the US
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The Italian shoe manufacturer Geox SpA is streamlining its business activities. On Thursday, the group announced the closure of its subsidiaries in China and the US at the end of the year.
Both companies had only made insignificant contributions to sales and were in the red, Geox said, adding that the measures were aimed at increasing efficiency and better meeting the needs of sales. The media had already speculated about the closure of operations in the US a few weeks ago.
The company responsible for the US market, S&A Distribution Inc., recorded sales of 9.6 million euros and an operating loss of 1.5 million euros in the 2023 financial year. The Chinese subsidiary Geox Trading Shanghai Limited, which operates 12 stores in the country, recently achieved annual sales of 13.8 million euros and suffered an operating loss of 2.4 million euros.
In the future, the shoe manufacturer's China business will be taken over by a "relevant international player". A corresponding partnership agreement is close to being concluded, Geox explained.
Nine-month sales fell by 9.7 percent
The company also provided information on its business development in the first nine months of the current year. Sales amounted to 525.5 million euros, which corresponded to a decrease of 9.7 percent (-9.0 percent adjusted for currency effects) compared to the same period last year.
In the wholesale business, revenues fell by 15.4 percent to 274.5 million euros. Sales in the company's own stores and those run by franchise partners and in e-commerce totaled 250.9 million euros, 2.6 percent below the corresponding level of the previous year.
The available figures gave management no reason to change the existing annual forecasts. A decline in sales of a mid-single-digit percentage is therefore still expected for 2024. The operating margin is expected to increase by 50 basis points compared to the previous year.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.DE. It was translated to English using an AI tool called Genesis and edited by Rachel Douglass..
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