Word: shoeings
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Given these dynamics, wouldn't this be the absolute worst time for a company to enter a business that combines two ailing industries: namely, the golf shoe business? Not so, says GEOX, the fast-growing Italian shoe company whose breathable, casual footwear have developed a loyal following around the globe. On Wednesday April 1st, GEOX announced that it's entering the golf game; the company is launching its first line of shoes for the weekend duffers. GEOX is betting that its "NET System Technology," which utilizes an actual net inside the shoe's sole to help keep a golfer...
...golf stop the slump? Polegato insists that his customers have asked that GEOX create a comfy golf shoe. "Golf is a perfect environment for GEOX technology," he says. "You walk long hours, often on a damp surface, and in warm if not hot climates. Why suffer with your feet? In the third millennium, it is impossible that people still suffer from such a basic problem as sweaty, smelly feet." Right on, Mario. The problem for GEOX, however, is that the world's economy may stink even worse...
Polegato's timing might not be as bad as it seems. While footwear in general, and especially luxury shoes, has suffered in the recession, athletic shoes have not taken as hard a hit. In fact, after the $17.5 billion U.S. athletic footwear market saw flat sales in '08, sneakers are actually up 6% so far this year, according to SportsOneSource, a research firm. Further, while the overall golf business is stuck in the rough - U.S. equipment sales, for example, have dropped 9% this year - spikes have sold relatively well. In the United States, the $500 million golf shoe market...
...selling shoe brand in Italy, and GEOX is a rising star in the global marketplace. Between 2001 and 2008, the company's net sales increased from $195 million to $1.2 billion. Profits jumped from $9.5 million to $163 million. More recently, however, GEOX hasn't escaped the slowdown. After a decade of double-digit annual profit growth, net income flattened out in 2008. The stock has dropped 54% over the past year. "At the moment, the shoes business is very difficult," says Polegato. "I believe, however, that GEOX is in a great situation, because we can mix technology and style...
Cheever grew up in the Greater Boston shore town of Quincy. His father was a traveling shoe salesman successful enough for a while to keep his family in middling Yankee splendor - a big house, good schools for John and his older brother Fred. But by the mid-1920s, as Cheever reached his teens, the shoe business was tanking, and his father was increasingly drunk and adrift. To make ends meet, his mother opened a gift shop that Cheever would describe as "an abysmal humiliation," at least for him. The big house would be lost anyway; his mother would shed...