Good morning. Thank you everyone for coming to attend the 2015 interim results presentation of Samsonite International. Today, we have our Chairman, Mr. Tim Parker, our CEO, Mr. Ramesh Tainwala, as well as our CFO, Mr. Kyle Gendreau here to present the results. The plan is for Tim to give a few opening remarks, then Ramesh and Kyle to review the performance of the operations in greater detail. Without further ado, I'll have Mr. Tim Parker begin the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you very much indeed, William. Good morning, everyone. It's very good to be back in Hong Kong and to be presenting another set of Samsonite results. I must say, we are very happy indeed with these results. There can't be many companies, either here or across the world actually, who can report a sustained growth in sales over four or five years of around 15%. Some years a bit more and some years a bit less. For us to reach the half-year point, and to be able to point to a record sales of almost $1.2 billion is very satisfying. The fact that our business is so globally diverse, I think is a great strength. Having just come from the Bloomberg studios, where everyone's in a flap about China and what's happening and great worries.
I was able to point out that unlike many companies here, we are a very broadly based business around the world. I think that is a great medium-term strength. China's important to us, but we are in no sense reliant upon China. At the same time, of course, being a business that reports in US dollars, any periods where the US dollar appreciates so significantly is bound to have an impact on our dollar reporting. What we are going to try to do in this presentation is to give you a good picture of how the company is performing in each market in constant currency, and obviously to balance that too with the outturn in terms of US dollars. Our business as a whole, as I said, was up 16.6%. In dollar terms, obviously that was somewhat less at 8%.
Our gross margin contribution moved up by 14.5%. In dollar terms, that was somewhat less. For me, it was very encouraging that despite a lot of pressures in terms of costs in dollars, we were able, to a large extent, to preserve our gross margin. Most of the changes there were due to structural things like slightly more American Tourister business as a proportion of our total sales. Again, if we look at our EBITDA, which is our key performance measure, that was up a very satisfactory 8.4% in constant currency terms. Of course, the headline number was 2%. To be honest, to get to this stage of the year and produce that sort of outturn in US dollars despite significant translation pressures, for us, was a very satisfying result indeed.
Of course, at net income level, excluding some of the one-off FX effects and also the stock option costs, our adjusted net income was up 8.1% in constant currency terms. Of course, in USD terms it was slightly down. It's important, as I said, I can't stress to you too much, that the underlying results of our business, if we take it market by market, was exceedingly positive. We can normally adjust quite well for gross margin pressures. Obviously, from a translation perspective, the impact of the U.S. dollar has been pretty much inescapable. It is important to think about the future, and how will we see the U.S. dollar moving in the future. My sense, and I'm no currency expert, is that the U.S. dollar has certainly appreciated a huge amount.
I would be very surprised to see this kind of U.S. dollar appreciation repeated over the next few months and indeed years. Maybe some, but not nearly so much. By way of some temporary relief, I suppose, the U.S. dollar reached 110 against the EUR. I think it's now at 114, maybe some of that has already started to turn around. From our perspective, the most important thing is that our strategy of being a multi-brand, multi-country, multi-segment company is really beginning to pay off. When I joined the business in 2008, I think around 70% of what we sold, broadly speaking, was Samsonite luggage. Today, we are a much more broadly based company and becoming even more broadly based with each year that passes.
If you look at the second slide here, you can see in country terms, our business was up in all of the key regions by around 17%. 17% in Asia, 17% in America, 17% in Europe. I'll talk about the organic numbers in a moment. If you look at our brands, all of our brands posted really positive growth. Samsonite 7.5%, American Tourister 18%, High Sierra 5%, and Hartmann almost 10%. Very encouraged by that. You can see too that our efforts and the efforts of Ramesh and the team here to move the business in a more broadly based way in terms of segments are also paying off. Our travel business was up by almost 10%, 9.5%, but you'll see enormous growth in complementary segments, that our business category up 44%, our casual business up 22%, and accessories 52.5%.
These are very encouraging numbers for us. Also, as we shift the company much more in the direction of a greater exposure to direct-to-consumer business, our overall retail channel was up in constant currency terms by around 20% and e-commerce by around 29%. We are seeing, and of course the Rolling Luggage acquisition has made some impact here. We are seeing a fundamental shift in our business, and Ramesh will be talking, I'm sure, about some of the benefits of having a company which is less reliant entirely upon wholesale business. Of course, we achieve this because we invest consistently behind our brands.
Although this first half of the year has obviously been challenged from a currency translation perspective, we were still, in spite of all that, able to increase our advertising and constant currency terms by 12.5%, but in any event by around 2% to support the growth in sales. This is a business which, as I said, despite some of the short-term fluctuations, I think has performed extremely well. On the next slide, you can see the performance of the business in organic terms has been very strong. Overall growth of 11% in organic terms, Asia almost 15%, and that was driven by an outstanding performance in China of nearly 30% growth. It's often a surprise that despite some of the questioning about the future prospects in the market, our business, and we'll explain in more detail why in a moment, continues to perform extremely well.
Very encouraging growth in Europe of 15.5%. I don't know many consumer goods companies that can boast that kind of expansion. America, as we've signaled in the past, is settling down to a more mature business. Latin America, we'll speak about in a moment, where we're beginning to invest because whatever the short-term turmoil in Brazil, we still feel very buoyant. Buoyant is not the right word. Positive about the prospects for South America. Getting good growth out of the brands that we have acquired and feel very happy about how they are settling down in our portfolio. I could say that there are always some short-term costs of settling down new acquisitions, and that makes, again, us very happy with the overall results because we are investing in some of the brands that we have acquired. In the short term, there are costs attached to that.
Currency translation, as I mentioned, has just had a massive impact. Without currency translation, our sales would have been almost $100 million higher. Whatever view you take of the future, as I said, I don't think that kind of pressure is likely to be repeated in the short term. We are signaling that in the second half of the year, we don't think some of the dollar pressures are likely to go away entirely. At the moment, currency parities are being driven by monetary policy, and it seems to us quite likely that the U.S. currency will probably have, on balance, more appreciation pressures than on the other side. I mentioned the impact of currency, and on the next slide, you can see quite graphically what it means in individual markets.
In the six or seven years that I've been associated with the business, I don't think I have seen such a major adjustment to currency parities. 19% against eurozone countries. Of course, Russia has been pretty much a complete basket situation, but even there, as we'll tell you in a moment, our business has grown slightly. A lot of economies in South America, although it's par for the course down there to have depreciation against the dollar, but it's been another quite difficult year from that perspective. Even one or two markets in Asia have seen quite significant adjustments. Japan for one, and Australia of course, which is natural resource dominated for another. If you look down the list here, we've tried to give you a breakdown of the $92 million translation effect, and we've also traced it through to EBITDA impacts as well.
That should give you some understanding of what the company achieved on a constant currency basis and the impacts of recent adjustments. From my perspective, the team are doing a fantastic job. It's a broadly based business and some very strong foundations, I think, are being laid for future growth with the business, and there's no better person to tell you about all of that than Ramesh Tainwala, our CEO. Ramesh, over to you, old chap.
As Tim rightly said, we are very happy with the performance so far in the first half. I'll take you through region by region. Asia, our business grew on constant currency basis by 17.2%. One of the key growth drivers there have been a strong sales growth, in direct to consumer channel. Our retail stores grew by 12.7%. A part of it is also coming from a few doors of Rolling Luggage. Direct to consumer e-commerce grew by 28.4%. The sales growth in the wholesale channel have been 17.5%. It's very broadly based growth in terms of the channel that we have seen in our Asian business. Samsonite also had a very strong growth of 15.1%, and within that Samsonite Red have grown by 39.6%. American Tourister have grown by 9.6%.
The reason why American Tourister starts to somewhat moderate because the big pockets that we had in the past, is more or less, in terms of distribution, is more or less done. Except for a few countries like China I mean, like Japan and Australia, where American Tourister was a little bit late starter. We still have some opportunities there in terms of distribution expansion. The travel category grew by 17.8%. Casual, which is the backpacks and things like that, primarily driven by Samsonite Red. The two other new acquisition that we had done, High Sierra, which been around with us for two years now, and Gregory, which was acquired last year, grew by 42.3% and business by 25.5%. You see that in terms of when the categories, there have been a very broad-based expansion.
This whole vindicates our strategy of being a multi-brand, multi-category and multi-channel company, which makes our business more resilient. The adjusted EBITDA increased by 130 basis point. Partly it's also because of the timing of advertising and partly it's been offset by the drop in gross margin, which is primarily because of the channel mix. North American business also grew very nicely, 17.3%. In that there has been a major contribution from Speck and Gregory. If you look at our core business by itself, also grew very nicely. The wholesale channel grew by 4.6%, excluding the acquisitions. The sale in Canada, which have been a very strong market for us this year. It performed very nicely for us. There, the business grew by 36.1%. Retail channel was down by 2.8%, primarily because of the sales in the gateway cities.
If you really offset the sales coming from some of these gateway cities, there have been like-for-like growth other than Florida and Central Valley, New York, we have seen a positive like-for-like. Samsonite sales grew by 6%, American Tourister by 11.4%. High Sierra sales were down by 4.6%, but that's mainly because of the timing of some of the sales to big customers like Costco. Our view on High Sierra remains positive. We will see a positive growth for the whole year for High Sierra. Hartmann is down by 27.9%, primarily because we were cleaning up some of the inventory last year, which is not happening this year. Travel and casual category. Travel grew by 5.7%, casual by 6.3%. The business has grown by 121%, and accessory by 98.3%. That's primarily because of Speck business.
The adjusted EBITDA as a percentage have decreased by 2,020 basis points, mainly because of the impact of the integration in the first half. Excluding the acquisition, the adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of sales have decreased by 120 basis points, driven mainly by decreased profitability in the retail chain. As we said that our retail doors had the negative LFL, primarily in the gateway cities. Europe had a very strong first half. The sales grew by 17.4% on constant currency basis, led by U.K. growing by 52.7%, Germany by 17.3%, Turkey by 15.8% 44.6%, Italy by 6.5%, even Russia, despite of macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges, have also grown by a small 2.4%. There have been a strong growth in direct-to-consumer. Retail has grown by 48.9%, but Europe, our like-for-like growth has also been very strong at 8.2%. Direct-to-consumer e-commerce grew by 28.3%, Samsonite 2.9%, American Tourister 127%.
As we have spoken last time, we are now starting to accelerate the rollout of American Tourister in the region. Started with a small base, but it is doing extremely well, and I see no reason how it is today in Asia, where American Tourister is as big as Samsonite in terms of value of the business, that it would not be the same in Europe in three to five years' time. This year, we expect American Tourister already to be contributing to around 15% of the revenue of European business. The newly acquired brands are slowly gaining traction. You have seen that we are showcasing Lipault for you now. Lipault is getting introduced now in Asia, starting from South Korea. It should be in Hong Kong before end of this year.
These numbers are small, so the percentage looks very big, but they're all very interesting pieces of business. As Tim said, we see them as a medium-term opportunity. They are the businesses where we are investing right now, but in three to five years' time, they will be contributing a very significant part of our future growth. The sales category grew by 12.8%, business category grew by 35.3%, and the casual category by 39.1%. Europe is also pushing through this strategy of trying to grow the contribution of non-travel category, which have been earlier the part of the Asian strategy also. The contribution of non-travel in Europe is still much smaller. In Asia, it's about 37% of our revenue, but as I speak to you, in Europe, it's only about 20% of the revenue.
As they catch up on that's why you see bigger numbers coming out there. The EBITDA margin has decreased by 400 basis points. 200 basis points is because of decrease in the gross margin, and 120 basis points is because of the increase in advertising, which is mainly because of the timing. The gross margin decrease is mainly attributed to higher percentage of sales of American Tourister and also the customer mix, and partly because of the currency pressures. We are taking a price increase on 1st of September in Europe, and I believe the second half should see a better gross margin coming from Europe. Latin America, our business on constant currency grew by 7.3%, but if you exclude Brazil, where I'll touch upon Brazil separately, the rest of the markets have been doing very well for us. Mexico, 19.7% growth. Chile, 10%.
Colombia, where we're starting to invest now, is 56% growth. Peru, 26.8%. Brazil is down by 41% due to challenging economic conditions. Also in the first half last year, there was a liquidation of some of the old unwanted inventory that we had took back from our previous distributor. We are right now investing in Brazil, and I believe that over the next three to five years' time, Brazil will be one of the important markets. We feel committed to Brazil, and I still see it to be one of the big opportunity market for us. The size of the luggage market alone in Brazil is estimated to be $1 billion. We are now investing there in terms of the manpower, putting infrastructure in place, and I believe over the next three to five years' time, we should see some very interesting numbers coming out from Brazil.
The retail store sales grew by 12.8%. We also opened 23 new doors. That's primarily coming from the 23 new doors that we had opened in 2014. The like-for-like growth has been 2.5%. Samsonite sales have decreased by 1.5%, mainly because of Brazil. Mexico has seen a strong growth of 15.1%, Colombia, 69%, Peru, 12.2%. A strong sales growth in every single other brand that we operate there. Secret, it is a handbag brand which we operate primarily in Chile. Now we are extending it to other Latin American countries, more particularly Mexico, Peru, and Colombia. Xtrem by 9.2%, Saxoline by 9%. These are more specific brands that we operate mainly in Latin America. American Tourister is getting launched now in Latin America, primarily in Mexico.
It's off to a very good start, I do believe that American Tourister, like it was in Asia before and now getting started in Europe, also offers a very good opportunity over three to five-year horizon. EBITDA as a percentage is down by 430 basis points, mainly because we have increased an advertising spend there, and also part of it is because of the gross margin and we are investing in terms of infrastructure in Latin America. The next slide, you see that there are some of the markets which we have talked about in more detail. Practically all our markets have done very well. On constant currency basis, U.S. have grown by 16.3%, China 30%, South Korea 4.8%. This is slightly moderated, mainly because of the MERS that did affect the tourist arrival in Korea and also both inbound and outbound. India 13%.
Japan had a strong year for us, 44.6%. It's both organic growth as well as there is a growth coming from new acquisition of Gregory. Hong Kong, 8.1%. This is in spite of, we all know what's going on in Hong Kong. I feel it's a very satisfying number coming out of Hong Kong as well. Germany, 17.3%. France, 13.6%. Chile, 10%. U.K., 52%. Part of it is coming from organic growth and part because of the Rolling Luggage acquisition. Australia, 33.5%, mainly because of traction that we are getting now with American Tourister. Look at some of the emerging countries also. We had some very nice growth. Mexico, 18.4%. Thailand, 9.8%, in spite of the challenging macro situation which exists in Thailand. Russia, 2.4%. Likewise, we have Turkey, Indonesia. Most markets have shown very nice growth except for Brazil, which I explained to you just now.
Direct to consumer is a very important element of our strategy, both brick and mortar as well as online. It has grown by 20.9%. Part of it is the first half impact of 162 new stores that we added in 2014, which is getting annualized now in 2015. We've added 33 new stores through acquisition of Rolling Luggage. The same-store comp are roughly flat compared to prior because of challenging retail environment, mainly in these three or four markets. I would say gateway cities of U.S., which is Florida and Central Valley in New York, where we see we have negative LFL. Other than that, all our stores in U.S. also have positive LFL. In Asia, other than Hong Kong, Macau, and South Korea for very obvious reasons. South Korea, all other regions in Asia also had positive LFL. Sales growth of 29% direct to consumer.
E-commerce is led by North America, 29.9%, Asia, 28.4%, Europe, 28.3%. See, there has been a very strong growth in our e-commerce channel across all geographies. Acquisition of Rolling Luggage contributes to the growth in our retail channel strategy. We've talked about it that we want to improve and enhance our airport presence. We have very strong presence in the airport in Asian countries, but we had limited presence in Europe. Rolling Luggage gives us a very interesting opportunity. It has about 33 stores, it gets off to start in U.K. and also some other European countries. Besides having these stores, it also gives us the talent pool of how to operate these airport stores, how to negotiate the deal with the airport operators. That was also kind of a missing link within our talent pool that existed.
I'm personally very excited with this opportunity of Rolling Luggage. Based upon Rolling Luggage, I believe that over the next three to five years' time, we can very significantly enhance our presence in airports across the world. All brands are delivering strong sales growth. Samsonite, as I said, very satisfying numbers, 7.5% constant currency growth driven by Asia 15.1%, North America 6%, Europe 2.9%, Latin America -1.5%, but that's mainly Brazil. If you peel off Brazil, there's been a positive growth in Samsonite in Latin America as well. American Tourister had a very strong first half, 18.4%, primarily driven by Europe. As I spoke to you before in Asia, other than in Japan and Australia, the growth starts to get moderated. That's one reason I was trying to explain to a few of the people before, we have recently launched a brand called Kamiliant.
What happened when we launched American Tourister, the intention was to occupy the entry price point, and it was launched at a price segment. I'm giving you this price segment based upon the cabin size luggage. That's how we talk about in the industry. It was between $80-$120. Since we continued to invest behind the brand and the consumer continued to love the brand, we suddenly realized that consumer has pushed us up. We are now operating American Tourister between $150-$250. We have practically almost completely vacated the price point where we started to operate American Tourister. Not that it was by design.
We continued to develop products at those price points, those products were never picked up by the consumer because they found that American Tourister was a great value and they were comparing it with other brands which are higher than American Tourister. Now when we look back, we find that that opportunity of $80-$120 is once again become vacant. We have just launched Kamiliant now. Tenson, when I last time spoke to you, I was intending to launch it in India because that was natural market. It was a very value-seeking market. We did want to do that, we had this deal with JD.com in China who was willing to invest the marketing dollars behind this brand if we are willing to commit quantity which they needed it, and also an exclusivity for six months.
We decided that it was making sense for us. Right now, Kamiliant is only available on JD.com. The exclusivity will get over before end of this year. Beginning of next year, Kamiliant will find its place in other markets. Our first feedback on Kamiliant is very positive. It's almost like what we did with American Tourister. I'm almost talking to our people yesterday only because we were having a business review meeting. My own view is that I see no reason why Kamiliant cannot be as big as American Tourister, because American Tourister started there, naturally, the customers and the consumers and our channel partner pushed us up. It's not a bad place to get pushed up because we made more money out of that. Now we see there's an opportunity there.
That's the reason why you see some amount of moderated growth of American Tourister. That said, Europe is off to a very strong start. By end of this year, American Tourister will start contributing 15% of the revenue of Europe. Hartmann and High Sierra are extending into more global markets. Hartmann has taken some time. By the time we have got the products right, we're now just getting started in Hong Kong and many other Asian countries. I believe over next three to five years' time, this should also offer us a very interesting opportunity. Others are very small brands, so I'm skipping. Right now they're small, but the intention is not to let them remain small. As you have seen that by presenting Lipault today, we're trying to give a message that we believe that Lipault is a very interesting opportunity for us.
It's a youthful, vibrant, a very chic brand, a very feminine brand. We have tried to really address and please the women customer. I have worked in this company for 19 years, and every five years we really go all out of our way to please the women. Somehow we never really succeed at big time. The product that you see it, we can always design this product under Samsonite. We have done it in the past, but it could never really appeal to the women because probably the challenge was the brand. Lipault is now mainly in France. We have just launched in Korea. I must say, I've never seen the positive response to brand Lipault anywhere as much as for Lipault, for any other previous brand that we have launched.
Very tough guys, the mall operators in Hong Kong, which are very difficult to deal with. Every time when you go up with a brand, they show you the list of 100 other brands waiting to get there. When I presented Lipault, which is only two weeks back, that was the only thing which people said, "Oh, yeah. This we can do for you." The same thing we have seen in department stores. Lipault had a licensee in Korea. We just took back the license two months back. We have presented the brand to our customers, our channel partners, mainly department stores. In one month in Korea, we are opening 15 shop-in-shop in key departments in Korea. I'm talking about this month. We have already opened 12. Three more would be opened within this month.
That kind of a response and that kind of a feedback or encouragement from our channel partner, we have not received for anything. I personally feel Lipault can be a very interesting opportunity for us, because it sits at a price point which is very interesting. It is not very expensive, because when you really go at a very high price point, the market become that much smaller. Your channel partners are choosy because that's in the luxury segment or the premium segment. There are every brand jostling for the space, and now every brand is jostling to get out of the spaces. In the medium segment, there are more people who want to really buy you.
When you see those cabin size luggage or we see some of the pieces which are on display there, it is priced between about $80 going up to about $200. It's sitting between the American Tourister and Samsonite price point. A very unique positioning, and it's off to a very good start. It will take another three, five years' time before you will see more and more traction. Right now, we are still limited to France, I believe that every next quarter it will start to contribute good numbers for our business. Speck. Again, we are very pleased with our number with Speck. We have delivered $50 million in revenue. More important, when we bought Speck, it was losing money. We believe that end of this year, 2015, it should already be delivering around nine, 10% EBITDA, which is a very satisfying number.
It's on its way to start delivering profitability similar to our core business. Our American core business profitability is around 15%-16% kind of number. I have no reason to disbelieve that that won't be possible next year. Gregory, which is a very interesting brand for us. We bought this brand primarily for its strong DNA. It's an American brand, but it had a very strong equity in the Japanese market. It's off to a very good start. It has contributed $18 million in sales in first half. Somewhere in 2016, we will start rolling out Gregory in other markets. Right now, as I speak to you, it's primarily a Japanese business and a very small American business to that. But 2016, it's our intention to launch this brand also in some other Asian countries.
These are some of the pictures of the key product assortments. We have Hartmann, High Sierra. There is strong sales growth in all the product categories. This was broadly touched by Tim already. You've seen that travel grew by 9.5% and across every single geography. Casual by 21.7%, primarily again, because of Samsonite Red, Gregory, and also extension of High Sierra into Asia and Europe. The business category has grown by 44.4%. One reason has been Speck, but also we had very strong growth in Asia and Europe, which is basically organic growth. Asia 25.5% and Europe 35.3%. Accessories also grew very nicely, 52.7%. A part of it is because of Speck, but again, once you again peel down the number, the organic growth in Europe, because Speck is not there. Speck is still limited primarily to our North American business.
The growth in the accessory category in Europe and Latin America and Asia is still coming from the organic growth. The advertising spend have increased by 12.5% on constant currency basis. There are some moving pieces. We have allocated more money in Europe for the main reason that we are launching American Tourister there. We've also allocated slightly higher money in dollar terms in North America, because we were putting some money behind Hartmann. These are some of the pictures of the targeted brand advertising. I'll pass it on to Kyle, my friend, to take you through some of the financial highlights.
Okay, thanks everyone. A little bit of a recap just to drive some of the points home. Strong constant currency growth, as we've all talked about, 16.6%, offset by $92 million currency. I think the third slide in the deck is very helpful for you to navigate through. As Tim said, I think we'll see a similar currency impact in the back half, barring any sorts of additional movements, because we're still year-over-year, dealing with the currency, and it's really when you roll into next year that we'll start to see some stabilization, assuming currencies don't do anything different. You'll have a similar impact pressure point for the back half of the business when you're thinking about our numbers from a translation perspective. Same thing for EBITDA.
It's a little bit more challenging to carry it all the way through to EBITDA, but we carry the translation effects through EBITDA, so we have a roughly $12.2 million number, a negative impact. If you take that out, our EBITDA would've been around $202 million, 8.5% growth, which we're very pleased with. We had very strong operating cash flows. We haven't quite touched on this yet, but our operating cash flows were $79 million for the half, up 50% from last year. A lot of that's off the back of slightly tighter working capital and just general cash management in the business, which we've always talked about. We're quite happy with that, and we should see that maintain that pace for us. As I said, the working capital efficiency, 13.7%. Our target's been 14% since we've listed. We've generally been running under that.
Last year at the mid-year, we were a little bit higher because of acquisitions, and we've quickly cleaned all that up as we've integrated these acquisitions. We're in a very good place there. I skipped the balance sheet side, but very strong net cash position still in this business. We have $85 million net cash position as of the end of June, a little over $200 million of cash on our books, and borrowing capacity of almost $400 million against the facility we have. Our balance sheet, even with the deals we've been doing over the last handful of years and the Rolling Luggage deal we did this year, and we also tucked in our Russia JV buyback, in June this year. Still in a very solid cash and capacity position for the business. As far as CapEx, we spent $25 million. I'll show you a sheet.
Largely this year around retail expansion. We've talked about retail expansion. We've added, if I take Rolling Luggage out over the last 12 months, we've added 130 doors. You'll see us continue to invest in CapEx on the retail side. Excluding FX, if we go to adjusted net income, there are some FX impacts within our numbers that are really around unrealized and realized gains, losses on translating balance sheet items, which aren't really translation. If you take those out, and also this year in January, we had an additional stock option grant, which brought the stock option expense up. If I take the noise of those one-off type items or kind of explainable items, we're up around 8%. If I take those out, we're still up 7% constant currency.
They're not a huge impact, but we wanted to kind of point those out to you. As I think most of you know, we paid a dividend, $88 million in July. That's up 10%. Our dividend policy is growing in line with earnings growth. So, you can expect that from us as well. Next slide is really just the balance sheet. I've covered this. You can see our cash position and our net cash and debt position at the bottom. Strong working capital, which is really the next page, and if I just bring you through that. So at the end of June, 13.7%, up a little bit from the end of December, but that's a seasonal piece of the business as July is a big piece of our business.
You'll see things like our receivable days come up from the year-end, and that's really just timing of the business. If I go back to one year ago, our receivable days are actually down. Some of that's around retail mix. As we've grown the retail portion, we'll naturally get that. Our inventory days have come down. This is the more important measure. We've gone from 116 last year to 109, and we still think this business is probably between 100 and 105 days opportunity. There's probably a bit more to go here on the inventory side for us. On payables, I think as most of you know, most of our vendors are to 105-day terms. We've continued to push that across the business, and particularly as we've brought in new acquisitions, we move those vendors up to something similar as well.
We've made good progress on our payable days as well. All of that with the team very focused. We feel very comfortable with our working capital metrics and our ability to kind of maintain these levels going forward. If I go to CapEx, really last year to this year, we've dialed up the retail investment. As part of the strategy with Ramesh coming in to the CEO role and really our general push to drive more direct-to-consumer, you'll see the mix of our investment in retail go up. That's a trend you'll see for the second half and also as we roll into next year. Our product development is down for the half. Last year, we were investing in some production capacity in warehouses in Europe.
It's down for the first half, but we're going to be dialing up some investment in the back half. As we talked about last year, we're going to be investing in China facility. That starts to come in the second half of the year. Our overall full-year target for CapEx is around $80 million. I think we might be a shade better than that, but you should assume that not that far off from that number. Those are the balance sheet items. I'll turn it back to you, Ramesh.
Okay. If you look at our future, our view on the future is still very positive in spite of the recent last week or few weeks of the turmoil is in the market. We believe that we can still continue to grow Samsonite into a well-diversified, this implementing multi-brand, multi-category, multi-channel strategy. We're trying to reshape our company from being just a luggage company to being a bag company, which continues to sell the luggage. By deploying multiple brands, we all start to operate wider price points. Also to increase the direct-to-consumer proportion of our business. As I speak to you, it's inched up to around 30% or 31% of our business. By end of this year, we'll be close to around 33%, which includes both e-commerce as well as brick-and-mortar channels and concessions that we operate.
I do believe that over a period of time, this would inch up to around 40%-50% of our revenue. Within that, there would be a bigger portion of e-commerce. Right now, e-commerce is around 7.5% of our total revenue. I see no reason in three to five years' time, this number is not getting up to 15% or even 20% of our total revenue. Just because that channel seems to be far more buoyant and we are investing more and more behind those channels. We are continuing to invest behind our core brands, implement synergies, executing market opportunities for the newly acquired brands. As I said, most of the brands, our strategy remains the same.
We acquire a brand, bring it home in the home country, spruce up at the back end of the business, bring up the profitability of those brands to the same level of profitability we have operating the core business there, then brings the second phase of starting rollout. The first brand that we acquired, just to remind you again, was High Sierra. High Sierra's profitability is exactly at the same place where our core business is, which are 15%-16% profitability. Now it's getting extended to other markets. Few other countries in Europe and few other countries in Asia. Speck, again, at this stage, we are still in the phase of sprucing up the brand in its home market. When we bought it was losing money. By now it is delivering around 10% EBITDA numbers.
We believe next year in North America, it should be back to 15%-16% kind of a number. Then we will start the second phase of starting to extend Speck into markets beyond North America. We may be doing a test marketing of Speck already end of this year, more likely beginning of next year in China. It will be a test market and we will learn through that how do we engage, how do we get into that category. That is a category which is slightly new to us. We do believe that because of e-commerce, it offers now a more easier opportunity to bring a new brand or get into a new category. Previously, if you're only distributing through a mass distribution, it requires much more time and much more effort.
With the success of Kamiliant, we have some of our e-commerce partners in China have expressed very keen desire to also try out Speck in China. First quarter of 2016, definitely one of the e-commerce partner would be launching Speck in China, then we'll learn through that. We will continue to explore strategic merger and acquisition opportunities in adjacent spaces and also to gain distribution in less represented market to grow direct to consumer, which I spell about it. Our own view is that, when I look at the second half of this year, I believe that in spite of whatever is happening at the macro level, our business is basically more travel related.
Because now we're operating multiple price points and our experience have been, in spite of what is happening now in China, I was speaking to our Chinese team and to our channel partners. Do we feel worried about the Chinese renminbi depreciating? Will it have an impact on our business? I'm not talking about the translation part of the business, we feel that the Chinese tourism number will remain strong. That means our business will be strong. It may so happen that there may be less number of Chinese tourists who are going to a more expensive destination and buying an expensive piece of luggage. They may be buying a more reasonable price luggage. We are now in a very nice spot where we are occupying a price segment right going up from $60 going up to $1,200 with Hartmann.
We are really occupying the whole spectrum of price points, and we have the widest distribution which the consumer can imagine in terms of the sales, we also offer the widest network of service after sales. I often repeat it, that's a very important competitive advantage. We have now extended in China 24-hour service of service after sales in more than 132 cities in China. That's a very, very credible thing which Chinese customers, and I have seen that more and more Asian consumers. This 24-hour service is already available in India in around 18 cities. In China, we have extended to 132 cities now, which is for all our brands. That gives a consumer enormous credibility that why he must still buy a Kamiliant at $60 or nobody else. If you can afford to buy something higher, it'll be okay.
The view which I'm trying to guide you is there that I personally believe that even in second half our business should continue to grow double-digit on constant currency basis in most Asian markets, primarily driven by the strong growth that we are anticipating in China, Japan, Australia, India, and also double-digit growth in Europe. Again, primarily driven by what we have seen. The key drivers in Europe are now three, which is one is the extension of distribution of American Tourister. Second is expanding our business, getting a bigger part of our business from the non-travel. In our retail store, if I give you some numbers, last year only 10% of our revenue was coming from non-travel category from our own stores because our stores, we were trained to be luggage retailers, we never took our non-luggage category very seriously.
As I speak to you now, majority of our stores starts to already contribute around 25% revenue. That's why you saw that very outrageous expansion number. It's not that we have got some new doors for non-travel, it's just that we start to repopulate our stores. That will also help our business. The third is that the focus on direct-to-consumer. The Rolling Luggage and like of it will continue to expand both retail as well as e-commerce as well as omni-channel. I believe Europe should also be able to deliver us still double-digit growth in second half of this year. Coming to Latin America. Leave apart Brazil, because Brazil is still in the learning process. Other than Brazil, Latin America should also deliver us a mid-teens kind of a growth in the second half of 2015.
North America, you've seen our number here is 17.2% or something like that for the first half, but part of that has been because of Speck. Speck number is getting annualized already in the second half. You will find that our core business in North America, which grew around three, 4% in the first half, we do believe that the second half would be a little bit better than the first half. Because of the macro reason and because of some other initiative that we have taken, it would be something like five, 6% kind of a growth. It will be mid-single digit is what you should expect from our North American business. When you blend everything together, I'm still willing to stick my neck out and say that we should still be able to deliver a double-digit growth.
Whether it'll be 10%, just about double digit or you'll get to 11%, 12%, which will be depending upon how the macro picture shapes up. These are all constant currency numbers that I talk about. In terms of the profitability of our business. Generally, our business is almost like 45%, 55% kind of thing. Second half is always slightly bigger than the first half. Because of that reason, you will find that our profitability will be slightly better than the first half. It's not that there's any dramatic change in our business modeling. I'm expecting any dramatic improvement in the gross margin. The gross margin will be more or less range bound. We're seeing there are some positives coming our way in terms of renminbi depreciation, in terms of commodity prices once again going down.
Both put together may give us some cost advantages, but I believe there is more and enough things which are working still against us. As Kyle very rightly said, we still believe second half the currency pressure may still be there. We are buying in dollars. What this weaker renminbi and weaker commodity prices would help us to mitigate some of the margin pressures that we having. We are still guiding that our margins should still remain in the same zone as we have seen in the first half. It may not materially get any better. Though when beginning of last year when we were planning for 2015, we did anticipate, and we did expect, and we did plan that we will be able to move our margin up by 70, 80 basis points, but that's not happening yet.
For very obvious reason that the currency have put more pressures on our margin. This is a kind of a broad guideline to how we see our business in 2015 and more particularly second half.
Okay. Thank you very much, Ramesh and Tim and Kyle. We now open the floor to Q&A.
Thank you. Erica Ku Workin with UBS. Thank you for the presentation. For China, you attribute your strong growth to both the direct sales, the e-commerce, and also the B2B. Can you just share with us what each of these B2B and the e-commerce contribute to your China sales? Also, what kind of momentum are you seeing for these businesses now that we're seeing a little bit of weaker macro condition? Thank you.
E-commerce have given us some very strong growth numbers. To give you a number, last year e-commerce was contributing in China to around 5% of our revenue. In the first half, it's already up to 10%. Our outlook is there that in the second half, probably the e-commerce contribution could move up to around 12%, 13%. Just because the consumer is clearly loving to shop on e-commerce. I must also say that e-commerce, I think our challenge more was that it took us some time to overcome our fear of engaging this e-commerce channel because it was like a new animal on the block, and you almost have the first inclination is to think that it's going to eat you up. We have realized that there's a way to engage with them, and it could be a very profitable business.
Both profitable for us, profitable for our partners, and also profitable for the customers. To the extent that I've seen some of the press releases coming from the CEO of JD.com. He claims Samsonite to be one of the key strategic partner, and he lists Samsonite as one of the three major partners for them. It's his view about that. Because we share a lot, we discuss a lot. I think, we are learning from them, and in some way, they're learning from us, and which is also partly helping the business. I'm just quoting you the press statement, which are in the press now. That's about e-commerce for our business in China. B2B contributes right now to around 7%, 8% of our revenue. Definitely B2B has been a strong comeback because as you have seen that in 2014 and 2013, B2B completely fell off.
I said that part of the B2B, which is coming back to us, part of it is gone and is gone forever for that matter, is the B2B, which is coming back to us, is basically the airlines which were buying for their crew. It was not really a gifting thing which was happening there. The banks which were buying it for redemption of their points. Because many of the credit card companies, you accrue the points and things like that. That's come back. There's also small business of companies like Lenovo, which does this bundle products. The bulk of the product which they sell is their own OEM kind of thing. We don't do in that business.
For their very high-end laptops and things like that, or launch of new products sometime, they buy Samsonite to give it away as a kind of a bundle product. These are three components of our B2B business. It's about 7%-8% kind of a number. I believe, I don't see much buoyancy in that. I think these are the three segments which will stay in China like that. More or less, these businesses have now become somewhat more, I would say, more normalized. Yeah. They're not happening month-on-month. Though our first half growth in China have been 30%, I'm not expecting, I'm not guiding in any way that China, I'm expecting the second half of this year would be 30% growth.
I would be happy, not because of the macro noise, that does not worry me so much, or the stock market turmoil and all that. Generally, I believe that 14%-15% or mid-teens kind of a growth is what I would expect China to continue to deliver in second half and very much into 2016 as well.
Aaron in the front.
Thanks for the presentation. A couple of questions maybe. On e-commerce, I think you said the sales growth was 29%. I'm not much of an expert on e-commerce, so I'm not really sure whether that's a good number or not. I guess that is a good number, but maybe you can explain whether you think you're taking market share in e-commerce or not. I'm not really sure how fast the category is growing in luggage. The question is whether you're taking market share. A little bit more information. I think you answered Erica's question well about JD.com. Can you talk about what's happening on e-commerce in different regions, whether you're tying up with more partners in other markets or whether you're filling out your platform with more products or your own platform, or you're expanding your own platform into different markets?
Maybe a bit more information on e-commerce. The second question, just about product innovation. That wasn't really mentioned during the presentation. Is there any new developments there on the product side, whether it's for Samsonite or American Tourister? Thanks.
Okay. On e-commerce, we are on both sides. We have our own platform. I would say roughly the business, you can think about it, that is getting divided half and half. In China, the bigger part of the business is coming from our own platform. In China, you can say it's almost like two-third, one-third. When you look at company as a whole, it will be half and half. Half and half are like wholesale accounts, where we do a wholesale business with e-commerce channels, and half of it is coming from our own platforms. Coming up in terms of are we gaining market share? I would say yes. In the beginning, the first round of e-commerce, the e-commerce channel, as I said, that we are learning, and they are educating us, and we are re-educating to them.
In the beginning, I think, most of the e-commerce, and still many of the e-commerce channels, I would say, in the beginning it was most, and I would say now many, were thinking that consumer is only wanting to buy there because when they can get it very cheap. I remember that in China, since we are in Asia, and I have better understanding of the Asian markets. In China, we had the situation that most of the e-commerce partners, they just poach our own people. They really could figure out so they can take up our product and say, "Oh, you buy this in that factory for $20. Give it to me for $22." What he's going to do, he want to sell it for maybe $25. He says, "You can put the quantity, you make good money.
What do you need anything more for that?" That's what they're thinking. They could never thought like until 2014 first half, before we took the first break with JD.com. JD.com was more involved, according to me, in terms of these kind of negotiations. Our business was stuck basically on two grounds. Number one, their perception that a brand and a commodity, there's not much difference, basically, for category like us. That was one biggest hindrance. The second biggest hindrance was there, they were still allowing fakes to be sold. They go into the denial mode to say there are no fakes. They get into the same thing, but they know this is a fake. Okay? They know very well, and they cannot say we cannot control it. The marketplace, business cannot work like that.
How will a consumer identify that this is a fake or not fake when he key in the word Samsonite, he can go to the fake and he can go to the Samsonite platform also. We never were comfortable to open that. Where are we standing today? They start to realize when a consumer is not necessarily wanting to buy those cheap luggage. He's buying on e-commerce, he's shopping on e-commerce. Maybe one thing is convenience. The second possibility could be that it's a cool thing to do. The young people want to shop e-commerce. We have seen that today in China, if you leave apart the eight coastal cities, the shipment that we are doing, most of the fulfillment we are doing it ourself, and only 18% of the fulfillment is going to these 18 cities.
72% of the fulfillment is happening in the B&C market, where generally, even if we have a retail presence, we're never able to present the entire range because, sometimes somebody's buying an X color or Y color, how can you present all the colors? You cannot present all the range because it is from an inventory management point of view, it is not viable. Those are the people, suddenly when they go on the platform, they have a huge variety for them to pick from, and that is efficient for us to fulfill. To give you an example, today the highest selling price point on JD.com for us is a product called Inova. It is retailed at $380 for a cabin size luggage. They had convinced themselves anything more than $50, you cannot sell on the cabin size.
I think that's a big change which is happening on that, it's not only happening here, but it's also slowly start to happen in other places as well. Of course, there are some markets, like U.S., which continues to be more price sensitive. There are some channel partners which are very big boys. They still are taking longer to learn that the way you want to engage with a brand is very different. Brand and the commodity is not the same thing. I think as the market matures, I think this is the reason why this channel is starting to grow. It is fundamentally more efficient because the whole logistic cost and the warehousing cost and also retailing cost.
If you look at when we run our own full price retail, or we run a shop in shop, or our channel partners run it, the four-wall cost on an average is about 30%-35%. For e-commerce, that cost is not existing. He can part of that, he can pass it on. We can take advantage of that because we are large enough company to do product segmentation. We do not allow to create any price arbitrage. On our e-commerce side, there's no price arbitrage. We took some time to convince some of these partners to say that you do not need to necessarily create a price arbitrage, again, because they want to then, I don't want to quote their names, but you know what I'm talking about.
They want to go to your store, find that product, and then come and purchase the same thing from you and want to sell 40% cheaper than you. I mean, that's how the business model was based upon. They don't want to buy if you say that, "Okay, this is what I'm selling in my store for, let's say, $400. You don't want to make money, fine, that's your call. You can buy this from us, which have similar value. You can buy from us at $250, and that's your call. You could sell it for $260 also, if you want to sell it." They want to buy this. That has taken time, but I think that more and more people start to understand it. That's long and short of the e-commerce part of it. I would not say that we're gaining market from somebody.
What we are doing is that some of those unbranded and commodity products were there, the consumers are trading up. Definitely, the high-end department stores and all that are losing some of the businesses. When I look at our own retail stores also, I must not deny that, we are also losing some of our own retail sales also to our own e-commerce platform. That is why we'll start to create our retail stores now more and more omni-channel ready. People can come to our stores, and they can also shop on a larger range, which we also are physically not able to present in our own store. That is about that. On the product innovation, we definitely continue to invest as heavily or even more than what we were doing it in the past. Our business is about product.
As long as we can keep having the winning products, our advantage is when we're offering these multiple brands and multiple price points and multiple channels, is your ability to design and develop products for unique products for each of these channels. That's the only way you can manage these channel conflicts and reach out to the consumer. That has been one of the strengths of our business because of our scale gives an advantage to invest more behind the product innovations and product designing and spend more behind marketing. I think we're not going to let go that part of our strength, not this year and not in any other year.
Okay. Thank you, Ramesh. Just want to check any questions from online?
Yes. There's a question from Catherine Chan of Nomura. She's saying, "We are seeing global pricing harmonization for some global brands. Will Samsonite consider lowering prices for its products sold in China?
Samsonite has always been following a kind of a very regimented pricing metrics. We've been doing that since the last 14 years. We've got this concept called a pricing metrics, which had operated in our business for the last 14 years. How does it work is that we do allow our individual markets to decide the regional price at that we'll sell, but that must operate within a price band of ±10%, because we're not resetting our price every month. This ±10% was given, the flexibility was given to individual countries to take care of the currency movements and some odd costs here and there. I think we've never had that kind of a huge price arbitrage between one country to another country. There's a necessity for any price correction in China is not there for us.
Okay. Any more questions from the audience?
Yeah. Hello, this is Peter from Mizuho. Just a couple of questions on the European EBITDA margin. You mentioned you're raising prices in second half, and there were a lot of other factors impacting the first half in Europe. Could you give us an idea of where you see the EBITDA margins develop second half in Europe? Secondly, just if you could comment on the profitability of the retail side, both in terms of the physical stores as well as on the online side, and how you see that developing going forward as you ramp up in scale. What level of profitability are you seeing there versus the core business? Thanks.
Europe, our profitability for the whole year, our view is there, it will get back to, on an annualized basis, it'll be same as last year. We can talk about our profitability range of around 17%-18% kind of a number. That's the number which we were there for the whole thing. The first half is because we have invested more behind the advertising. Part of it is also because of the margin. Margin is not coming because of only the currency pressure. It was just that the proportion of the American Tourister sale had been much higher. As we correct our way, going forward in the second half of 2015, you will see that the profitability in terms of the EBITDA margin will significantly increase.
If you add both the first half and the second half, we will get back to the number of 17%-18%, which had been last year. Part of it is coming because of the price correction, part of it is because of the timing of advertising, and part of it is also coming because you have a higher value of business because 45% of the sales come in the first half and 55% comes in the second half. There your SG&A percentage also comes down. Net, it will move up very significantly in Europe. Coming to the retail profitability. Generally our retail business, including e-commerce business, tends to be more profitable than our wholesale business. That is true for practically every single market except in countries where, let's say, the proportion of new doors are much bigger.
For example, Brazil or Colombia or Peru, where we open too many doors. In the beginning, they had one door and suddenly went open four doors because the door requires about a year's time to mature to come up to the required amount of profitability. If you leave them, those kind of an outlying countries, look at our North American business. Our EBITDA profitability on our retail business, which includes both e-commerce as well as brick and mortar, is slightly higher than our wholesale business. Same is true in Europe and same is true in Asia. Though I must admit it, that in the first half, because the like-for-like growth in Asia on a blended basis, though other than Hong Kong, Macau, and Korea, all other countries have posted a positive LFL. When I put all the regions put together, we had a minor negative LFL.
You know that how the retail business works. Moment you have even -2%, it immediately reflects on your profitability going down. That does not mean that the profitability become lower than wholesale, but it is lower than, let's say, last year in Asia in the first half. Same has been true in North America. The retail profitability in the first half has been slightly lower. That is why we are saying that our EBITDA is slightly lower because retail in North America is about 1/3 of our business. When profitability takes a step back, it does bite us a little bit. We do hope that maybe the like-for-like growth in the second half in the gateway cities in North America.
Though it may sound strange, and I'm talking about only two cities, but those two cities contribute to around 30% of our retail business in North America. It's a very strange number, but that's what it is. New York and Florida is 30% of our retail business because they're very tourist heavy kind of a thing. Florida by the Brazilians and New York by everybody. We do see less tourists coming and shopping there, which does affect our profitability. I'm once again repeating it, that does not mean the profitability of retail has become lower than wholesale. It's just slightly lower in Asia and in North America as compared to last year. Europe is slightly better because they had 9% LFL, that has helped them to do a little better.
Just to clarify, the EBITDA for Europe second half will look like where we've typically run combined. It will still be down for the full year just because of some of the investments in the first half and some of the pressures that we've seen. I think you said, it's really second half will start to look like where we've been, just because of the effect of the first half, it won't quite get all the way there. We will have this currency impact going into next year, which is why we're increasing prices in September. We've been in a very good hedge position. We're hedged into next year, but that hedge amount is less, obviously, than what we had for this year. We'll have some work to do to maintain margin in Europe.
We think we can for next year, there'll be more pressure, actually, as we get out of a good hedge year and into a period where we're hedging. Again, it's who knows what currencies are going to do. You should think through that Europe will be more consistent with where we've been, not upsides, because there will be year-over-year currency impact next year, depending on what currency does. I guess the only other thing I'd add on retail is there are some initiatives within our retail that is actually putting a little extra strain on retail, things like the Hartmann rollouts. You've seen us start to open Hartmann stores. Those, when they're starting, are taking a little bit more investment.
Small, you don't really see it in the numbers, but underneath the numbers, you should know that we're investing in that kind of retail front and spending a bit of money. We're talking kind of $5 million, $10 million numbers. It's not big overall, but it's an impact to us in the numbers itself.
Great. I think we'll take one last question, and then we'll end the presentation.
Thank you, William. Alain Hornblow from HSBC. I have two questions, actually, I'll make them quick. I've been a bit slow at understanding EBITDA margin guidance for the year. In the press release, you say that it should be up, I suspect that's H2 over H2. Is it fair to assume that EBITDA margin year-on-year should be flattish?
I think it'll be flattish to slightly down.
The second question is on M&A appetite and timing. You repeated that if there were opportunities, you'd look at them. I get the sense that you have so many opportunities with Kamiliant, with the rollout of Rolling Luggage, with American Tourister in Europe, with Samsonite Red, with so many balls you're juggling with. I'm just wondering if it's reasonable, actually, to look at any deals in the short term, or if this is more of a sort of message for the longer term.
I think it's difficult to time the deals. When I really use the words, First of all, I fully agree that there's enough and more for us to do in terms of the organic growth, and we are very much focused on that. Also getting to speed with the new acquisitions that we have done and things like that. At the same time, we do like to be aware of what's going around and what are the opportunities there. When the opportunity shows up, we cannot say, "Oh yeah, come back tomorrow." That doesn't happen. It all depends. Do we have an attractive opportunity coming our way, and does it make right sense in terms of valuation to us based upon the acquisition making economic sense to us, and how does it fit within our portfolio of the brand?
If it's coming at the right price, we would not deny.
You mean you're not feeling stretched?
We are not looking at delivering our numbers.
Do they look stretched?
The good part is they tend to be regional, right? Until you get into phase II, other regions aren't distracted by integration. If my U.S. guys are working with Speck and getting that going, and Tom Korbas is spending a good amount of time on that, doesn't mean Leo in Asia is feeling stretched because I've got the Speck deal being integrated. Now, when we move to phase II and we bring in like High Sierra into Asia, I wouldn't say they're stretched because it's not integrating, but they're quite excited about, "Okay, now I've got this," and Repose a good example, that's why we're showing it. "Now I've got this in my toolkit." Actually, people get excited about just taking it and rolling it out. We don't distract each region when we're integrating.
I think that's why we have capacity as we think about it.
Great. Thank you very much, everyone, for coming to attend.