You know, a few of you might already have seen some of the news. So, of course, we are closing a very strong quarter, and, Björn Borg is developing according to plan, and, we'll look back at a very strong quarter and also, of course, a very strong 2021. However, I think it's still worth commenting, of course, you know, we might perform better and better, but I think, you know, looking around us, the world is definitely not going in the right direction. The whole Ukrainian war, which, of course, is a complete disaster, and, very unfortunate, of course, we do support the Ukrainian people, and we see, of course, that there's a lot of worries around us with, inflation rates, and no one really, you know, understanding where everything will go. So, just want to mention that as well.
It doesn't have a direct impact on our business, but it's worth mentioning, of course. It's a very, very sad place that we're currently witnessing, unfortunately. But with that said, let's get back to the Q1 report then. So, we have a number of things that we want to cover, as always, of course, and the first one is, you know, to summarize the entire quarter. We look at, well, at, our record sales and apparel. So, of course, for those of you that have followed us for a while, back in 2014, we set out with a very ambitious plan of moving the iconic, you know, underwear brand into something much bigger, so to create a sports brand. We even said that we want to be a global sports brand.
Of course, the whole idea was to inspire people that you should train, not to become an athlete, but to become a better version of yourself. That's what we've been doing ever since. I think we're every season getting closer to becoming a sports brand. We see that in all of our end consumer service. Also, of course, looking at Q1, one of our biggest victories, of course, our fantastic apparel growth. That's reassuring, and that is telling us that there is a massive demand, of course, from end consumers in terms of our apparel collection. We see a number of big trends that we are betting on and that we believe that we really can, you know, fuel growth going even further.
Of course, if you can see me in the image, you know, I'm wearing the track top for our Padel collection, and our year-on-year growth with Padel, men and women, is almost 200%. So, of course, there's a booming Padel trend in Northern Europe, and we're in the middle of that one. Of course, being a strong provider with our tennis heritage, we believe that here there's massive opportunities. But, again, just wrapping things up then. So looking at Q1 from a top-line perspective, we grew 22.7%. So fantastic. That means actually that this Q1 is our best Q1 ever in terms of revenue. So that's a victory worth celebrating as well. Looking at our EBIT margin, we are improving that 0.8 points to 12.9%. That's, you know, another 30% increase versus last year. So, of course, very happy with that as well.
Again, as I already said, very, very strong, you know, sports apparel growth. So 35% growth year-on-year. I have a slide, you know, in just a few minutes that showcase that we have a strong growth in all of our categories with a bit of an exception for footwear currently. But again, that means that the consumers are really willing to tap into everything that we're currently offering them, which is, you know, fantastic and reassuring and tells us that we are on the right track. Looking at our largest markets, Sweden and Netherlands, those both are performing really, really well. Looking at our online business, as you know, we have been refocusing to be much more digital, you know, to much better at, you know, social communication, but also distributing our products in e-tailers, marketplaces, and own e-com.
That is continuing to work really well. We still believe that's the way forward. However, in Q1, we can see that the slow increase in sales on our online channel is slowing down a bit, and we see a very, very strong recovery in physical retail stores, so looking at our own store, for example, growing 44% versus last year. Of course, partly related to a few stores, of course, being closed last year, but nevertheless, we see strong comp growth numbers, so that's also showcasing, you know, how important it is that you have multiple channels owning a strong brand. And then, of course, you just need to make sure that you have that brand and those products where the consumers currently are, and looking at Q1, well, they were spending slightly more time in brick-and-mortar stores than online.
Of course, then that's where we need to be. Looking at our financial solidity, it's also improved, and now the equity ratio is 16.9%. We closed the quarter at a net debt position of SEK 646. Jens will talk more about the financial key figures in just a while. But again, as we've said, you know, a very, very strong quarter. Just a reminder then. Where are we heading, you know, just to remind you all that we are on a long-term growth plan where we said that we have a strong mission, and that is to inspire you that you can be something more and that you should train not to become an athlete or win an Olympic gold medal. You can do that. That's okay with us. But training is so much more important than that.
It's to unleash your true potential to become a better version of yourself. And that's really resonating well with what we feel consumers are looking for right now. Of course, we have a number of long-term financial objectives, and we can conclude with the Q1 numbers. We're over-delivering on all of those. Our business strategy is really to continue to focus on online e-tailers, marketplaces, you know, grow our sports apparel business, and then expand geographically within Europe. Our main focus right now is Germany, where we see also strong underlying growth numbers, which is fantastic, of course. Looking then at Q1 numbers more in detail and starting with the brand health numbers, brand preference. So, of course, you know, which of all the underwear brands do you prefer, which is the number one?
And, of course, here we are strengthening our number one position in our mature markets. And then, of course, you know, the second KPI, perhaps the most important one, is the brand awareness for apparel. So do people walk around thinking about us as a sports brand or still as an underwear brand? And, of course, here we are on a massive journey, and we're making inroads every quarter. So looking at Holland, for example, went from 4.1% last quarter to 6.3% right now. So still low numbers, but we're making progress. And, of course, the last KPI, which is, you know, if you could pick from three, three brands from this list of brands, which would you pick? And, of course, here we also see good increases, when it comes to Björn Borg.
So, all the KPIs in terms of how our brand is evolving is working really, really well. So, that's very, very good. And, of course, you know, makes a strong promise for the future. Looking at purchase intent. So what do you intend to purchase? We see that underwear and apparel is also performing really, really well. So on a good trend there as well. Looking at top line, again, as I already said, and here, of course, we're talking total sales numbers. So +21% leading to SEK 237 million in the quarter. And, of course, you know, that's absolutely fantastic. We see, you know, strong growth, you know, coming from all of our markets, which again is very, very, very, very good. Of course, the biggest numbers is Sweden and Netherlands. Of course, our biggest market is growing a lot.
And, of course, it is apparel that is driving that growth. But, again, of course, we see strong growth in also the other categories. And again, the whole move into online that we talked about now for three, four years is continuing. And yes, the share is dropping a bit in Q1. And, of course, that's due to the, you know, the shift back to brick-and-mortar stores in Q1. We do see, however, that the long-term trend is still the same. So we believe that our arena, for the most part, is going to be online through marketplaces, e-tailer, own e-com, and, of course, also social media and communicating digitally with our brand. We see that's resonating the best for us and working the best. So we'll continue on that path looking forward as well. And here, of course, looking at own retail.
So, as I said, fantastic recovery in Q1. So + 44%. Again, a few stores in Netherlands, for example, were closed last quarter. So, of course, not hard to beat those numbers. But even with those stores that were open, we see a strong growth on own retail. Looking at online, so + 7% versus last quarter. And here, of course, we have, you know, very high comp numbers from last year. So looking at two years' growth, we're looking at 70%. So still, of course, you know, high focus, and we see an underlying growth here, but it's been slowing down a bit in Q1. Looking at wholesale and distributors, that's the biggest portion of our business. Very, very strong quarter growing 23%. And, of course, looking at then 2020, we're up 39%. So on a strong sort of growth path.
And here, again, just reviewing all of our categories. So, of course, the idea from moving from underwear is also that you can then, you know, have consumers tapping in, to the brand from different touch points. And if you're only known for doing the best underwear in the world, which is fantastic, and we want to maintain that, of course, well, you will struggle to sell other stuff. But, of course, with the transition into becoming a sports fashion brand, we'll also allow and become much more relevant in all the other categories. So here we see, you know, bags growing 42%. We look at eyewear growing 49%, sports apparel, the stuff that you're training, but also the leisure apparel is growing. And, of course, still underwear is growing.
So it really tells us that we're doing something fantastic with the brand, and we have more entry points than before, and everything is really growing. We have a challenge with footwear that we're currently working on, and the plan, of course, is to reboot that and also get footwear growing, which should be a big portion of our overall business going forward. Footwear is a crucial category if you want to build a sports brand, we believe, and then looking at bottom line, of course, here, I will have Jens just running through those numbers with you, and then I'll come back in a while just to close things off, but again, you know, happy to be here, and thank you for listening so far. With that said, Jens, fire away.
Thank you, Henrik. Fantastic. Yet another quarter to an end, and the momentum that we saw in 2021 is continuing. Yet another quarter with fantastic energy boost in the office. I think I said it last time we were presenting, if you need an energy kick, just come by our headquarters, outside Stockholm, and then train with us, just hang out with us. It's a fantastic feeling just being in the office at the moment. Anyway, if we look at the more financial side of the company, to the right-hand side on this slide, you can see our operating profit and also the net income. Yet again, we see a record quarter for Q1, at least in the recent history, SEK 29 million on EBIT, compared to SEK 22 million last year's Q1.
And, at least in this slide, never been higher in terms of operating profit. And it should be said that even so, despite that, we have accrued around SEK 4 million in the Q1 for a long-term incentive program to the management team, which is not in the 2021 numbers. So really, if you want to compare comp numbers, it should be SEK 33 million compared to the SEK 22 million in Q1 last year. So fantastic performance also on the EBIT line. Net income also ahead of last year, SEK 23 million versus SEK 21 million. And also here, this in addition to the long-term incentive program I just mentioned, we also have a one-time tax effect due to closing down our legal entity in the U.K. as we handed over the operations to an external distributor, affecting the net income with SEK 1.3 million.
So comp numbers even here should be a bit higher. So fantastic performance on the bottom lines in the P&L. On the left-hand side, you see the gross margin. This one is declining, and clearly that's a concern for us. The majority of the reason for declining versus last year is driven by exchange rates that is working against us at the moment. So that's the main driver for a decrease in the gross margins. But we also see, as many other companies, increased freight costs in basically getting the products from our producers in Asia to Sweden and then sent out to the rest of our markets. So those are the main drivers that we are working on and getting. We're doing all we can, of course, to turn this trend around.
Again, if we look at the EBIT margins, this slide is supposed to show you that we are finding ourselves in a new level. So the bottom line representing 2020, the top one representing 2021, and then we have Q1 2022 on the far left, which is at 13% compared to 12% last year's Q1. So we are even though 2021 was fantastic in terms of EBIT margin, we are outperforming last year. So we're still seeing ourselves on this new, let's say, high level of profitability, which is fantastic to see, obviously. If we dive deeper a little bit on the balance sheet, the equity ratio, solidity of the company to the left is continuing to increase and show a very strong development, above 60% at the moment when we close Q1. So very strong and solid company.
Then, we have a net debt, which is decreasing compared to previous years. We closed last year, for those of you who remember, at a net cash position. Now that we still have a net debt of SEK 46 million when we closed Q1, but still very low levels. And if we put that in relation to our EBITDA, on a rolling 12, very low levels of this ratio. Also the working capital is clearly, as you can see, going in the right direction. We're now at 19% versus the rolling 12 month of our sales. Clearly, getting the working capital under control, the net debt is certainly under control and a very strong and solid company when we look at the balance sheet combined.
Very proud again to close the quarter on a high level. We continue what we saw in 2021. Super proud of that. I want to hand over to some key takeaways from Henrik so you can really feel this for the rest of your day. Enjoy your Friday. Thank you.
Hi, Hjalmar and Jens, thank you. I'm back again, and, you know, a couple of key takeaways . Again, of course, you know, we started 2022, the first quarter really, really well. I think the first one that we just want to highlight, so the brand is, you know, gaining momentum. We saw that already starting in 2020, continuing in 2021, and also now in 2022. Our brand communication is really, you know, getting traction. The brand is getting stronger and stronger, both the underwear, which we maintain, but also we see strong growth in sports apparel, which, of course, is, you know, super, super important. The second one, of course, we're continuing, of course, to focus on profitability.
Of course, looking back, we see, you know, high level of EBIT, and also, of course, as Jens just said, you know, if you consider then the one-off effects of the long-term incentive plan, for example, then, of course, the EBIT would have increased even more, so close to 50% versus last year, and you know, sports apparel is growing, which is fantastic. That's what we're betting on. You know, it's the trick of maintaining underwear, you know, making the best underwear in the world, which we're doing and not dropping there, but, of course, at the same time, adding volume from different categories. I think we can see that with the Q1 numbers behind us, that we are seeing a strong growth in apparel, 34%, but also in some of the other categories. Bags, for example, growing tremendously, so which is absolutely fantastic.
So, of course, you know, what you've seen here is, of course, the sum of the entire team. So everyone really is doing something fantastic. And, of course, we don't do any forecasts, so we're not, you know, trying to tell you what we believe will end the year. But we believe in our plan. We believe that the plan is working. We have a very strong team in place, and very clearly, we need that now more than ever. Of course, looking at the world, there's, of course, a lot of things that are going in a different direction, and it's very uncertain where the world will take us, actually. What we can see, though, of course, you know, stepping away a bit and having a bigger view is that, freight costs are increasing. We see raw material costs are increasing. We see inflation coming our way.
We see, you know, interest rates going. We see all that kind of stuff, of course. And also, we see that, you know, the consumer's mind in terms of what will happen tomorrow is much more worried than what it was, you know, three, six, nine months ago. And, of course, that will also have an impact on how they will consume. We, however, believe that, you know, we are an entry premium price brand with a very strong mission. And if we do things right with a strong team in place, we believe we can continue to grow. And because, again, you know, no matter whether your interest rate is high or low, training is still going to make you better. And if you want to do one thing today that will give, you know, value to your life, that is training.
And then, of course, you can add a bunch of other stuff as well. We believe that's going to be more relevant than ever, even if the world now is going into, you know, a different time. So I think with that said, you know, thanks to the entire Björn Borg team, of course, you know, thank you for all the shareholders listening to us. Again, looking back, you know, a very, very strong quarter. And with that said, I'm sure that, you know, Hjalmar has a few questions for us as well before we close the day. So, Hjalmar, fire away. And perhaps, Jens want to join me as well then.
Thanks for a great presentation. And yet again, congratulations on a very strong quarter. I found that the physical store sales growth was particularly impressive, both the wholesale and the own stores. Could you elaborate a bit on this? Are there particular markets that are driving this growth? Perhaps was there emphasis towards the end of the quarter? And just give a bit more flavor on the growth in the quarter.
Yeah, no, but I think we see, like in general, in the quarter, in all markets, perhaps more driven from Sweden and the Netherlands and, and Germany, that the, there is the, you know, a bit of a shift, you know, away from online business, online shopping into physical retail. And of course, whether that's because the consumer got tired of shopping online and now want to meet people again after, you know, two years of a global pandemic, well, perhaps partly. But we see that, you know, our growth from our retail stores. We also see that also when we, when we're cross-checking with a couple of our partners. So I think it's clear that, you know, it's been a shift, you know, from e-com business into brick-and-mortar or physical retail.
However, of course, I think we still believe that the long-term trend is that the future growth, you know, sports and fashion will continue to be driven from marketplace and retailers and not brick-and-mortar stores in general. So we also still see that there will be a, you know, a net decrease of stores, for us, but also for everyone else looking ahead. But overall, of course, a shift in the quarter, versus last quarter.
Yes. And if we look at the online sales, there's been some of your retailers, when they are reporting, they mention, of course, various effects, the shift from online to physical stores being one of them, but also a consumer more concerned about items such as inflation. But of course, how would you paint a picture of the current environment for the retail consumer? I mean, are they concerned about inflation currently? And how do they act on this?
No, but we see that there's much more concerns around the future right now than what we saw when we listened to consumers, you know, six months, you know, a year and a year and a half ago. So it's much more uncertain. And of course, I think the inflation is, you know, playing a big role, of course, in that, but also, of course, the, you know, geopolitical, you know, situation with Ukraine, which is, of course, you know, just very, very sad, and but in combination of that, we also see that, you know, the way they act online is also changing. So it's a big drop in certain categories whilst, of course, when we look at what we're doing, we don't see that massive drop. So it's about the same people looking for sports, you know, training, than it was last year.
But of course, if I look at then, you know, other categories, you know, home interior, that's dropping dramatically. So depending a bit on where you are, we see, you know, a change in behavior. That's very, very clear. But it's very, you know, clear that you say, and we can confirm that, that there is a worry, you know, around the future, in all of our markets, actually, and actually predominantly probably, I would say, like Finland and Germany is probably sticking out there, even though I think the Swedish and the Dutch consumer is also a bit worried, and of course, you know, will that have an impact on how much they will consume? Probably. Will that have an impact, you know, on how they will consume? Most likely. Will that have an impact on us?
Perhaps, so far we can't really see that. I think we believe that, you know, by having a very strong brand mission, continuing to remind people that, you know, you still need to train, you know, that's going to be an investment in yourself. We hope that we can continue to grow, of course, knowing that the share of sports apparel that we have in the market is still very low, so even if there would be a slight decline in consumption, we believe we can still grow, actually.
Like you mentioned, if there were to be a decline in consumption, perhaps a company holding a strong brand will have resilience against this. Do you share this view or do you, like, could you elaborate a bit on this? How do you think this will affect companies with a strong brand, versus perhaps no brand companies?
Yeah, no, but I think, and I think we said that on numerous occasions. So we're very fortunate that we have a very, very strong brand that we own ourselves. So I think that's in a good position. That's always good. And, of course, you know, with that strong brand, you know, all you need to then spend your time focusing on, okay, where will the consumers be? And that is changing. So again, last year, for the most part, they were online. And this quarter, they've swapped, you know, into different channels. And being a brand owner, we just need to see those trends and be where the consumers are. So that's, I think, is a massive strength. So on one hand, of course, owning the brand and also a strong brand, you know, people want to be connected with brands that stand for something.
We have a very strong mission, but also, of course, we are, you know, having, you know, all the different channels. So we're working with own retail, we're working with, you know, retailers, we're working with e-tailers, marketplaces. So, of course, we have a plethora of, you know, tools that will enable us to continue to grow, that potentially some others are not having because they're simply much more narrowed in their focus.
I was wondering also if we could focus a bit on the sports apparel because, like you mentioned, strong growth in the quarter. Could you give us some flavor on this? Was it like a B2B sales, B2C sales? What was the emphasis towards the end of the quarter? What was it in the drivers? You mentioned Padel, for example.
Yeah. No, I think there's many different trends we're seeing. If we look at our online business, we have fantastic traction with women. And, you know, our entire sort of seamless or tight collection, so like a studio yoga collection that is working really, really well. Of course, there we work with a number of different influencers. And that's really driving not only sales, but also actually the brand is getting stronger and stronger. In overall, of course, I think men is still the biggest category and it's working really, really well. What is really, you know, fantastic is that, you know, Padel is really a combination of both. So here we see strong growth from women, but also from men.
Of course, you know, again, as I said, looking at the heritage with tennis, you know, with Björn Borg, we're an iconic, you know, sports brand with a very strong tennis heritage. We really see that there's a window in the market to also move them into the Padel arena, which we started, you know, a year and a half ago. I think looking back, we see, you know, fantastic growth numbers. Again, you know, Q1 Padel collection is growing, you know, more than 160%, close to 200% versus last year. We really believe that that, that trend is going to continue. We believe that people will continue to play Padel. We believe that we could be a very strong, you know, apparel provider to those consumers.
Of course. Thanks. If we look at the gross margin, it drops year-on-year. And of course, there are several factors affecting this: container shipping prices, input prices, your own pricing levels. Could you give some nuance on these contributing factors and how they contribute to the gross margin in the quarter?
Yeah, looking back, so I think as Jens highlighted, the biggest drop is FX related versus last quarter that we're comparing against. And of course, it's predominantly, of course, you know, both the SEK and the euro that has weakened against the dollar. And of course, you know, we, we purchase about 50% of everything in US dollar, but we don't have any, you know, revenue in US dollar. So, that's impacted us 2.6% or 2.7%, you know, in the quarter. And then, of course, we also see freight cost increases and raw material increases that, of course, is affecting, you know, cost of goods sold going up. And of course, by being up, then the gross margin will go down. And of course, you know, some of the things is, is most likely here to stay. And there's a number of things we can do to mitigate that.
Of course, again, really the evidence of having a strong brand is your ability to, you know, have premium prices for that brand. We do see that the brand is getting stronger and stronger. Here's, of course, it's about, you know, following that and also do working with price increases, to make sure that we can mitigate for part of the cost increase that we see. That, of course, we have a plan in place that we're currently executing on.
Thank you. And if we look at the shipping prices, do you see anything on the horizon looking forward?
No, well, I think anyone daring to forecast most likely will be wrong. At least we see it's, you know, it's flattening out a bit. So we don't see, you know, ongoing increases, but we haven't seen any evidence of anything decreasing either. So I think there is, you know, a number of issues in supply chain also going forward. And of course, as always, if you have a strong, dedicated team, well, then you can probably navigate around those challenges, but it's going to be very tough, of course. But here, I think we have so far managed to work really, really well. So actually looking at our deliveries 2022, they were actually better than last year.
And of course, that's just thanks to a fantastic logistical team that has the ability to really, you know, be forward-leaning and just doing incredible things to make sure that we are getting our stuff quicker than, you know, everyone else actually, enabling then consumers to pick it up, you know, earlier than some of our competitors. So I think it's, yeah, you know, it comes down to having a great team in place. And then, of course, currently the world is working a bit against everyone, but then you just need to work a bit harder.
Yeah, of course. Thank you. And finally, I was wondering, we spoke previously a lot about your marketplace strategy. Could you elaborate a bit on what you're currently up to and what we could expect going forward?
No, absolutely. So, we have a very, very strong partnership with Bol.com as the leading marketplace in the Netherlands. And of course, as we told you a number of times in a few of our quarterly presentations, we are, you know, looking into Amazon. So we've recruited, a girl working with Amazon for 10 years, and she's now, you know, setting up a marketplace team together with Erik, which is our general manager in Netherlands. And he came from Bol.com. So a very strong sort of internal competence. And for us, we're currently reviewing then, you know, how quick we want to roll out on Amazon U.S. That's clearly where we see the biggest potential. When we look at Amazon Europe, it's, you know, it's less developed. And also, for example, looking at Sweden, we don't really see that there's a massive opportunity for us at Amazon Sweden.
We rather than think we should work even harder with those that we're currently working with, so for us, it's a bit in Europe, you know, win with the winners, which is, you know, continuing to invest in those that we have been doing business with for a long time and not adding, you know, new distribution points, however, of course, looking into U.S., we believe that Amazon could be, you know, playing a vital role for the U.S. entry, and that will be discussed during the summer and we'll make a decision then, you know, during end of Q2 or Q3, you know, when and how we will do that push.
Sounds very interesting. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
Yeah, thank you so much. And thank you for being here. I think just the final note that, of course, you know, without a strong team, everything is impossible. With a strong team, of course, you can do magical things. And we have a strong team in place. And I think also looking back, a strong quarter, of course, looking ahead, while the world is very, very challenging, you know, our feeling still, and I said that also last quarter, we're just in the beginning, you know, so we have an iconic brand, you know, and we just want to make sure that we are utilizing the massive potential within that brand, and I think we're on a good road of doing so.
So looking ahead, more than perhaps just one year, but two, three, four years, we truly believe there's a place for Björn Borg to play, also outside, of course, the markets we're currently serving. So we see a massive, massive high potential, even though the short-term view, of course, potentially looks a bit challenging if we look at the world currently, how it's developing. But thank you for inviting us again. Always good to be here. Thank you guys. And as you know, of course, 11:00 A.M. we work out in all our office. Join us if you can. If not, make sure you train anyway, because that will make your day a lot better. So with that said, you know, thank you for having us.
Thank you.