I mean, you've been an entrepreneur, CEO, and a major shareholder in this group for most of your adult life.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess the first question is essentially which of these three roles that you enjoy the most, and maybe if you can share some of them that you do like a little bit less.
Most, it's definitely the ownership. No, but I like it all. You can say sometimes it's, of course, more fun and sometimes less fun, but I think it's now it's year number 27, as 27 years ago we went public, and as you can say, I'm pretty used to it now. I would say I really still enjoy the work, and I think it might depend on that we have grown so much. I mean, when we went public, it was, if I remember correctly, SEK 320 million in sales, and hopefully next year we come closer to SEK 11 billion. It has been very interesting to establish country after country and so on. I really still enjoy it. I'm very lucky to have had Göran by my side all those years because what he loves, I don't like. I like product sales, marketing.
Yeah, I noticed that there are these lists of CEO that have been in place the longest, and I think maybe you are not on the list because you had a little gap, I think, when Göran was there in one year or two, but, I mean, with all these experiences that you have been building throughout your adult life, I mean, if you had the chance to travel back in time to visit the time machine here and now and go back to a young Torsten, just an adult, young adult Torsten, and you would only be able to bring three from this present, with everything you know, bring three key advice to that young Torsten, if you can attempt, what would those three be?
Yeah, that's a good question. I would probably have gone to you as earlier, since that's also a very, very big market for our products. It was, when I was in Seattle now, it was quite funny because let's say we were on 25 restaurants during 14 days, and all of them, excluding one, were selling merchandise for the restaurants with caps and sweaters and hoodies and T-shirts. The only one I know in Stockholm selling clothing in the restaurant is Hard Rock. So it's really huge. It's, I mean, the U.S. is the home of this market, and if it, I don't know if it would have been possible, but I would like to go there earlier. Yeah, that's basically.
That's one. To delve into that first one is very interesting because it's interesting that you relate this, since the entry, the big entry into the U.S. with the acquisition you did in 2007.
Correct.
Well, we will hear the presentation of this group, I think, after this rounding off, but that rendered a quite tough period for you.
Absolutely.
Nevertheless, that is exactly what you lived, that you would even give the advice to try to enter earlier.
Yeah. No, that acquisition was not well received from any, except us then. But it, I mean, if you look at it since then, I think it's our most profitable acquisition, and it really gives us a good, so long term, it was absolutely correct. But short term, it caused us trouble. That's also correct.
Right. So in this recommendation, you say enter earlier, but do acquire this company at this?
No, but it didn't change so quick. And I, I mean, I'm kind of a guy that hates to do plans for three years and five years because I have never managed to hit the budget on 27 years. I mean, it's sometimes a little bit better, sometimes worse, but to do this long-term plan, it's pretty useless. It's just wasting time. And if you see, I think the key is to move very quick when things happen. And the situation in 2007 and the first half of the year, 2008, was totally different. 2000 and 2008 started with Lehman and then 2009. So the only thing we could do at that time was really to take all actions.
And I think we learned a lot also from that when we had the pandemic, where we acted very, very quick and we came out of the pandemic more profitable when we went into it. So I think it's, you need to be quick and fast, and you need to adapt how the world is around you. And that, I think, is more important.
I guess now you have a totally different debt level than what you had then, but is it also perhaps important to sort of educate the stakeholders, if you have banks and other stakeholders providing you with funding, of how your business works and how you tie up capital?
No, but you mean, I mean like this, that I was never nervous when we were down on a 30% equity ratio. And the reason is quite simple. I mean, the main part, I mean, to create cash flow is the easiest thing for us. That's 10 times more easy than to build the business or something. And out of two reasons. I mean, the balance sheet is to a very big part stock and receivables. And the receivables automatically go down if the sales goes down. And the stock we can control within six months. We can cut down, we don't own the production, so we can really buy what we want. But if we shouldn't be failing or cheating the suppliers, we have six months in advance, and there we need to fulfill the orders to not put them in deep trouble.
But after six months, it's very, very easy to create cash flow. It's the most easy things that we actually can do. But of course, it was, I think, a surprise to the market all of that time, because with the growth, I think we had an average growth on organic establishment and acquisitions on 39% or something for, was it 17 years or something? And I mean, if you grow 39% every year, then it's impossible to do that with positive cash flow because we need to build up the stock before and so on. But it was 10 times easier to create cash flow than to build up the business.
Right. But I think there was a question also in the audience before on this subject a little bit, that you were on one end of this, I mean, that your industry requires capital and that maybe some stakeholders are not really that deep into how your industry works and that you're required to carry that capital to render revenue. This time around, perhaps, and after the period, the tough period of the pandemic, maybe some of your key competitors are a little bit on the other side of the table now, and that it opens an opportunity for you to take some market share.
A little bit, but we should remember that it's not a crisis now, like it was the first six months of the pandemic or 2009. It's like I said, my chairman described it as a wet blanket over everything, but not a crisis. So I can't say that it's a lot of competitors on the corporate side that are in deep trouble, but they are doing less good, and I think most people, including myself, are surprised that it has lasted so long time. I mean, I thought wrong for one and a half years. Now I give it up and say that it will probably be another, some other quarters before the markets recover, so not in deep trouble, but it can give us opportunities there to maybe buy a little bit cheaper.
Right.
On the retail side, it's another story, actually. There are many that are totally depending on retail that have problems today and are making quite huge losses and so on. On the other side, I think that we don't want to acquire brands that are too fashionable. We don't want to acquire brands that are 100% depending on retail, and I think all of your, that's in line with what Stefan said also about the retail business, so there it's, I don't think I overestimate if I said that we have been offered 50 retail brands the last two years, but it's not our core business and it's too high risk and we shouldn't go in there.
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, we've been looking back a little bit, but if we look forward instead, you just mentioned how you don't like to make long-term plans because the only thing they approve is that they will never be right. But nevertheless, if I stretch you a bit there and ask you to look out, not just make a three-year budget or anything like that, look out in time 10 years out, what, if you try to do that, what do you think will be the biggest events impacting your industry?
I think for us, we will have a huge growth on teamwear. I'm surprised if we have not established some places in South America and Australia. I'm surprised if we don't cover Eastern Europe. We should be much, much bigger, and we should definitely be number one worldwide on the corporate side. I know what I want, but I don't know exactly. It's no idea to plan how to get there. That's more or less you have to change and take and grab chances and so on, on a daily. We also know very, and this I think is important, as I said about retail, we also know what we don't want to acquire. Then it's also easier to do the right things.
The goal is still to have a high growth, and I will be disappointed actually if the markets recover a little bit, if we don't can go above 10% again and stay there for some years on a yearly growth.
Organic.
Organic, yeah. So no, but I see a great future, and I still think it's very, very fun. And I also think that now we have a scale of advantage, an advantage of the scale compared with many competitors. I mean, in total, we are by far number one in Europe as well now on the corporate side. Teamwear, we need to, if we really should be big in Europe there, we need to break Germany. And Germany is a very tricky market with, I mean, it's a home country for both Adidas and Puma. You have quite big competitors in JAKO and ERIMA that are more similar to us than I can. But we need to break through in some big countries there. It could also be France, it could be the U.K., but it's hard competition. So I agree with Stefan.
I think we have better chances to grow quick in the U.S. actually.
Right. I would come back a little bit to the geographies, but just staying on this sort of long-term view of, you mentioned you have a very clear plan and an ambitious plan for New Wave. If you think about the external environment, what do you see there? For example, if we talk something that everybody talks about now, AI, how have you seen AI? Has it affected at all any parts of your business this far, and if you also try to envision how it might impact you or have an effect going forward for you.
It has an effect a little bit on how we produce marketing material, but I would say that's not much more than that yet. I have seen so many changes. When AI is really, really, really there and really, really, really good, then we will adopt it and do it extremely well. I mean, I have seen the development from clients, for example, had no information at all of what we had on stock. Second step was that we sent out fax, maybe some of you don't know what it was, but you put in a paper and it came out of paper at the receiver's office. There with that paper, we told the clients that you should avoid to sell those products because they are low in stock or we don't have them in stock.
Until today, when everybody is up more or less and see exactly minute for minute how much stock they have access to on different products via internet. And those things are quite natural. The oldest of you maybe remember the first or the big one, the first phone I had, mobile phone I had was Nokia like this. You have to carry it around like a big box. I remember China. I mean, I was in a town called Ningbo, 1992 I think it was. And I couldn't find it on the map, so I couldn't describe where I was. And that was a city at that time on 10 million people. And you couldn't walk. I told my wife at that time that I think I can call home on that Monday and that Thursday because then I'm in Shanghai in a national hotel.
Today you're sitting in a taxi on the Chinese countryside and talk with the taxi in New York or Stockholm or whatever. So those changes are natural. In one way, I'm a little afraid for AI, but that's more due to that I think valuations start to go crazy on those companies. And it's a little bit, I feel a little bit like if you remember when.
Internet bubble.
Yeah, when Bricks should crash Windows. You remember that?
Yeah.
Yeah. I got the same feeling here. Everybody's now rushing into this. And I'm sure it will be good, but it will take some years and it's never going so fast as people think.
Right. Yeah, these bubbles tend to allocate a lot of capital, and then a lot of these businesses will not work, but it might still be beneficial overall, so to speak. The internet was not a bubble, but many of the internet companies were.
Yeah.
So just staying on this subject for a few more minutes, there is another big area in terms of robotics. There's a lot of talk about this. And you actually have robots, you could argue, in your fulfillment center for these, rolling robots over the automated picking solution that picks crates. How do you view that? And there is, for example, talk about how Amazon is elaborating and other players about humanoid robots that might carry crates and so on.
We will soon install the first humanoid robot at the company in Belgium as a test.
Okay.
But yeah, but it means I want to be. I don't want to be in the forefront when it comes to different techniques, but I want to adopt it very quick when it's.
Mature.
Proven that it works, yeah, when it's more mature at least.
When it adds value.
Of course, the automation and the robots on the warehouse, it has totally changed everything. I mean, we can run the warehouses on an efficient cost level 24 hours a day. We have no problem to handle the different seasons. The deliveries out to the client are much more correct, which give less returns. It's so many advantages. That I'm very happy for. Then you can say initially it's always a cost. For example, now, right now we started with Hai Robotics in the Netherlands. I think it was operative in May, June. We still have more people in the warehouse than we had before Hai Robotics. It takes a year or two before it's really start paying off, and then it's pay off quick. We will continue that.
but of course, it's a certain level in volume that you must have in each country. so it's any idea, but today the biggest warehouse is all already done.
Very interesting. You have a very hands-on approach to this rather than speaking up the expectations perhaps around the overall subject. But one final thing about the technology and so on. I think you have mentioned that automation of embroidery and print, that has risen a lot, that technology. How might that change your business the coming five years?
It will continue. It has already changed the business a bit, and it will continue to change it. The big difference I would say is that on a reasonable cost today, you could make one piece with a print or a logo that would have cost a fortune five years ago. That development I think will continue, and that's fantastic for our merchandise business. I don't know, I think I said it on last report, but in Gothenburg you have a couple of good football clubs, but you have GAIS and you have IFK Göteborg. Now this is very difficult to translate into English, but GAIS has the nickname Makrillarna. When it was a derby, they met and IFK was winning.
And then the same evening I would put out a T-shirt with a big Makrill, but under the, it was a quote, which is a loser, you can say. And it was sold. I don't remember the total volume, but it was several thousand T-shirts sold in 24 hours. And if you came out with, in the past you have two options. Either you have to gamble and print them before if you should be able to deliver them, or you can offer it maybe for delivery two, three weeks after. And two, three weeks after, the interest has gone down like this. And there I think the new techniques can give a lot of different opportunities.
That puts pressure also on you as suppliers to be able to deliver very quickly then, because the demand will be quicker.
Yeah, yeah, but we never, we don't have any problem with that. It's a print that's always a problem. I mean, the stocks are there, so it's.
Will you also increase in the print and do embroidery in your own, so when it leaves your fulfillment center, everything is finalized?
We will look at an establishment in Eastern Europe for, especially for screen printing. We have different solutions. In Sweden, we have one actually external company that rents space on the biggest warehouses that are located in Dingle, on the west coast. So they rent the space, but the advantage for the client is that they save the freight between the printer and us. And also they can get one invoice because we can do the admin on it. In Ahead, Cutter & Buck, we have our own decoration centers. And we will have in Texas as well when that comes next year. And hardware, as I said before, we are printing, I think 99%, maybe 99.5% of all pens or chargers or something are printed already. And just very little bit blanks. And I think it will continue that way.
Right. And the final one actually on technology perhaps. Post the pandemic, I know that you were a bit enthusiastic about the new meeting, the digital meeting, the teams of this world or Zoom or whatever. And you said that now we're not going to be traveling as much because we found this new way to interact. But I've noticed you've been traveling quite a bit as of recently. So is the world going back to normal you think, or somewhere in between?
Depends on what normal is, but.
To where we were.
You can say, I think, that it's quite fantastic to have meetings on Teams. And it's really not a problem if you have it with clients that you have known for 10 years or if you have people you have worked with. I mean, we have the luxury that we have a lot of management that have been in the group for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. And then it's no problem. But to build new relations and to build up new clients, it's extremely difficult sitting on only Teams. And it's the same on the supplier base. I mean, it's a huge difference with walking around in the factory or seeing your guys sitting in the screen telling how good they are, but you don't see it. So I think traveling is necessary if you should continue to build.
But we do travel much less than before because in the subsidiaries we had like three to four physical meetings in the past. Now we have, if it's a normal situation, we maybe have two physical, sometimes even only one, and the rest of the meetings on Teams. But you have that. And then you can say also in my job, I need to travel to get the feeling of the markets to keep me creative. I mean, it was fine the first year during the pandemic, but after a year you really felt that you don't get enough inputs about markets, about products, about brands and so on. But this fall has been extreme. But it's also, I think the situation in the world is a little bit extreme.
Surely so. We heard it already in Stefan's presentation here about home brands, how retailers are really pushing their own labels. There is new competition from that side. We have digital direct-to-consumer models that are also winning ground. How does this new phenomenon affect your business or your approach to your business essentially?
Now you can say we maybe changed a little bit of a strategy, as I said, that acquiring pure retail brands that are only built on retail, it's not so interesting for us today. The e-commerce is of course both a chance and a threat. I mean, as Stefan said, in percentage, it's the fastest growth in Craft right now. Home Brands is, I mean, they have existed for a long time. And I think it's very difficult for any chain if you're not extremely low price oriented to really have so much higher percentage than it is today. It can move a little bit more, but I mean, the consumer is not stupid. I mean, if you take a sports brand that is unknown, sold by one chain and compare it with Adidas or Nike, you can't do that because the consumer is not so stupid.
Yeah, but private labels are winning ground gradually. And I mean, you are quite agnostic, I think, in your business approach. I mean, you do the trading orders, they have a very low gross margin, but they contribute, as you usually say, to your EBIT. And you do delivery in your promo of unlabeled products. So have you ever thought about actually turning the stakes and delivering to those retailers that want to build their own brands?
We do.
You already do? And I mean, is that a business that you can expand?
It's in the trading business, yes, absolutely it is. But I also think we should also remember that the last years when we're talking private labels, you have had in, I think not only in our business, in most business, it's also the low price chains that have been the winners the last years. It's not the more mid type of companies. So I think that the movement also from brands to private labels is also depending on that you move from or down, so to say, to low price chains in many cases.
Surely so, but we see a growth of private labels or home brands, whatever you want to call them, in all price segments, I think, even if discount has been winning itself.
But it's increasing, but it's not increasing so very much if you look at chains like Intersport, for example, that are big clients in both ways.
Right. Right. If you think about geographies again, we were touching upon it before, but where do you see, geographically wise, the biggest potential? I think you stated, but I want you to summarize it again, and maybe sort of which market pockets where you are now geographically in terms of Europe and the U.S., but where do you think you have most to win or where do you want to see you growing more?
Short term, it's definitely U.S. because we are still extremely small there in market shares, but we anyhow have a quite strong foundation and we are very profitable. And it's increasing even if it's tougher now. And I mean, if we increase our business on two warehouses all over the U.S., as it is right now for Cutter & Buck and Clique, for example, it means that we don't serve the whole U.S. We are more a regional dealer in some regions there. So U.S. definitely. And there I'm also more optimistic that the competition is actually a bit lower among certain product groups like Teamwear, we discussed before. That's a typical example that I think Germany is much tougher competition than it is in the U.S. So I believe a lot in the U.S., but then still we have very small market shares in Germany, France, Spain.
So we have still a lot to do in that part. Eastern Europe, we are extremely small. Australia, we haven't touched yet. And we have a distributor for Jobman. But Australia would also be very easy for us, except the distance from here. But I mean, it's actually closer logistic-wise to our production and where we source. Everything is already in English, if you talk catalogs or web shops or whatever it is. So it would be quite easy and don't take too high investments.
Right. You're eager to grow in the U.S. You explained in the beginning how you would send a signal to yourself, to your young self, that you should be entering earlier on, if anything. And you have quite a strong balance sheet now and you have continuously communicated the opportunity to make acquisitions. And you have done two promo acquisitions here in Europe. Are there any targets in the U.S.? Is there a fast route for you to expand there?
Absolutely.
Can you mention a few names without mentioning anything that is sensitive? Just mention a few names.
I don't think so, actually. No, no, but it's absolutely a chance in the U.S. since we are so, yeah, we are so tiny there still, but we should also remember that I think the competition in some product groups could be tougher. Some is actually less than the big German and the big European countries, but it's also quite an easy place to handle. I mean, you have one currency, you have one language. In the south, you can maybe use also a little bit of Spanish, but one currency on this huge market and one language is very easy. I think it's there for many Americans actually failing Europe because they go to Europe and think it's the U.S., and it's not. I don't know how many languages. I think we do the Clique catalog on 17 languages.
I don't remember the number of currencies we sell in, but I mean, you have pounds, you have Swiss franc, you have euro, you have SEK, you have Danish, you have Norwegian. I'm sure I've forgot some. So it's very different in that way. And to expand in the U.S. is from that perspective easier, actually.
Interesting. Yeah, I think the half hour is approaching rapidly and I will leave a few minutes also to general questions out here. But just one final question maybe to sum this up. I mean, we started there going back to the young self. I don't know, was it in the early 1980s you actually started this business?
It was. The first company that later on became anyway was 1981.
1981. And then you were like 18 years old or something like that?
No, I've done the military. I think I was 19.
19, okay.
19.
So your whole adult life, you've been operational essentially in this group and running it. But you also have a brother in Dingle where it all started. And you have two daughters also, I believe, working in the group. And one is on the board, I think the other one was on the board.
Yeah.
So how long do you plan to stick around operationally yourself? And what about your family and the engagement? How does the future look there?
I admire Trump in one single case, and that's his age comparing with what he's doing. Otherwise, I'm not a big admirer.
20 more years to that, I guess.
If you're healthy, and I think it will not be less fun. I mean, we have greater opportunities now with this balance sheet and the profitability and so on that we had in the past. And if I can do the job, I mean, you notice sometimes that you're a bit older. I think I was in eight countries spread out over Europe, U.S., and Asia for seven weeks or something. And then you get a little bit tired, actually.
That's human though.
I don't know if it's so nice to fly to Seattle two times a year when you are 75 years old with nine-hour time difference. But I hope to be able to stay active for quite a long time. And I have no plans to quit. Then if you look at, I have never, ever forced any of the kids to, so to say, go into New Wave. They have done it anyhow. The only goal I have had is that they should have enough knowledge to be a good long-term owner. I'm not sure that they even wish that in my life, so to say, with always traveling and all those things. But I think it's important that it's a plan for the ownership in the future. And I think they are quite well trained. Now actually two are operative, but one is against what I wanted.
But that's the oldest one that was in the board that our CEO for Orrefors Kosta Boda. And I actually told her that why should you take the worst and most difficult job you can have in this group to start with? But she wanted it and then she can try. And then I have one more daughter that was still studying at the university in Gothenburg. And then my son moved to China. So she lives in Shanghai since August and studied Chinese on the university in Shanghai there and practiced like 10 hours a week. Those two years he will study on the New Wave Group buying office. So they have an interest. And then we will see what's happening.
But I actually don't care if they are operative or not, but I do care a lot about they have enough knowledge to be able to be in the board or to be long-term as owners.
Secure the ownership of the group?
Yes, and that I think is important, and not only for me. I think it's important for other shareholders as well, but it's also, I mean, when we are in Sweden, it's so much focus on my person, which I think is pretty wrong, actually, because if you go out and look like you, as I keep contact with three clients just to be updated without a lot of filters between me and the market, so I think this group would also handle very, very well without me, actually.
Thank you so much, Torsten, for all the answers, and yeah, maybe time for applause for that, I think.
Thank you.
But then I think we have maybe one or two minutes before we're going to get the link to the U.S. up. So please, Nicklas, first hand up.
Yes, two questions, please. First one on Tenson now, following on this discussion on retail, perhaps not being sort of the area where you see the biggest opportunities going forward. How is Tenson doing? And will you need to do things differently to sort of speed up the development there? And also, are you still keen on, it didn't sound like it, but are you still sort of looking for outdoor brands still to perhaps buy?
Tenson is doing more or less as planned, and there we have already done what we should do, and that is to introduce it on the corporate market. If that was not the plan from the beginning, we would never acquired it. Because then retail is too tough, but the combination to have someone retail and corporate, I think, can be very successful long-term also for Tenson that it has been for our other brands. And yes, we still are interested in outdoor brands if it's product assortment that we also can introduce on the corporate market, but a little bit same thing there. An outdoor brand that are only 100% retail and it's a product assortment that it's not possible to sell volumes on corporate, then we will pass.
Okay. Thank you. And then going back to the U.S. there. So you currently have basically all of your business today is sports and leisure, Cutter & Buck and Craft. Why have you never entered the corporate business?
The majority on the Cutter & Buck business in the USA is corporate.
Yeah, fair enough.
It's IFRS shit. That makes that everything is coming up as sports. But actually, I think it's around 70% of the sales in Cutter & Buck is corporate.
But it's only Cutter & Buck sort of golf that's style. You have never introduced your other brands.
Yes, Clique, we introduced some years ago. We did it 2011, I think, in a wider way.
But you ramped it up in recent years.
Yes.
Okay.
And also you can. It's not corporate in that perspective, but it's quite close because we do supply a lot like merchandise. I mean, the biggest event this fall was Ryder Cup, where it was fantastic selling. So it's touching each other, you can say.
Okay. Thank you.
Further question. Andreas back there with the mic, I think it needs to be.
Thank you, Andreas with SEB here. Inventory has always been a big issue or big thing in your company. Now in the last few years, you have raised your profitability through higher margins while days inventory turnover slash capital velocity has been sticky for 15, 20 years at one time or so. Do you think that could change in the future or not, given technology or?
I think we can improve it a little bit. And that's also depending a lot on how quick we expand. Because now, I mean, we put up a huge stock on Teamwear U.S. Calculated stock turnover is 0.2 the first year. But it's no idea to enter U.S. if we are not a very strong supplier and give a right service. So I mean, all those new establishments are taking down the stock turnover in average. So if we grow a little bit slower or make less establishment, it will automatically go up a bit. But we will never be up on 2.0 or 1.8 or something because then we can't fulfill our service level that we need to have. But of course now when we open up, when we open up new warehouse in Ireland, we just opened up two weeks ago a new bulk warehouse in Italy.
Texas will come next year. Teamwear in U.S. and so on. We are some years before you will see it in the average figures. But a bit we can speed it up.
Maybe one final question. Someone who wants to have the final one?
Thank you so much, Fredrik from Nordea also. I was wondering what three bottlenecks do you see going from 10 billion yearly sales to 20 billion yearly sales?
I don't see any. That's the next goal actually. It's serious. No, no, we have so much left to grow. It's more a question about how good work we can do and how quick we can expand. It's not any limit. It's in the market. I think we have a very strong management. We have the balance sheet. So it's a question about time. It's more when and if.
So will you be able to keep your 39% growth?
39%. That will be a bit tough, I think.
Good to be here. Thank you for having me. My name is Stefan. I'm with the group for the last 15 years. I met many of you before, but for those who haven't met me before, my name is Stefan. I've been the CEO for the Craft brand for the last 13 years. And then been with New Wave Group for the last 15 years. I'm here today to talk about Craft, a little bit where we are today and where we are going. And we have an ambitious plan. And I'm going to dig that down into every single business area that we are doing to see what and where we are going to be increasing and how we are going to be increasing in every single business area. Should we do questions along the way or you'd like to do questions afterwards? What do you think, Anna?
Questions along the way? Yeah, I think it's easier to do questions along the way. So you just raise your hand and we have a microphone. Okay. All right, a little bit of a throwback. We started in 1977 with the brand. The Air Force of Sweden was asking for base layers for the fighting pilots. They were wearing cotton base layers. They came to a Borås company, which is outside Gothenburg in Sweden, and they asked for a base layer made for moisturizing away all the sweat from your body. A man called Anders Bengtsson got the task in Eiser Trikå in 1977, and he invented a base layer made of a polyester fiber. That was the first product, and the brand Craft was born in 1977. Craft comes from the English word of handiCraft. A pretty bumpy road along the way.
We were really good in the 80s with Ingemar Stenmark and Gunde Svan and all these legends. And Torsten acquired the company after two bankruptcies in 1996 for SEK 1. Today we do roughly more than EUR 200 million. We are in 70 markets and we're trying to challenge the big ones out there. And we are an outsider but we just love this big challenge. And we have some ambitious plans. And we love ambitious plans in this group. So we are planning to double the business into around EUR 400 million to 2030. That's the target. And how? And who are we? Well, we are Swedish Endurance. And we are pretty unique by being Swedish Endurance. There's a lot of Swedish brands, especially within the outdoor sector of this world, but very few that are being Swedish Endurance.
Most of our competitors when it comes to the Teamwear business or to the running business, they are German or American or French. But we're going to stick to the Swedish heritage and the Swedish Endurance. And there is something really, really good to this, which we see that Volvo Cars or IKEA is using pretty strongly. And we're also going to use it very strong for the future years. Key markets as it is today are these ones. I would say the Dutch area, the Nordics, Benelux, and also North America. And we do have our business divided into five different business areas. We are not just like someone else. We are not just like Nike or an Adidas or an Under Armour or a Fjällräven. Because we do things differently. First of all, we have a New Wave company and we act a little bit differently.
We are a little bit more entrepreneurs, and we love a big task and we love this challenge, and we act pretty quickly. We're not a big giant ship. We are a little bit more agile, and we do five different business areas, which gives us a pretty good solid basement to stand on, but also giving us a really good profitability. Because if we just did, as Torsten said this morning, if we were just today depending on the base layers being sold at the Intersport and Sport 2000 of this world, we would have a pretty hard task. Just look outside and it's hard because the curtains are down, but outside is pretty gray and it won't be minus five, I'm telling you. It's not really the base layer season yet. How many of you have been buying a winter jacket?
So basically retail selling from the shelves, base layers, bike bibs, etc. is pretty challenging. But we do so many more things. And we're really happy that we launched the teamwear business around six, seven years ago. That's been helping us to be having an easier way of growth. But these five ones we're going to dig into today. And if you have questions, just fire them off along the way. We're going to start talking about the e-commerce business. And when we talk about the e-commerce business, it's us selling to the consumer. And this is an increasing business. This is by percentage the highest growth we have so far in this brand. This year, the highest growth. But as Torsten says, it's easy to increase on bad numbers. So they are still small, but we are increasing a lot.
We do think it will be about the same percentage, maybe a little bit more when we come to 2030, but keep in mind we're doubling the business. This is doing well. And here we see the consumer behavior is a little bit different. We are in general in this room, at least a little bit older than the younger generation. Younger generation are acting a little bit differently. They are not going maybe to the Intersport of this world in the same way as we did when we were young. So the consumer behavior is different. And we need to reach these consumers in a different way. It is not a competitor to our retailers because we have all the assortment online here. And we know that about one to two people out of 10 is actually doing the acquisition and the buying online.
That means 80%-90% is starting the journey online on our page, but actually buying somewhere else. So we can see a correlation between our e-commerce and having success in the retail. So today is not a competitor. Today is not a problem for Stadium that we are having in e-commerce. That's simple how it is. And it's an inspiration for them to get more consumers. So why e-commerce? Well, it's good margin. It's good EBIT. Even though there are returns, and I won't hide them, there are returns within the e-commerce business, even though the margins are much higher. We reach much more new consumers. We're going into markets today without going to a retailer. We're going directly to the consumer with e-commerce in new markets.
In many markets, people think we're just doing the footwear because we're going in with footwear, for example, in Israel or in the U.K., for example. That was not the case in the past. Entering new markets, as I said, and lead the consumer journey. Even though they're not buying at our page, the inspiration starts at their own e-commerce. Super important for growth, but super important for EBIT and profitability for us. How? Running in footwear is important online. We know that the footwear is much more interesting for the consumer. We know that the U.S. runners look more into the footwear than a pair of shorts. We thought for the first 40 years of this brand that shorts or a pair of T-shirts was super interesting for the consumer. It's not. I'm going to tell you more about it.
Centralized e-commerce and then the team in HQ in Borås, which is leading this journey. It's good. We have some really good talent factories around us in Borås, as you know, that we can be using for expanding this journey with e-commerce. I will come back to the footwear discussion and presentation about the footwear and the shorts a little bit later on. Retail wholesale. Today is roughly 40% of the revenue. We think they're going to be staying-ish as it is in revenue, meaning they're going to be less in percentage to 2030. Why is that? I think I answered pretty briefly about this is the hardest thing we do today. Again, if we were just depending on retailers around the world, we would have a hard time. This one is standing still or actually decreasing for us, while the other ones are increasing.
Retail is tough due to the behavior of us consumers doing things a little bit differently. It's hard again. It's hard to be buying winter jackets nine months ahead and then hopefully sell them to you when you enter the store. Retail is tough, but it's still the largest channel for consumers. We can be talking about e-commerce as much as we like. We know that retail for us in the sporting industry is still the biggest channel for the consumers. The problem we have with some of our retailers is they're doing home brands. They're doing their own brands. In the past, when I started Craft in 2010, there was no base layers basically with the home brand. We own the whole category of base layers at Stadium, for example. Today, that figure is basically 50% home brands.
50% comes to the brands. If that journey continues, meaning we're going to be out. Because if the retailers continue doing the home brands, it won't be any fit for us. It won't be any space on the walls for us anymore, and we, as consumers, tend to like some known brands. Tend to like brands that just fit. That's why some of the brands have been exploding on Amazon, for example. There are brands on Amazon selling for millions and millions and hundreds of millions of euros, and then no one knows them. So we need to bring our brand up, and that's why the e-commerce journey we do direct to consumer is so important to build this brand. But again, retail is tough, not just because it's hard to predict how much you need in nine months, but it's basically hard because they are increasing their own brands.
You see the same thing at groceries. You see the same thing in all different aspects of retail, so this is, if you continue this, it's going to be hard. Therefore, we do think it will be pretty stable, but we need to change out some bad retailers and change them into good retailers and earn more money. This is the hardest one today with the margin, so we, Craft, as a brand in total globally, have a higher gross margin than the New Wave Group. Though the retail business has a lower margin than New Wave Group in total, so the other ones, the teamwear, as Torsten said, or the e-commerce business or the corporate business gets our margin up and retail is taking it down. Though a big order from Intersport is maybe SEK 10 million , so that's pretty easy work to get a big order.
But in promo or in club, it's much more work to get that high margin. And again, you need to create some brand visibility also in the retail space, which is going to be important for the brand future. We will do this with the New Wave Group companies within North America and in Europe. We believe in winning sports accounts, winning department stores, and outdoor and running specialty. Why do I say winning? Because we need to find the winners. We need to find the winners in the market. There's a lot of retailers that are not winning, and we need to be with the winners. And that's what we need to be attacking. So maybe we need to change a little bit how we are today, where we are presented, and move that into slightly different retailers. How to do it? But again, we can do things differently.
For example, one of the biggest issues for the retailers today is cash flow. And again, we are forcing or saying to our customers, you need to place an order nine months to six months ahead. How many pieces of base layers do you need in six months? We have no idea. Because we know that we're going to be buying a winter jacket or a base layer if it gets cold. We're trying to turn that around because at New Wave, we can do things different. At New Wave, we can do things that no one else can do. We can take some risk, and we can have things on stock. So if we can start getting our customers understanding that you can refill. What do we have today in stock value, Anna? SEK 5 billion.
I mean, there is something there that we can help out with the customers. The customer's behavior, not the consumer, but the customers, meaning the Intersport of this world, needs to be thinking a little bit differently. They don't need to be placing the nine-month order ahead if we have SEK 5 billion in stock. This is that no one else is doing. And this is the way that Amazon is working. Amazon is working in the same way. They're selling the same item year after year after year because you and me and everyone else is doing reviews. This is what we need to be learning our customers as well. You're going to be in the core categories: running, bike, skiing, and base layers. And we're going to have long-living styles. The first one they get tired of a product is the designer.
And then it's the buyer at the customers. But the consumer, they're not tired. They like a pair of pants. They like a pair of base layers. They like a pair of ski pants. But we tend to change them out too quick. Because you've been wearing a nice pair of ski pants, and then you go two years later on, you need a new one. But then we change them. So we need more long-living styles. So more than 75% of our products today are long-living styles. This is the way that we can do better business for the customers and better business for us. And this is why we are a little bit different. Again, business is all about making something different. If we're going to follow Nike, we're going to get beaten. Because they are better at being Nike than we are.
But we can do something different. And this is the way we'd like to do at New Wave. We need to be entrepreneurs, and we need to change the way of thinking and doing. That's the way we're going to do in the retail. Footwear. It is today 5%. This is 2024 figures. So keep in mind, full year 2024, roughly 5%. Looking at being 15% in 2030. But this is a super important category in many ways. Why? Well, the running gear market is one of the highest valued industries in our business. So basically, you can't compare the amount you're selling or the value of the category of footwear compared to base layers. That's a pretty big difference. It's global. Maybe we think a T-shirt is global, but a T-shirt in the U.S. has another fit. A T-shirt in Europe, another fit.
If you go to Asia, you're going to be an Asian fit. There can be three different fits, but we do think a T-shirt is a T-shirt. Shoes are the same. Maybe it's the French size or it's the U.K. size or the U.S. size, but they're all the same. They're all the same. Maybe how you see them in the label of sizing is different, but it's global. It's something that we all do around the globe. If we make a great success in footwear, you're going to see a tremendous uplift in cap value for the brands or for the group. You see what Hoka has been doing or the On Running has been doing in a pretty short period of time. That's what we mean. This is so important. As I said, it's global.
And again, it's the most popular sport among you consumers. This is what we as consumers are putting up on Strava. Running is the biggest activity that we do. It's the biggest basically sport in the world because we do it. We don't do it in a club maybe, but we do it just running down the streets, going to the park, running at the gym. So running is basically the biggest one. And I was talking about T-shirts and shorts and footwear. And this is how we as consumers are Googling about different products. So the yellow and red line here is how we are Googling about running shorts and running T-shirts compared to the interest of the blue line, which is footwear. So for 40 years, we were down here talking about things that basically no one cares about.
If you go to an Intersport store and buy a T-shirt, it doesn't really matter which brand it's going to be. But you have some preferred ones. Maybe you won't leave that store, "Oh, they don't have my exact Nike, Craft, Adidas, whatever T-shirt." But when it comes to the footwear, you're much more picky. You're Googling. And this is the interest. It's the same thing for bikes because the bikes are most important. And then the apparel coming down under. So why we do this is basically to get also more attention because we know the more footwear we sell, the bigger brand we're going to be, and the more interest we will get for all the other products. It's basically leading the way. How? Long plan, Swedish design, coming back to that, digital presence, ambassadors, influencers.
We were in New York now during the marathon, made a co-op with the pizzeria. It turned out really well. Interact with the local community. We need dedicated footwear sales reps, and we need to be present in stores. And we're starting this on the highest level, selling to the Löplabbet of this world, the running specialty. Where are we doing this? Well, we're doing it with the New Wave countries, but here we also do it with external distributors that are helping us in other parts of the world, such as Asia, Latin America, South Europe, et cetera, et cetera. And again, talking about the home brands that I said at retail, this is interesting. When it comes to running, there are no home brands. There's no competition with the home brands for running. You won't be paying SEK 3,000 for a home brand of a running shoe.
But apparently, you can be paying SEK 250 for a T-shirt, say a home brand, but you won't do it for the footwear. Two reasons. It's pretty hard to make a shoe. Big investments, and you are more picky with what you have on your feet than what you have on your body, so we are meeting a big competition, of course, with some of the bigger brands. We're not meeting the competition with the home brands, and this category, together with football boots, is basically the only category which won't be discounted in store, so if you go to a sporting store in Stockholm today and check, you're going to see the football boots. You're going to see the running shoes not being discounted. A lot of other categories have a negative price by going down the whole time because it's all about price, and this is not.
So we can charge a higher price here. Looking into club, we've been talking a lot about the team and the club business, and it's really good for us, increasing a lot. It is today in 2024, it's roughly 25% of the revenue, keeping in mind we started this in 2017 in Sweden and 2018 outside Sweden. So pretty fast pace. We can be doing even better. We do think it's going to be 35% until 2030. That's pretty ambitious. But we are on the pace, and we've seen that we are taking market shares in every single market that we are launching. So why are we doing that? Well, when we did this, me and Torsten and some other people, smart people, sat down in the conference room in 2015 and said, "Well, we need to do something bigger.
Craft is in very slim, small sports, because cross-country skiing is important for us and maybe someone from Norway or Finland, but outside that, it's pretty small. Cross-country skiing today is less than 7% of our total revenue, but if you ask a Swede down the street in Stockholm, people are going to say, you know, at least in the past, "Oh, that's the ski brand or the base layer brand," but if you ask kids today, they're going to say, "That's the teamwear brand. That's the football brand or the running brand," right? We also realize that we are very much depending on what's outside and if it's anything coming from the sky, cold snow. And we can't be depending on the weather, so we try to do something that's going to be more season-independent.
Because this is actually sports, teamwear or club sports, going to be made even if it's snowing or if it's raining or if it's hot. You're going to do your archery, your boxing, your football, your handball, your karate or ping pong, even if it's snowing or raining or if it's sunny. It doesn't matter. It won't go up and down. This is pretty stable the whole time. We also needed to have something to target the younger audience. Because to be very honest, when you were 15 years in the past, you had no idea about Craft. When you became 40 and got a bit of a crisis, you started doing Vasaloppet or the Stockholm Marathon. Then you realized who Craft was. We haven't seen anything of this yet.
Imagine the kids of today walking around with Craft items when they are four to five years old, doing that for the 10 to 15 years during the club season, so club period, up to they're going to be 20. It's going to be a major impact. These girls and boys are going to have us top of mind because they knew it's a good quality, nice brand, nice stuff that I've been wearing in my club. We have not yet seen that impact for the brand. And again, we're trying to target some of the biggest sports in the world, not just doing cross-country skiing or biking. Biking is fine. Biking is a good sport. But in some markets in the world, you can't even bike. You can't bike in America. You can't bike in China anymore because the traffic is just too hectic.
So we need it to be in bigger sports. And this is also something that won't be depending on the weather, but it's also something that won't be depending on if you have money or not. If you look to yourself, even though with high inflation, how many of you have been saying to your kids, "No, there won't be any handball practice today because we can't afford it"? It won't be the first thing you cut away, I'm telling you. You won't go to Thailand. You won't buy a new couch. You won't buy a new car. But taking away the kids' activities, no way. So what we can see, this is very stable. And we signed a contract. We signed them for five to six to seven years. So we know for seven years that we're going to have this amount of business coming.
Really good and smart way of doing it. High margin. You pay a little bit to get in with some free goods to a club, but you know how much of revenue you're going to have for the coming seven years. We're going to do this only with New Wave companies because it comes back to the way we are working. Salespeople, stock, and being out in the market. We're adding on now, U.K. and Ireland, as Torsten said. We're opening up in Ireland a new warehouse in Q1. We have been starting in the U.S. already, and now we are opening up Canada as well, and then we are looking now into Spain and Italy pretty soon, so we're meeting the Spanish guys and the Italian guys next week to start doing that journey as well. So how to do this? Well, it's pretty easy.
It's just to be the best club supplier in the world. If we to 2030 are going to be the best club supplier in the world, we will have a revenue of EUR 150 million. I promise you. This is the only thing we need to do to be the best club supplier in the world. This doesn't mean that we need to be the best brand for club. Because there's a big difference between the footwear way of buying and purchasing and purchasing something for a club. So if you are a club, you are a parent or you are in the board for a club. And someone is pointing at you and saying, "You know what? Henrik, you need to be deciding what kind of brand you need to have in your club." That's going to be a pretty rational choice.
If you ask the kids still, they will say Nike, Adidas, because that's what they've seen on television. But basically, you know, they maybe won't be the one delivering the most. And some parents are going to be a bit angry at Henrik and going to be calling him and saying, "You picked this brand and not delivering." So this choice is not driven by consumer behavior. It's a much more rational choice. Though when you buy a pair of footwear, it's much more driven by your wallet. You're going to spend EUR 300 on a pair of running shoes. They better be good. But this is more about how can I make a choice for this club without any hassle?
Henrik doesn't have to be worrying about someone calling him in the middle of the night saying, "Where are my T-shirts or where are my jackets?" These are the very big differences between the club business and the footwear business. Consumer-driven and more of a rational choice and a little bit more B2B business when it comes to the club business. How to be the best supplier in the world? It's a bit of a task, isn't it? Stock and service. As Torsten said, and I can underline it, we are best. We are the best to delivering. Because again, we have SEK 5 billion in stock. A lot is teamwear because teamwear now is really increasing. Teamwear is not only for clubs.
We're selling a lot of teamwear for the corporate business where you're at, for example, Swedbank are going to be running an event or you're playing football in your spare time and you have a team. That's also teamwear business. We're selling a lot of footwear, regular running shoes to the clubs. They need it to be running. Even if you play ping pong or you're playing football, you need to be in the forest running. There's more things that we can sell within this business. We believed very early in the female consumer, and saying that in 2025 just feels odd, but when we started this in 2017, going to customers and saying we're going to have men and women fit for teamwear, they were laughing. It's eight years ago. We were the first brand launching every single style that we have in men and women eight years ago.
That's a pretty bad grade for our business. We have never done that before. As the Craft brand been doing base layers and cross-country skiing things for 30-40 years, Charlotte Kalla doing cross-country skiing won't have a suit made for a man. That's what we've been doing. The business has been doing male fitting for women, and women are allowed to be buying extra, extra, extra small. We call that shrink it and pink it. It's wrong, and again, every time we go to a club, there are men and women in the booth. And the question is easy. Do you want to have women's fitting? I can promise you that everyone says yes, so it's a really good USP, but for us, we're selling a lot of this, so when we see the split, it's amazing.
And looking now, for example, in the U.S., there are more women, more girls playing soccer or football, the Swedish football, than boys. And this is turning. This is turning the whole way. So it's super important. We like to be agile. We like to be entrepreneurs. And that's why we need to have the custom design. So custom design for us is super important. Meaning we have Hammarby. And I know maybe you don't support Hammarby, but there's a team in Stockholm and they are green and white. And in the past, they had other suppliers. They gave them a jersey. We don't do that.
We sit down with them and they say, "We would like to have this green with this color and this design." And we've been tripling the business of the merchandise and sales due to the fact that we've been helping them with the custom design to be first happy with how they look, but also then doing the business with the merchandise that we are much more agile. So the custom design part is important to design out what you need. Because again, if Henrik again is responsible for his club, he can't be wearing pink if his club is red. And there are examples in this market of clubs being green, not getting the right color because the supply can't help them. That won't be happening to us on the bigger, bigger clubs, of course. Local presence.
This is in the DNA of being an entrepreneur and being a New Wave that we do believe that the team sport or teamwear business or the club business is pretty local. There's not many of you in this room that knows who's a top of the league in the Danish football, but the most of you know that Mjällby won the Allsvenskan. Basically, I'm going to help you out saying Århus is top of the league, which is the Craft club, of course, in Denmark, and then Mjällby won the Allsvenskan, and you know that one, right? But again, this is examples of the business being local, so if you go to a Danish club and you start talking about Mjällby, they have no idea. You better know who's top of the league in the Danish club, so you better be local.
You better speak that language of that customer. For the teamwear business and the club business, this is nitty-gritty, nerdy people-loving sports. You better be knowing your market, speaking that language. If we have some countries selling teamwear, they better know the market. You better be a little bit sport nerdish because you need that. You need to have the knowledge of someone in karate if you go to a karate club. You better do your homework. It sounds pretty easy, but we see that other brands have Nordic as one region. I'm telling you again, who is top of the league in Finland, right? It's hard. We don't act like big regions. We act in every single local market. Then, of course, sustainability. All the products we are doing from 2025 and onwards are fully or partially preferred fibers.
That's what we're going to say. Not eco-friendly, preferred fibers. So we take sustainability super seriously. And it's also really, really good USP coming to our customers and the clubs talking about, "Okay, we have every single style being sustainable." Corporate business. Last but not least, this is around 20% of the business. It will be around 15% probably. Could be 20% also for the future, hopefully. This is actually where we're earning the most money. Here we are using the New Wave Group full out. The New Wave Group companies are selling the Craft promotion items. It could be like this sweatshirt. It could be like a T-shirt or something for a running event. Or it can be a jacket or a hat or something. We are a pretty unique brand within the promo business because most of the promo business is with no brands or unfamous brands.
But Craft is a little bit more premium into that business. And we're seeing a tremendous increase. And we do it only with the New Wave Group companies. So this is the most profitable business we do. So for the EBIT, this is going to be the most important thing for the Craft EBIT: to sell here. So basically, the gross margins here are pretty high. We can charge a little bit higher price due to the fact that we are pretty alone being a brand within this kind of business. So again, most profitable business areas. How to do it: it's just follow the New Wave. So basically, we are just listening to the big brands and the good brands within promo in our group. And we listen to them and we do the same as they have been doing.
Same as Cutter & Buck or same as Clique, but of course with different products. New Wave Group setup, long-living styles, stock and service. But it's the same thing here. You better be out in the market. You can't sell it without reps. So we have a lot of reps in all the markets doing this for us. But Sweden is the only one where we have local Craft promo reps. The rest of the world, we're using the other New Wave Group companies. And this again is the most profitable business area we do. So the more we increase here, it better going to be for overall profit for Craft. With that said, as the total plan, how are we going to go from 200 to 400 and doubling the business to 2030? Thank you. Questions?
Thank you very much, Nicklas Skogman from Nordea.
You finished off here by saying that you're planning to double the business to EUR 400 million by 2030, but I think, if I'm not misremembering, the plan was to do this by 2027. So I was wondering where you stand right now and what has changed in terms of the plan.
I think all the New Wave Group has been looking at a little bit higher increase or after higher growth, which didn't really come, so basically, we've been postponing it to 2030. So that's what we're looking at now. The pace, again, the retail is the one that's not pacing, so basically, if we're going to point out things that we are not really happy about, it's, as Torsten said up here, it's the regular retail business. When I say retail business, we don't have any stores. We're just selling to retailers.
That one is not pacing as we've been thinking. But the teamwear is doing well. It's sort of on the plan. The e-commerce business is on the plan. Footwear is sort of on the plan. Promo has been a little bit stable and then retail is behind. So we had to be pushing it to 2030. Still pretty ambitious though.
Okay, thank you. And where are you sort of rolling 12 months at this point for Craft turnover?
Growing?
No, what's the sales?
We don't say exactly. So it's about SEK 2 billion.
Okay. Thank you.
I just follow up with a question on the good profitability contribution from corporate here. We're selling into that channel. And still, you show that you expect this to be a bit diluted weight here. Is it that you've, where are the growth limitations that you see?
It's diluted, yes, due to the fact that the teamwear are basically going to be even bigger. So I think that's sort of it. The retail business probably, hopefully, can be staying on the 40% share of the business. We don't really think that way because what we've been seeing and what we've been talking about with retail. But the teamwear is not as high with the gross margin, but pretty close. So the highest gross margin we get from the promo business, basically the highest is the e-commerce business and then the promo and then the teamwear. But it's not far away. So I'm not really worried about the total profitability, but it's more about the fact that how much can we grow as a performance premium brand within the promo business.
There is an easier way for Clique to sell more T-shirts than for Craft to sell pretty more premium jackets and hoodies in that business. That's sort of a little bit in the mix of why we've been thinking it will be a little bit diluted, but again, it's more about we will be growing in value, of course, but it will be the percentage going to be less to the target
and when you say that e-commerce is highest, it's on the gross margin level you're thinking?
Yes. E-commerce is highest gross margin, then we have the promo, then we have the teamwear, then it's the retail and then it's the footwear.
Speaking of the footwear, I sensed here what you're saying that you had hoped for a little bit more market traction, perhaps. Did you revise your plan in any way?
Do you have any new ideas of how to get that penetration going?
I think the worst thing we can do is panicking because we see traction and we see the increase. So when I see the footwear category, it's increasing much more than basically base layers. So I mean, we are doing the right things. Again, as Torsten said, if we were continuing just doing the base layers and the bike and the cross-country skiing on regular shelves, we're going to be decreasing, right? So we always expected a bit more. We always like to have a little bit higher pace. So we do think, and if you've been testing the shoes the last years, they're doing well. So basically now it's more just to convince the consumer. From the beginning, we struggled a bit to find the right models. Now I think we have the right things.
I'm seeing what I saw in Borås yesterday. It looks amazing. So no panicking. And I think that's not really in our way of thinking. So we're going to continue. But we see the traction also on e-commerce with the footwear. People are buying footwear on our e-commerce. And it's basically the biggest category. So we know that people out there would like to be buying our stuff, but sometimes having a hard time finding it. And that's sort of what we need to be doing in the future, even more distribution. But again, convince all these people that we're going to be the brand. And again, it's harder to do that with the consumer-driven decision compared to this club decision, which is more about the rational choice.
Yeah, so the products are right.
But I think you mentioned also in the presentation that you wanted to alter a bit which retailers you go with and so on. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? I would like to be specialized ones.
Yeah. If you ask me, I would like to sell to a lot of customers. But of course, you need to be sort of on the pinnacle stores from the very beginning and sort of dripping down. So in Sweden, we are mature enough now to be entering the Intersport and the Stadium and the XXL of this world, to be honest. In some of the other markets, we most likely need to be building a little bit more on pinnacle stores from the beginning and dripping it down. So it's different phases in different markets where we are.
But I would love for you to see us in a regular Intersport store with the running wall. That's going to be when you see us up there, then we're going to be catching up some speed. Because again, the running specialty in this market is pretty small. But if you look into the market in the U.S., Daniel, how much is the running specialty?
The running specialty channel in the U.S., which is approximately 16% of the market in the U.S., sells more than 8 million pairs a year.
So the running specialty in the U.S. is pretty big in the U.S. only. Due to the millions of people living there, the running specialty in this market is pretty low. And Daniel is responsible for footwear. So he knows it all. So there's different markets and different challenges.
But of course, we would like to be broader and wider. But if we're going to be wider and having things on the floor and we don't have the attraction enough to the consumer, it won't be selling.
But I presume when you say that you have the lowest gross margin in this category, I presume you have lower gross margin than leading shoe brands, running shoe brands.
Right, I would say from 26 and onwards, I'm going to be saying that we're going to have pretty much spot on as the other ones. Of course, if you're doing ASICS, Gel, and Kayano, which have been in the market for the last probably 30-40 years, it's of course having a little bit higher margin. But footwear margins are lower than the apparel margin.
So if you are having somewhere around 40%-45% on a pair of shoes, it's not too bad. But again, the average selling price for a shoe is just much higher than a pair of T-shirts or a pair of pants. So basically, looking to value, it's going to be helping us a lot. But the percentage is slightly lower, yes.
But when you look at On Running and Hoka, did you look at their margin ramp? I mean, or was there any?
We went to make us more enthusiastic when looking at where are we compared to Hoka at the same time when they were founded. And we're actually ahead of them. That's something we need to be able to boost ourselves. We look at that. Then I think they had a really good trajectory of sales. But yes, we've been looking at how they did it.
We have a lot of people that have been working in those kinds of businesses before helping us. But we also work a lot with the ex-distributors that have been working with Hoka, On, etc. So yeah, but again, it's a harder one. It's a harder one due to the fact that this is going to be a consumer-driven decision compared to the other ones that we've been doing with Promo or with Club.
Finally, on that topic, is there any inventory risk here? Because you mentioned before how you want to extend sort of the duration of seasons. But I guess in running shoes, it's all about these seasonal releases of new patterns and kind of up and up.
Up and up.
Ramp your production too much or?
So footwear for us, one is the consumer-driven decision that you and me are going to go running, right?
We're selling at Club. The other part is regular footwear that we are selling to Promo. I think I'm allowed to say this. We had a big order the other day, SEK 1 million on only footwear to a commune in Sweden. Basically, now it's more people are entitled to start buying working shoes, also as joggers. We see now pretty big business within that kind of sector also for the promotion side. Those ones are going to be even more, but they're going to be in 12 colors. They're going to be staying for 10 years. Then some of these ones are going to be going in and out, of course. I'm not worried about selling shoes. Selling shoes as clearance is much easier. It's a little bit harder with the striped jersey for teamwear, I'm telling you.
If we take that one out, a blue and yellow striped T-shirt, that's going to be a little bit trickier. So seeing the clearance of stock for footwear, you can always get it in outlets, so you can sell it pretty easily. More questions?
Yes, we have some more questions here.
From Torsten?
I guess maybe you should mention something about next step in shoes, the category shoes.
Yeah, so next step in shoes is that we're going indoor. So the running shoes is pretty tough. I mean, we've been talking about it. It's a bit tough environment. Indoor is not easy, but it's a little bit easier. We have some of the bigger players and the bigger brands are not really in the indoor. So we will launch the indoor. Daniel is behind in the back here. He's working hard with the indoor shoes.
They're going to be launched within some years. We have not set the date yet. We are testing it and it needs to be good. Indoor shoes, meaning that we can use it for floorball, for handball, for futsal, for racquet sports, ping pong, and those kinds of sports. The competition here is a little bit milder in one way. I'm looking forward to that. Also, it's very connected to the teamwear business. It's a good way of connecting it with teamwear, being even stronger, coming to clubs, that we can say that we have now hard goods as well, meaning the footwear, together with the apparel to clubs. Looking forward to that.
Andreas with SEB again, can you talk a little bit about the U.S. teamwear setup? You started a year ago or so. What have you done?
Where are we now and so forth?
Yeah, so basically, good question. We've been talking about this teamwear. Teamwear in general, if you talk about it in general, it's a big potential. Teamwear specifically in the U.S., I see as a really big potential. Why is that? Well, basically, teamwear in the U.S. is a little bit different. It's more driven by corporate business. It's basically someone owning a club or someone having a school. So the average sales to a member is much higher. So we now had a club we'd signed the other week, and they're having an average sale to their members of $500 per year. If we do the same number in Germany or in Sweden or in Finland, it's pretty similar. It's about $80-$100 a year. So we're looking at a five, six, seven times higher revenue per member.
That's a good thing. The other thing is that you can't really sponsor a team. So for example, in Denmark, we have, as I said, the number one team now in the Danish Football League, Århus. Why are we having them? Well, it is mostly to sort of take a step into a market because you need to prove that you are something in this market. Something we did with Hammarby or IFK Göteborg or the handball team, the Swedish federation, to sort of prove to clubs that we are good enough. That's what we did in Denmark. In the U.S., it's different. All the pro teams are sponsored by one brand. So the MLS of soccer in the U.S. has one sponsor. If you go to the baseball or the American football or the basketball, it's the same thing. They are sponsored with one brand.
Meaning, you don't really have to go the sponsoring way to find a way of getting into the market. Third thing is that a lot of brands are pretty sloppy. They're not really bad at delivering. Even though you think that in someone's home market, they're going to be good, but we see they are pretty bad, so most of the customers that we see when we meet, they need to pre-order every single item they need for the next season, and I talked before about Intersport having a hard time pre-ordering base layers for a season. Imagine pre-ordering yellow T-shirts and black shorts and yellow socks for one club in size 122 and 128 and 134 and 150. It's going to be impossible, so it's basically no one having good service, so what we see is basically a brand called Capelli, pretty unknown for most of you.
They are now having a revenue of more than $100 million in the market. Came from nothing because they promised really good service. They are struggling a bit. But it's a proof that they can be pretty fast growing. So now to answer your question, yes, it's doing well. We are ahead of our plan for this season. We are meeting a lot of customers saying, "finally, someone that can be delivering." Some customers that we meet, and I met them myself a few times, they think we are joking. So they say, "What do you mean? Can I order tomorrow?" And I say, "Yeah, you can order tomorrow. And then you can get delivered." And we're going to also have this teamwear in more warehouses in the U.S., as Torsten said about Dallas. We have one in Kentucky. We have now one in Seattle.
The plan is to have it out in more warehouses to get quicker delivery. So they can't sometimes even understand that you can do this because for the other brands, you pre-order, you wait for the order, you sit, and you can't take new clubs to your store because you can't risk losing those yellow shorts or yellow socks. So basically, we're seeing a tremendous, tremendous opportunity. And so far, it's just down on these club smaller school levels. We're not going up further up to the bigger ones. We signed one semi-pro team now in Eugene, which is the hometown of Nike. It's a little bit funny. So that's basically a big assignment. But again, we signed this club now in east, south of Boston, and they have three, four thousand kids.
So again, if you start taking the numbers of the average selling for all these clubs and how many kids they are, it's a great uplift. And we see the competition being easier than, for example, in Germany, for example, or France. Any more questions?
Can I add on one thing?
Yeah, sure, Torsten.
Can you talk a little bit about how we use the whole group in merchandise? Because actually, you mentioned Hammarby before, and they were at the office. I don't remember if it was yesterday or the day. Yesterday, yeah. Yeah. And discussed the merchandise for 2026. Yeah. And when I was listening, the Craft salesman discussed coffee mugs. So can you comment a little bit there? Because that's something that Nike, Adidasdas, no one else can do.
Yeah, so as Torsten is saying, we can do offering in much more things to all the clubs.
Even smaller clubs. Small clubs also need mugs and scarves and hats and all these kinds of things. But for the bigger ones, we can be supplying from all our brands in the group. We can be supplying merchandise. So when we do this, we see a bigger uplift, of course. If we sign a bigger club, we can start calculating a little bit differently. There's two ways. One is selling to the network, promo business, that's separate. And then the merchandise business within that club. So in Hammarby, we are selling, I think it's around SEK 8 million now, only from other things that's not basically apparel and things that we do with Craft. Meaning bags, glasses, coolers. It could be Jobman workwear for carpenters. They're buying that with the Hammarby logo onto it.
Around 8 million out of the, I think, 30 we do is coming from different business. And if you start calculating this opportunity in every single club we go to, it's pretty big. So it's pretty hard for them now to say, "Oh, we're going to change Craft out and take on another brand," because that brand can't do that. Sometimes we're having a hard time getting in because we're a little bit unknown still, right? But when we're in, we just continue and continue. So basically, the contract with IFK Göteborg is now extending again to 2031. And I think it's important to see the leave rate, what we call it, the leave rate, how many clubs they're leaving us is very low. And we did Umbro in the past. For 20 years ago, we had Umbro. And we had a 25% leave rate of every single club.
One out of four left us when the contract expired. With Craft, that's less than 5%. This thing with New Wave makes it a little bit harder also for them to change. But again, I think all the things that we said in the presentation also makes it a little bit hard for them to change. But the merchandise is a big uplift. Torsten was saying that we are now launching a new brand called Untagged Movement. Untagged Movement is basically T-shirts and hoodies without a logo. That means, and this is a pretty important thing to know, this means that we can go to any club. Because in contracts today, the other brands are a little bit worried. So they're writing in, "You're not allowed to work with Craft. You're not allowed to work with other brands." Fine. But New Wave, we find new ways.
So now we have garments without logo, meaning that we can start doing merchandise for every single club, any club. And we don't mind if they have Puma or Nike or Adidas or Under Armour or whatever. We don't have to do the jersey. We can do the cap and mug. And we've been doing that in the past, but now we can do T-shirts and hoodies with no label. And then we can be printing the club name back in the neck instead. So this new thing with the no-label project that we are now launching, it sounds maybe a little bit like it's the brand, but for me, this is a revolution. For me, this is one of the biggest brands they've been launching in the last year, last 10 years, because to be honest, this opened up a totally new world for us.
Meaning that I, as a Craftsman, can be calling to a club sponsored by another brand, and most likely, they will have to have a meeting with us. Then if we can't do the Craft thing, then I have something else, and it won't be a competition to the other brands, meaning that we're going to have some really big uplift, so the merchandise part of New Wave, I think it's still a little bit underdeveloped. I think we can do even more. Even though we do good things with Hammarby, there's much more potential in that teamwear business, so the teamwear business, we are planning for 35% of the total revenue. It's one thing, but I do think the revenue can be as big only with the merchandise, or maybe even bigger. Because merchandise sales like T-shirts are amazing.
So, sorry, my mistake, if we look into, for example, we met a really big German club the other year. 40% of the sales comes from the brand. 60% of the sales of merchandise, this club sold merchandise for EUR 12 million. 40% came from the branded merchandise, meaning Nike, Adidas, Puma, Craft, or whatever, jerseys and hoodies and stuff. 60% of the sales was something else. 60% was these kinds of things that we do in the group. So merchandise for the group in the future, massive. And now, especially with this no-label program, we have a tremendous opportunity. Thank you. Just wondering there with the indoor shoes you mentioned before, you will not be launching soccer shoes? Not yet. It's too complicated. I think me and Torsten are having a bit of an arm wrestling about the football shoes.
But basically, to come back to the same discussion again, what is driven by what? So looking into the club business is driven by a rational choice, even though Nike and Adidas will be top of mind for the kids. I mean, the kids can be super happy with that. Looking into the indoor shoes, it's a little bit the same pattern as the club. It's a little bit more driven by that pattern. And the bigger brands are not in there, meaning that the shelf space in stores is a little bit easier. But looking into the football boots, it's very much driven by two brands. And it's super driven by your personal choice and consumer behavior. So that means that we need to be convincing a little bit more of the kids and the football players to be going away from those brands into something else.
And that's a little bit further on, I think. So right now. So there is no central sponsorship if you look at Hammarby or IFK at all for teams that you are sponsoring. There is no central sponsorship from Nike or Adidasdas. It's a mix of what? Yeah, in the past, yes. In the past, it was, yes. But football players don't like that because players have individual contracts. And then the club says, "Okay, now you need to be playing in Puma or Nike or something." And then the players are going to be saying, "No, I have my contract." So I think in one way, we've been helping out that development because what we say with Craft is that you do the apparel from us, and you can do balls, and you can do shoes from whatever. Right? And everyone said that can be impossible.
You need to have everything when you come to a club. We turned that around as one of our benefits, saying, "Hey, let the kids have whatever they want." So for example, in Hammarby, they are using probably three, four, five different brands because Intersport is helping them selling whatever they want. So one is playing with Puma, two is Nike. It doesn't matter, right? So central sponsorships with football boots today. In the past, when we had Umbro 15 years ago, that was a yes. That's what we did. We went in, signed balls and boots and apparel, and that's been changing. It's a little bit more common, though, with the indoor shoes because the players are not as well paid as they are in football. So a handball player or a football player in a regular league don't get any sponsorship.
So then you can sort of force them in. That's why we are now looking at the indoor shoes first and then the football boots a little bit further on.
Great. Can I add one more thing?
Of course.
No, it's clear for everybody that the figures that you present, Stefan, for teamwear business is Craft teamwear business. So it's excluding all merchandise coming from other companies. So if a club buys pens, it ends up in Toppoint or Intraco Trading. If they buy beer glasses, it ends up in gift and home furnishing and so on. So this is only actually pure Craft teamwear in the plans we have here. And hopefully, I think merchandise can have maybe not the same turnover, but huge growth at least.
Great. Anyone else?
One final question. Yeah, sure. I know you are aiming for Stockholm Marathon next year.
I think I know which shoe you're going to run in, but what time are you aiming for?
Thank you, Anna. Put him in a hot seat. I tried to do the Shipper Pro this year, but I changed my mind because I'm not that fast, so that's going to be hurting my calves. I did this year with the Endurance. I think I did four hours or something, 50 or something. So if I can be below 4:30, I think it's going to be enough. I don't have the shape and the body of a runner, but I try the most to run the marathons.
Okay, welcome back. I thought I should talk a little bit about Cotton Classics, our latest acquisition, what we have done and what we will do. First of all, I can say I'm very, very happy for this one.
We strengthen our position very, very much in several countries. So today, you can say on the corporate side, we are or have been for some years market leader in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and also Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland. But now we can also add on Austria. And it's also given us a quite good position to start expanding into the more Eastern Europe. They are quite big in the Czech Republic, Slovakia. I shouldn't say big, but established in Slovenia and some more countries there. And also, it gives us a much stronger position in Germany. If you look at Germany as a country, with this acquisition, more or less doubled the sales in Germany, which is a good foundation to continue to grow there. It's included in the figures since 1st of September, but we actually started working much, much earlier.
The reason was that we were waiting for the competition authorities in Austria, was it that, Göran? Yep. Yep. So we couldn't take it in before 1st of September, but we were actually starting working to introduce our brand already in July to not lose all that time. And they are in a large number of markets. The only one that really we already had the big market share in was Switzerland. There we now are totally dominant and maybe even too big, I would say. But the other countries are a perfect match to our markets. And it gives us a very, very good platform for our brands. I mean, we had the company or have a company, another company in Germany, New Wave Germany, but they are very small in market shares.
We have New Wave in Austria, of course, as well, but also very small in market shares. So for our own brand, it's a fantastic chance to grow in several of those countries. And that's also the plan. I mean, to make them really, really profitable, we need to raise the gross margin. And it's a huge difference. While we are running our own brand on 50% or around there, 45%-50%, they are running the external brands they distribute today on an average of 25%. So if we can take just 20, if we can keep the cost level and just take 20, 25% of the future sales into our brands, it will be a very, very profitable company. And that's what we aim to do. It's also quite interesting because they have a very, very low cost base.
I think most of you recognize that I have said in the past that sometimes we talk too much about gross margin. I mean, New Wave was up when we had even more percentage of the sales in basic items, in percentage of the sales. I think we were up on 13% operating margin, on 37% gross margin. To develop all these brands and design all the products and everything, it's also cost a lot of money. It's quite interesting to see how they can operate on their wholesale, where they don't develop on products and so on, on a cost base on 20%, as they do today, or roughly 20%. What we have been doing is that we have already introduced a number of products and brands from Summer Group.
And we worked against quite a tough deadline because you can say Cotton Classics releases a huge catalog in January every year. And then they have a news edition that's somewhere out on the table if you want to see more, that are out 15th of September. So it was surprising for many competitors that we were a majority with New Wave brands in this edition, 15 days after we took over the ownership. But that was, yeah, that was the summer work. But we have introduced several of them. And Cutter & Buck is one example. Of course, it's not full lines. It's an assortment from each. We have Clique, Harvest, Harvest and Frost, and so on in now. And it has been well received by the clients in Cotton Classics.
It's also interesting to see that we have had the products out for all this out now, and they signaled and marketed it in six weeks. It was a little bit of a debate inside the group before because you can say the New Wave companies in the past have been exclusive distributors in each country. Of course, it was some of the people in the organization that didn't like it all that they will have another distributor that's selling the same thing as they do. It's interesting to see now after six weeks that actually all countries where Cotton Classics is active, where we have subsidiaries, also our subsidiaries have increased the sales in September, October.
I think and I hope it can continue that way because as more knowledge that the trade gets and all the clients get about our brands, it's hopefully also helping not only inside Cotton Classics, but also our other business there. So that's what we have done. Next step is that we will expand the number of products from the brands we have already launched, but also launch Craft on the corporate side and teamwear and Tenson and Jobman through Cotton Classics in mid-January. So they will have from mid-January, they will have not a complete assortment, but a big part of the assortment we have under our own brands.
And the next thing now that I'm really curious on is how big part of the sales can be in New Wave and how long time will it take that it will be a big part in the future that I'm pretty sure at. But it's always hard to say how long time it takes to transfer some of their clients into new for them new brands then. Volume, of course, we want to grow the business. But when we take in our brands, the goal is not actually to take turnover from their existing brands. The goal is to grow the company and, of course, grow the parts we have year by year. And we hope and think, I mean, some of the product lines we have, they haven't had brands that compete with either.
For example, Cutter & Buck that grow very quick in Europe now is on a much higher level, both in quality and price and design than what they are used to having their assortment. So we think it can increase also that way. And also, of course, as I mentioned, then if we can take up the gross margin, which we are quite sure we will, then it can be a very, very profitable deal. And this has gone much, much faster than BTC that we acquired in the U.K.. And it's mainly two reasons. First of all, BTC was outside or England is outside the EU. So we have a limited use of our stocks in the rest of Europe. And they only actually get competitive with our brands when they have direct deliveries from Asia, which took some time. And then also I think we have learned.
To be straight, we also, of course, gambled a bit and started the job before we have the permission, but it went well. We also do a lot of preparations for the future. We're not 100% sure what we will do there, but we will probably automate the stock. They are located quite close to Hungary. Actually, the majority of the warehouse workers at Cotton Classic are Hungarians that come back and forth. But we still think that it's such a big volume. I mean, it was over a billion SEK in sales last year. So we still think right now that it's worth to automate that warehouse. But we also look at warehouse in Germany and/or France. This is a little bit back to what Stefan also said, to use a very old saying. It's good to be global, but we need to act local.
And I think we should not act in Germany if we really want to take a big part of the market. We should not act as an Austrian company in Germany. We should be a German company in Germany with German stock and so on. So it can come some investments in second step, but first step is really to use and introduce all our brand first. We are also looking at, but that is not only for Cotton Classics in that case, but we also are looking to set up a decoration center and a warehouse somewhere in Eastern Europe to be able to do decoration. It's quite successful for us in Cutter & Buck in the U.S., and it's also in Ahead in the U.S. And on the Toppoint, that are hardware, we are just building a big new warehouse factory in Poland.
And there we sell, I would say 99% is with print and decorated already to the resellers on the headwear. And we see that some of the printing methods, like screen printing, is so much cheaper to do in low labor countries. So this could be also a big advantage in competition in the future. We actually today, for example, have Swedish clients that buy our T-shirt in Sweden, and we have to send them to Poland, and they print them in Poland and send back to Sweden. So it would be a good thing to also have that. But that's, I would say, both of those are earliest 2027. And it's, of course, also depending on how Cotton Classics is developing during 2026. That was Cotton Classics. And questions? Crystal clear? You must have some question, otherwise we run even more ahead of the schedule.
Thank you very much, Nicklas Skogman from Nordea again. Maybe we could talk about the time frame for where you see margins sort of approaching. You've said group margins before, but you also said 15%, and your group target is 20%. So maybe elaborate a bit on the progression of the margin.
I think like Cotton Classics and also BTC will never be among our most profitable companies because it's too much external sales. The goal is 20%, but we have New Wave companies doing 25% already. I think we're doing a good job here if we can take them up to 15% in those two cases because the gross margin is so much lower, even if the cost level is lower. Also, the gross margin is so much lower when you sell Gildan or Fruit of the Loom or other corporate brands.
So I would be happy for those two units with 15. And it will probably take a couple of years. It will go. I'm not surprised if, or this will go with Cotton Classics much faster than it does with BTC because here we can use, I mean, we have a warehouse in Austria that can refill Clique. We have a warehouse in Germany that also can refill Clique and Cutter & Buck and so on. So it's much easier logistic-wise for us to speed this up. Then, of course, it's all always depends on how quick will the clients adopt it. But I would say we had a good start. I think we had around 1,000 the first four weeks. No, sorry, the first two weeks after the introduction. No, four weeks it was.
We had approximately 1,400 clients to Cotton Classic that bought samples, which always is the first step. So it's good response. But I don't dare to say that. But if we can, let's say like this, could we increase the operating margin by 2-3% a year, then I think it's quite good. And that means four and a half years until we can be up on 15%.
Okay, perfect. And then I think you said that there aren't that many other companies like this out there in Europe. So we shouldn't expect sort of a roll-up of acquisitions of this type, but. It's some. A few of them out there that are, yeah.
Yeah, it is. No, but you still have two in Italy. You have two in Spain. You have three in France. You have three in the U.K..
And even if we already had BTC, it could be possible with one more there. You have one in the Netherlands, but I think personally, I think they are too small to be any idea. And that's basically what you have left in Europe. Okay, thank you. And it's moving. I should also maybe add one more in, sorry, two in Germany. But one of them is just bought by the competitor that are most like New Wave, a French company that acquired that also running a mix between external brand and own brands. And actually, that was a company we tried to acquire. You remember what this was? Three years ago? Yeah. We tried to acquire, but we couldn't agree about the pricing. But of course, the chance is less now than it was before Cotton Classics because it's not so many left.
Hi, Torsten. Emanuel Jansson, Danske Bank here. Is it possible maybe to elaborate a little bit more on how Cotton Classics will strengthen your market position in Germany? Is it particularly in the speed of delivery or how should we view it?
Access to much more clients. They have much more clients than we have. Logistics-wise, it will not improve our brands because now we have also made the automation in our warehouse in Germany. So if you look at our brands, especially Clique and Cutter & Buck, then they will actually be faster from our German stock than from Cotton Classics. But it's to have access to the market and get a lot of hopefully new clients and also offer all their existing clients our brands. And we don't have actually not even in the countries where we already were big, where they are selling a little bit.
We don't have so many same clients actually because we have been to be on the market, we have been a little bit more high level. I mean, even if Gildan is one of the biggest manufacturers on T-shirts, we never discuss that on our product meeting or board meetings because we are really not competing with them in that price category and quality category, and Cotton Classics have, for example, a lot of smaller screen printers that need to have access to more than, for example, the Clique brand. It's not enough because if they only work with Clique, they can't offer the cheaper items, so I think it's quite many new clients for us as well. New products for them and hopefully new clients for us,
And is it then possible also to maybe quantify how your market position is today in Europe within promowear?
What's your market share thanks to the acquisition of Cotton Classics? Is that possible?
You can say I can't come back with that, but you can say we are definitely market leaders now. As I said, in Sweden, Norway, Finland, I think we're number three, probably in Denmark. We're number one in Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland. Switzerland now is we will be extremely strong or totally dominating if you have both Cotton Classics and New Wave CH. Then we were quite small in Austria, but with them we also become the market leader in Austria now. Germany, I would say we have still small market shares, even if we double the sales on the German market. Slovakia, sorry, Czech Republic, they are quite strong.
They have a good foundation. They are not market leaders, but they have a good foundation in Slovakia, in Slovenia, and so on. We hope also we can expand in Italy. I mean, Italy has been one of our most profitable companies for 20 years, but we still have small market shares. The one that has the market shares there is more or less a competitor to Cotton Classic, and that type of assortment we haven't offered before. So it will strengthen the whole region there in a good way and also give new opportunities to go to the east.
Perfect, thank you. Last question, you talked about the external brands. What kind of opportunity do you see there? Is it because of the price differentiation you want to have in the offering towards your customers, and how will that split be within like five years?
Yeah, I think to be able to really catch up those types of clients that we don't have 200% today, we need also to offer this type of products and quality range and price range, and I think that also, hopefully, due to our size, we can maybe increase the gross margin a little bit, not much, because it should be split between two, but maybe also increase the existing brands with some percentage, so I think it's very, very interesting, and to be a complete supplier, we need it, and we have chosen always to don't use distributors with Clique or with Harvest or with our brands, which means also that the distributors have tried to find, not always succeeded, far away from that, but they have tried to take in other more expensive brands than ours, and then, of course, we lose sales also that way.
So I think it's a very good complement. I hope you can count there, but if we should go to 15% operating profit and we have 20% cost level, we need to raise the gross margin average by 10%. And I haven't counted myself how much must be own brands in that case, but what can it be? 20% or something that need to be our own brands, relative others to reach that. So it's not any fantasy numbers we need to reach before it's very, very profitable. But it's a job that should be done. And as I said, it's always difficult to say how long time it takes for the clients to adopt it.
You can say, I know I said when you heard, yeah, a few two years ago or something, we talked about Craft, and now Stefan made the presentation on Craft, and we're growing there very, very fast. But some of you may remember that the clients to us, they told us to close down and not even try in football because it was a cross-country brand. It was not a football brand. No one in football wanted to wear Craft. It took some years, but it's not like that any longer. So the hard time is to say, will it take two years or will it take three or four? That we don't know. But it will be anyhow much faster than it's in BTC thanks to that we could start so quick.
I mean, in BTC, the first products went into their assortment, and that was only the first ones. It took more than one year. And also, it's first now in January next year, they have a complete assortment. So I think that complete assortment from our group will be actually the same time for Cotton Classics and BTC to offer to the market, even if we acquired them years later.
Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Coming to you live from Seattle, Washington. It's 4:59 A.M. here. So just wish I could be there in person, but I was listening in the last part. I'm a big proponent of using Teams whenever we can save some money. So I'm sure there's plenty of people there to entertain everyone.
So I'm going to take you through a presentation on Cutter & Buck and talk to you about the brand that is Cutter & Buck, as well as the company that is Cutter & Buck, because it's an important distinction. Torsten talked about some investments that we're making here in the USA, and that's a lot about the company that is Cutter & Buck. I'm going to give you an update on tariffs as best I can. I haven't read all the newspapers this morning, so it might have changed, but I'll give you an update from our standpoint on tariffs and what Cutter & Buck is doing about tariffs and how we've really, I think, well managed up to this date what's going on with tariffs. And we'll talk about the future, the new Texas Distribution Center, and adding brands that kind of comes with that expanded distribution. So I'm going to continue on.
I think I have a good audio feed, and Anna has not messaged me back to tell me otherwise. Cutter & Buck, the brand, we were founded right here in the Pacific Northwest. You can see our original office right behind this young woman on the shores of Elliott Bay in Seattle. We are proudly a Pacific Northwest brand, been so since 1989. We'd like to say all of these little taglines that are on the screen here. We are rooted in Seattle, but we are ready for more. We really strive to find that versatility, that lifestyle, everything that goes into an all-day active lifestyle in the Pacific Northwest, where we really seek to find epic every day.
We have established a history of quality, really uncompromising quality since our founding, huge founding pillar of Cutter & Buck, and we've been working at improving and keeping the utmost quality all throughout our lives, and so we talk about standards are for raising, that's what we work on at Cutter & Buck. We, as a company and as a brand, we're always looking to improve, so we really focus on continuous improvement, continuous learning. We believe in our people being empowered. Torsten talked a moment ago about how good work we can do. That's something that we focus on every day in the Cutter & Buck brand worldwide, and so the optimism that we have from that is our finding new ways forward, and then finally, since our beginning, we've been committed to sustainability, really with quality being job one in sustainability.
As you've seen, the longer products last, the less carbon impact, the less of environmental impact they have, the higher volumes we can drive with our sourcing partners or otherwise, we have a better social impact. And so that's how we look at our sustainability. And I'll talk more about that in the company in a few minutes. So what do we make at Cutter & Buck? We really make iconic styles that are engineered for exceptional versatility, designed to be your favorite. So lots of product categories that people wear every single day in their work, in their lifestyle, really a huge opportunity for casual market here. In the short, we like to say in short, iconic versatile favorites. That's what we're looking for. That's where the market is really big for us here in the U.S. and also around the world.
What does the brand get up to in the market? We really have established a global brand presence. Certainly, I'm here representing the USA. We have an expanded business in Canada through our New Wave Group sister company in Toronto. We also have the brand totally active in our businesses in Europe. Nearly all of the New Wave Group subsidiaries in Europe stock and carry the Cutter & Buck brand. Many of those are focused on corporate, as you know, but also there's business and retail there as well. Then we have several licensed markets around the world that have been with us for many, many years in the Middle East and Africa, Australia, New Zealand. Those have been great markets for us for over 25 years each in East Asia, in Korea, and China. In Southeast Asia, we have licensed businesses there as well.
There's really a global brand presence for Cutter & Buck. The good news is in nearly all of these markets, while Cutter & Buck has great distribution, all these things, it's still a small brand. While we have a growth in all of these places at present, there's so much business out there for us to go and get. Zeroing in a bit on the U.S. with the brand, we have awesome commercial partnerships that have really served us well. These partnerships are very hard-earned. These are partnerships where we sell through these partnerships. These are not sponsorships. These are commercial partnerships where we have earned the right to sell either with co-branding or through these platforms or through these other brands out into the market, including the National Football League, which is American football, Gridiron, if you know it as that.
But it's the largest league, the most popular league here in the U.S., Major League Baseball, a really old league, but really well established. We just had the highest ratings of all time on Game 7 of the World Series last week. And so that's a positive about the baseball. NCAA is the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and that's all of the colleges and universities around. This is a huge sports entry in the US market, as well as it's a really just a really popular base for fans and for alumni and all of those things. And then we have lots and lots of famous customers for the brands. The largest is Fanatics.com, but that operates under NFLShop.com, MLBShop.com, MLSShop.com, which is the Major League Soccer here. So that's the company that operates all of the websites across the consumer base in the sports license space.
And we have a fabulous business and partnership with them. And then, of course, Amazon, Nordstrom, who you're probably familiar with, and then famous locations like Pebble Beach or Torrey Pines or Pinehurst. These are three of the most famous and biggest golf course operations, resort destinations in the country. And we run a really nice business and partnership with all of them. So that's about the brand. We're a great, great solid brand on really strong footing. And what's so special about Cutter & Buck as part of New Wave Group is really what we have been able to become since the New Wave Group acquisition in 2007. So the company, what is our mission as a company or our objective? Our words, our objective. Our objective now is to be the world's best sportswear supplier.
We believe that we can do that with great product selection for corporate and retail. I heard the question a little while ago about the corporate business in the U.S. Cutter & Buck has a really, really strong corporate foothold in the U.S. Strong, but very small compared to the overall size of the market in corporate and what would be extension by imprinting and teamwear as well. With that, with an entry into that business for corporate and retail, which we go to market in the same way. Currently, we have the C&B brand, of course, the iconic versatile favorites. Then also we take to market Clique, which is our line of modern sporty essentials. Certainly a big label in the European market. We've been doing that since 2008. We launched that, and I've been part of that since the beginning in this market here.
And both of those businesses are growing at present right now. So we do that with a really high service level. We are committed, like we all are across the New Wave Group, 98% inventory service level. There was a question too about stock. We have to carry a huge stock in order to keep that. But that's our promise to our customers, and it keeps our business going and growing. We have a secret sauce. There were also questions about embroidery, but our secret sauce, and I could ask everyone here to be like, don't tell these secrets to other companies because these are the things that make us the world's best sportswear supplier. Fast embroidery and fulfillment. We have really perfected embroidery down to one unit at scale.
And so we are able to offer the partners that I showed on the last screen corporate programs, corporate embroidery, or I'm sorry, corporate uniform programs or otherwise. We are able to offer them really, really compelling packages as part of our USP on embroidery and that fulfillment. So some of you may have seen a video that circulated last year, but during this time of year, over the weekend, we will get five or six thousand single unit orders. We will receive those by Monday morning. We will ship all of them by Tuesday afternoon. So we have a 25-hour turn time on five or six thousand individual orders that have come in over the weekend from our consumer businesses. So that is something that we really can build more and more business on, particularly as it relates to expanding distribution and fulfillment capacity out of Dallas as well.
We have really trusted B2B technology platforms like CBcorporate.com, which is in the US for us about a $50 million a year business where that business comes in through our B2B platform. So the costs are low on that B2B platform. We have low order processing costs when orders come in like that. It enables us to go to market really, really fast. We also have a high profit level. This is in keeping with New Wave Group. New Wave Group, the sourcing partnership is key to that, to getting really, really great sourcing and great products at great margins. And then also internally, we're seeking those lowest possible costs, as evidenced by me not flying to Sweden to do this presentation today. And then finally, sustainability through efficiency. This is how we have our point of view on sustainability. We do fabrics with certified sustainable attributes.
We have consistent orders with our factories that enables a lot of very solid social compliance. Our factories don't really need to work on overtime based on us and those types of things, so factories love consistent, long-lasting orders. We haven't used any air freight in our business model at all in any of our imports since 2018, since the New Wave Group pointed this out that we should really have a goal of that, and we've been committed to that, and then we also don't use any print catalog, so we've been committed to that for sustainability since 2020. Prior to the pandemic, we had made that decision, so how do we do all that? There's a lot of things that I listed there. There's a lot of different things. I just want to just zero in for a moment on what our strategic flywheel is.
And so you see here in the center our objective, be the world's best sportswear supplier. And then here internally, we communicate to corporate and retail. We're very focused on that. We want to do both markets. There's huge channel opportunities in both. And so this is our virtuous cycle. This is a Jim Collins. Those of you that read Good to Great back in the day, those of you that are keeping up with this methodology, we really love this methodology. It helps keep us very, very focused at Cutter & Buck. And it starts there at the top with market-winning product series. And I'm going to go into a little bit of detail on market-winning product series, but those equate to high-margin, long-life cycle products. And that is an economic engine for Cutter & Buck as well as for lots of companies in the New Wave Group.
And then we power that with huge inventory, as I'm sure Torsten has discussed with you as well. We have that huge inventory to operate that 98% inventory service level. We have a rock-solid infrastructure so that we do not have outages. We are able to really be connected with all of our customers all of the time. We can take orders. We can answer questions about where anybody's order is anywhere all the time. So we have a really, really solid infrastructure both for fulfillment and for the technologies that are necessary for that these days. And then we power that with industry-leading service and capacity. I talked a bit about embroidery a few moments ago. We believe that we are leading in the U.S. for embroidery capacity and speed at this time in the markets that we serve.
So there's lots of cottage industry out there in regards to decoration, which we also supply with lots of blank products out there. And that's a huge growing business for us. But those are generally to smaller local decorators that are servicing the promotional or imprinter market. So there's a huge market of blank business, and there's also this awesome market that we keep growing in our decorated business. And then finally, I'd like to start or finish there depending on, but always adding and activating customers. We are very, very engaged with our customers. We still have a very small slice of the market in the U.S. And I'll show you some statistics in just a moment there. But this is our flywheel.
The more we concentrate our strategies, each year we set our objectives and our key results around these strategic objectives, and we just keep the business moving forward and keep improving over time, so from there, a little bit of detail on market-winning product series, like what is that? So this is just, it's actually a very, very simple concept that we've developed within the New Wave Group. We've just given it a name, which we like to do at Cutter & Buck, but the opportunity is to win a large identified market across channels: quality, design, stock level, sustainability, and price, which is not always necessary if we win on those other areas, but we really seek to have this, and the key thing is one base fabric in many styles and colors.
That's where you get the economies of scale across the supply chain: in the base fabric. We can buy at New Wave Group volumes at the volumes that we can do selling across all channels. We can buy fabulous fabrics at a very reasonable price. So this helps build margin. So the example here on your left here is the Adapt Recycled Knit Layering series. This is now number one for us in the U.S. The forecast for the rest of the year, we're going to hit $16 million in the U.S. on this product series with a sustained GM above 60%. And we're expecting lifetime sales in this series of $100 million. So that's just in the U.S. market. This is also available in Europe. It's available in Canada. It's available in many of those markets around the world.
So this is a key component to our strategy. And we also apply this with our Clique brand that we offer here in the U.S., as well as some other products that some other product collections that we'll bring in soon. So a little bit about the service, a little bit more about service capacity. We have an AutoStore system, a fabulous, fabulous technology that's really great. You've probably heard a lot about it, about the group or from the group, but we really love this system. It enables us to do that 25-hour turn time in our decoration business. It powers fulfillment capacity that for retailers, any of those corporate customers, we're able to keep up with that and really be servicing things. Same day blank orders, all of that stuff.
Then with 350 embroidery heads at our Seattle Fulfillment Center, we can do up to 15,000 units a day. Our daily average right now is about 13,000, but with those minimum orders of one unit. That's perfect for retailers who want to do dropship programs for all of these different sports businesses that want to do embroidery decoration. Then we're learning about how we can expand decoration beyond embroidery for the future while keeping with this great capacity. A little business snapshot for us. Torsten, you were a little bit off. No matter what we do, our businesses tend to kind of grow together. Starting here on the left, our brand sales, we're about 70.8%. This is year-to-date percentages right now for a 70% Cutter & Buck in dollars and 30% in Clique. It's kind of easy. These are very easy to digest here.
Brand sales and units, 52% Cutter & Buck, a little bit higher in Clique, right? Because the Clique price points tend to be lower than the Cutter & Buck price point. Then in our channels, we got 51% of our business in corporate, 46% in our wholesale retail, and then 3% in our direct-to-consumer. So that's the CutterBuck.com business. So kind of as the brand grows and as the business grows, it just continuously grows at these two levels and tends to kind of stay in lockstep with each other. Certainly, I think when we expand our distribution into some more markets or to some more locations, we'll probably start to distort a little bit with corporate, with a higher percentage of our business in corporate. But we're happy to have this. We don't manipulate this. We're happy to have it grow in both business channels.
Then customers, you can see here, 54% of our customers year-to-date are in corporate, 46% are in retail. So that's about so far year-to-date, it's about 13,000 customers across both. There are tens of thousands more customers for us to gain in the U.S. market alone. So we have strategies in place with that. It's kind of a slow and steady market, but it's really about keeping customers that we actually have open active all the time. So moving on to tariffs. Anna and others had asked me to speak about tariffs. In my original presentation, I had a nice little flow down to talk about each of these things. So sorry to barrage you with a slide that's a lot of text, a lot of text on it. But here you have it.
So the key things here is that Cutter & Buck in the U.S. market, we have a very strong partnership with New Wave Group Sourcing. We have committed really entirely to the New Wave Group Sourcing model, which we get a ton of advantages of. The first one is that we have that visibility and fast management. So by working with New Wave Group Sourcing, we can be in contact on Teams every night. We can be in contact on email. We really have a view into where our fast and agile management of our business. So since 2017, we have been actively moving or shifting, whichever you'd like to put it, to no-duty countries for our GM improvement. So that has limited our exposure to the highest tariffs. So just below that, Egypt is our number one sourcing country right now in the U.S. market for us.
Kenya is number two. Vietnam and Ethiopia are really three and number four. So 90% of our active production is in those four places. And we have zero for Cutter & Buck in the U.S. We have zero production in China. And that's been as much about moving ahead of time as it is now. So further to that, with our market-winning product series strategy, we have these really high-volume blocks of production. And this is why this is, again, a little secret sauce. Please don't share this with other apparel companies that you all work with.
But these high-volume blocks of production, they can be moved into new or parallel capacity more easily than lots and lots of small products, which, whether the product does, as the example given, whether the product does $15 million a year or whether it does $150,000 one time, there's all the same kind of paperwork for both. So factories are much happier for us to come in and say, "Hey, we've got a $15 million product series. Would you like to build this for us?" We're able to move those blocks of production more easily. And so the New Wave Group Sourcing team and the Cutter & Buck product development and the team there for buying, they're able to move these things around quite well. So as the tariffs came in, we had some of these changes we wanted to make.
One of the things that we did was that we increased our purchase quantities on our market-winning product series to lock in pricing, many of those times negotiated lower, as well as the capacity. So we're continuously negotiating lower pricing. So we came into 2025 recently having negotiated lower pricing with most of our factories built on the volume and efficiency that that factory can gain, not squeezing them, offering them larger production for longer periods of time. They can build that into their model, and they can give us lower pricing, again, based on that efficiency. So we use the crisis time. So from April, Torsten and I were in Shanghai at the moment that this all started to happen in April.
We used those next couple of months to just move some remaining market-winning product series to no-duty countries like Egypt, for example, for us, and Kenya at the time, no duty or the lower tariff locations, so there were a few of those product series that we had to make some adjustments to so that we were able to do, so there has been a cost to us, so the difference between duties and tariffs in the U.S. are duties are standard. They're standard whether you're making a product in Vietnam or you're making a product in India, you're going to pay the same duty based on what that product category is unless you're in a duty-free country, and then it goes from whatever that duty might be down to zero. Tariffs are an additional tax, right, so those are collected separately and collected differently.
While we've watched this closely, there has been an increase in the tariff costs. Globally, even in those no-duty countries, there's a 10% tariff coming in on imported goods in the categories that we make. Because of the reasons above that I showed you, we've been able to offset many of those. We've been moving the products into the other places. That's what we've been working on. There has been an increase. The tariff costs that we've experienced this year, which are sometimes a little bit of a flash in the pan, sometimes they were only at the high level for a few weeks. That was depending on when the product shipped from that export country. There will be some tariff costs flowing through our COGS in the medium term. We have taken some costs from that. They're completely unavoidable. It's not possible.
What we have done, as we've done all of the things that I've explained above, and we'll continue the resilient market-winning product series strategy to keep that base GM going and growing with no-duty and low-tariff sourcing. And there are some other markets. So we've been in the Africa market, North Africa, and then into Kenya since, again, 2017. We don't have any sourcing in Central or South America today. Those are no-duty and low-tariff locations. That's another huge potential for us for the future. We haven't even started sourcing in those areas. So there's huge, huge opportunity and potential for us to keep this strategy going and growing from here. And then the future, there are a couple of things that are really happening for us looking out is the big one. The big investment that we're doing is a U.S. distribution expansion.
So again, I had some animation here before to kind of keep you from digesting all of this all at once. But really what you're seeing here is the shipping map, the service map for what will be our three distribution centers. So on the left is our current two distribution centers. You can see Seattle, way up in the upper left. We like to say we're in the upper left of the United States. Way up there in the upper left, that's where we are based. That's where we ship from. But you can see that to and through many of the population bases along the Eastern Seaboard, down into Florida, over to Texas, up into Illinois, there is a long service time. And in the corporate world and growing now in e-commerce, as you're quite aware, service speed matters.
In 2009, we went ahead and opened a third-party distribution center with our partnership with UPS for blank product only in Cincinnati. You can see in the lower left hand of your screen, you see that brighter yellow area. That's got about two and a half million units of capacity. That's all blank units. We ship same day from that facility to all of our distributor customers, imprinter customers in the Eastern U.S. That had the effect of cutting that turn time. You can see down to Florida or up to New York, we had cut that down from five or six days down to two or three days when we opened that Cincinnati. That leaves a large part of the United States in the center really underserviced. Texas is a really fast-growing state. It's super business-friendly.
It's just a lot of business activity in Texas. There's a lot of corporate imprinters. There's lots of business to be had there. And in fact, Texas is the number one company sorry, the country. I was going to say country. The number one state in the U.S. for sales for Cutter & Buck today. So while we've looked at some other areas with maybe denser population, we decided that to really service the existing customers that we have really well and really expand the business rapidly, that Texas was the place for us. So that gives us a really improved shipping time to you see, really that center where you see the bright yellow and the light brown or the orange just around that. It really improves that to there. So we gain those days in the year.
An important time of the year is right about now between U.S. Thanksgiving and Christmas. We can get two or four more days of production capacity in that time. And it matters when we're running a really, really fast-growing business. And then as Torsten mentioned, we're going to start up in-house decoration when we open this facility planned for October 2026 at the same time. So it'll take some time to get that going. Embroidery and other decoration things, it's a bit like running a factory. It takes a little bit of time to get that going. So we'll have the inventory there. We'll start shipping blanks immediately. We'll start the decoration operation. But it'll take us some time to get to where we are with the awesome capacity in Seattle. So here's just a couple of renderings of the facility that we're looking at right now.
We should be finalized on the site selection any moment now, but we're right there where we felt comfortable with sharing this. The facility we're looking at will actually be our largest. It will be over 200,000 sq ft. That's 20,000 square meters or in the neighborhood of that. We'll establish a showroom there to service and really broadcast ourselves to the local market, and then a really cool thing about that space, not only is it located within very quick shipping to lots of places, but it also has, you can see the freeway is right there. So we're going to have a lot of "free exposure" to everybody driving by. It's over 100,000 cars a day that go by here. So that's something that we really have a great access to, and then we'll stock there our huge inventory of our Cutter & Buck premium sportswear.
We have our Clique corporate apparel. And then very excitingly, we have Tenson, the Swedish outdoor brand. We've come to the agreement that we will be introducing Tenson to the corporate and to the retail market into the US next year. And so we're really thrilled to have that. We will have that in all three of our distribution centers next year, but we're really excited about that brand. It's the first time, at least in my knowledge, that the Tenson brand has been offered to the US. And there is strong demand, particularly in corporate, for premium outdoor. There really isn't people going after it with premium outdoor in the corporate market. So we're really thrilled for that. And then through the generosity of the group here, we're going to be offering a Craft corporate performance wear as well as teamwear in stock.
So we will be supporting Craft U.S., which has huge, huge, huge opportunity in lots of markets. And so we will stock both for our own sales through our channels as well as for Craft U.S.'s sales, that corporate and that teamwear collection. So that brings me to the end of my presentation. I am going to close my, I think, close my screen and make every attempt to see you all again, assuming that you both saw that presentation and heard me throughout because I had no audio or visual feedback during the presentation. So I'll leave it open for any questions that you may have for me.
Thank you, Joel. We've been hearing you really well and seeing, so.
Oh, good.
Okay.
You've done really well. So is there any questions to Joel in the audience? It's a big crowd here, Joel, since you don't see them. It's describing.
I can only see three. I can only see three people in my field of view. Oh, there we go.
Hi, Joel. Emanuel from Danske Bank here. Good presentation. I'm just curious, for how long have you been CEO of Cutter & Buck here in the U.S.? And also, is it possible to maybe give us some color on how the sales development has been, possibly the last five years or so, the development?
Yeah, I'll start with the first one, which I'm embarrassed that I did not introduce myself more sincerely at the beginning. I have been with New Wave. I've been with Cutter & Buck since 1999, and I did many, many different jobs. I started as an intern in the sales department and then did many different jobs until I was at some point, I ran the corporate business for us here at Cutter & Buck for five years, and then in 2014, I became the CEO, so I've been in my seat now 11 years, 11 years and change, and then on the sales development side, yeah, we've been growing well, especially we had a dip like many companies did during the pandemic, but we've really been growing steadily since that time, so that's been good.
Both, I would say what has been quite successful since the pandemic has been the Cutter & Buck brand in the U.S. market, which has been strong and steady for both corporate and retail, as I described before, but also globally, the Cutter & Buck brand is growing. That's evidenced by strong growth in Europe as well as we're starting to get more licensing revenue from those license partnerships as well. I would say we've been resilient this year. The market has not been forgiving this year, particularly early in the year, early second quarter, in those times when the tariff disruption was really strong. With our model that I've explained here, it's resilient. We've got year-to-date growth in the business, and we've got year-to-date profit growth. That's felt very good for us.
Interesting. Thank you. And since you've been a long time with the company, Torsten acquired this business in 2007. How much bigger is the business today in the U.S. compared to then? You know that.
It's bigger. Maybe it's, yeah, I don't know. I don't know from 2007, but it's bigger than it was then. So the strategy that we explained here, we did take some years off from growth during that time as we adjusted to the market-winning product series strategy, to the strategy to sell to both channels with the same product line. So we've been steadily growing, really growing strong since 2000 or I'm sorry, 2021 is when our growth has been quite good.
Great. Thank you very much, Joel.
Any more questions?
You've been super clear, Joel.
Okay. Great. Thanks, everyone.
Time for breakfast for you. Thank you very much for joining.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck.