French-brand Mavic and Utah-based Enve are likely to be sold by their parent company, Amer Sports, as the cycling division shows declining sales year on year, according to a new company strategy announced yesterday by Amer.
Mavic, who supply numerous WorldTour teams and the GB track team, is one of the biggest brands in cycling, and showed healthy sales of nearly €140m as recently as 2015. It has also long-since been the iconic neutral service provider for the largest World Tour races.
Mavic’s parent company bought Enve in 2015, when the company was thought to have a turnover of over €25m. Enve has historically been atop the luxury brands of the carbon wheel market, employing innovative aerodynamic designs developed in conjunction with British aerodynamicist Simon Smart.
Mavic recently updated its Cosmic Ultimate with a clincher option
Enve builds the vast majority of its carbon wheels in its Utah headquarters near Salt Lake City. Mavic similarly builds a large number of high-end carbon wheels in its HQ in Annecy, such as the recently announced Cosmic Ultimate UST.
Despite a strong reputation and a healthy supply of OEM wheels for major bike brands, in the first half of 2018, Amer sports saw sales of its cycling division decline by 13%, to €60m. This follows an 18% drop in overall sales between 2015 and 2017.
As a result, the company has announced a future strategy for growth that does not include its cycling division – Mavic and Enve. Amer CEO Heikki Takala claimed, ‘We are looking for somebody who can better look for Mavic’s and Enve’s assets.’
Softgoods and splitting
In its search for growth, Amer is prioritising ‘Softgoods, Business to Consumer, China, United States, and digitalization.’ This follows on from results that have shown Mavic’s major growth to have been in clothing and helmets ahead of legacy aluminium wheel products.
Indeed, in July, Talaka singled out Mavic’s aluminium wheel business as ‘weighing on our result.’
While Enve was no doubt bought with a mind toward linking the operations of Enve and Mavic, recent changes have seen the two companies act more separately. Bicycle Retailer reports that there has recently been a split in US operations of Enve and Mavic, which were previously both managed by Enve’s CEO Sarah Lehman.
Enve's US factory in Utah
The results of Mavic and Enve are currently lumped together within the Cycling Division of Amer’s operations, and so there is little known of how each performs individually. However, it seems likely that buyers may look at buying the companies separately.
‘Today Mavic represents approximately 3.5 per cent of the (Amer Group) sales.’ said Talaka while announcing the updated strategy. It was not clear whether he was including Enve within that estimate.
He went on to say, ‘Going forward we continue the proven strategy whilst accelerating our portfolio transformation towards areas of faster growth, higher profitability, and more efficiency. We think this is also the moment to place the Mavic cycling business under strategic review.’