Reebok 2014 Annual Report Download - page 12

8
2014
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01.1
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Letter from the CEO
To Our Shareholders
adidas Group
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2014 Annual Report
For me, one thing is certain: true champions come out and show their worth after defeat. Only those
who analyse their mistakes, learn from them and work intensively on their own weaknesses have
what it takes to be true champions. While the full results of our work over the last months will only
become visible over time, I am proud of how hard our organisation and our employees have worked
on themselves in the past few months in order to take up the fight for gold. As a result of our fast and
decisive action, we have reached a first milestone, achieving our updated top- and bottom-line goals
for last year, and now we are looking confidently out onto 2015.
We are also profiting from the progress we have made since the introduction of our ‘Route 2015’.
Only those who set themselves ambitious goals are in a position to continuously improve. Against this
background, in 2010, we created and presented to you our ambitious strategic business plan. And
even though we will not achieve our sales and earnings targets this year, the adidas Group today is
significantly stronger and better positioned than at the start of our Route 2015 journey. Two examples:
we know that our brands and products resonate best with the consumer when we are able to present
them in exactly the way we envisage. That is why we set ourselves the goal of generating 45% of our
revenues from controlled space initiatives by 2015. We have made great progress in this respect over
the past few years and today we are already generating more than 50% of our sales from controlled
space initiatives. In addition, we have multiplied our eCommerce business over the last couple
of years and we will over-achieve the targeted online sales level of € 500 million in 2015. We will
continuously build on these successes and, with the help of our Concepts-to-Consumer team, which
we strengthened with valuable expertise last year, we will further enhance the consumer shopping
experience and the consistency of our messaging – across all distribution channels.
This, by the way, is a key characteristic that will increasingly distinguish us in future: our focus is on
consumers and the brand experiences we create for them. In order to live up to this claim to the best
possible extent, my Board colleagues Eric Liedtke and Roland Auschel have completed the realignment
of our marketing and sales activities accordingly. As part of our ‘brand leadership’ initiative, the
categories now for the first time have full end-to-end responsibility for all marketing processes. This
massive shift in tactics will make us significantly more agile, enabling us to drive our brand initiatives
in the marketplace more professionally and to bring our concepts to the consumer in a more effective
way. We know that consumers today use several different channels simultaneously, and because
consistent messaging across all these channels is crucial for enhancement of the consumer shopping
experience we have also realigned our sales strategy. Thanks to our omni-channel approach, we will
integrate all sales channels and marketing activation activities, utilise cross-selling opportunities and
align pricing across all channels. As part of initial pilot projects, we have given consumers in some
markets the option to order online and then pick up their products in a store. First feedback on our
‘click and collect’ offer is very encouraging. Therefore we will continue to invest in infrastructure and
processes that will enable us to implement the omni-channel approach globally.