És, Etnies and Emerica refocusing in Europe

It’s been 3 months since the takeover of the Sole Technology brands by the Nidecker Group so Source sat down with Bas Janssen, Head Of EMEA & APAC Sales of the new Nidecker footwear division to hear all about the new set up.

Please take us through the structure for the new Nidecker footwear division. Who is on the management team for footwear and what are their roles?

Bas: So on the European side not much is changing on the management side, Wouter Alsema, our Managing Director stays on as MD and myself as Head of sales. Next to that we have our marketing manager, Kevin Parrott spearheading skateboard marketing for the 3 footwear brands and Darren Wrenn managing the customer service side of the business. So generally, there are still a lot of familiar faces going forward for distributors, agents and retailers.

Similarly in the US most people have stayed the same when it comes to product, sales and marketing with some new additions to strengthen the team going forward.

The only larger change that has been made internally as of now is the fact that the APAC region will be managed under the European banner VS the US banner going forward to streamline processes within the NDK Group.

We hear you’re about to move across town to new offices, what’s the thinking?

Bas: Yes that’s right, office wise we are moving into the Low Pressure Studios office with the Footwear division crew and shared office space in Amsterdam Noord. Actually I can’t wait to move in, as the area is way more suitable for our brands being next to Skatepark Noord and generally in a nicer and more creative area in Amsterdam. Besides the fun reasons there are also professional reasons for the move, we will be able to work closely with the Low Pressure studios crew who have experience in a similar acquisition, the back end systems we are using and the snowboard industry generally, so I think we can share a lot of knowhow between the teams!

Any changes to the Skate athlete program?

Kevin: We’ve been making changes for quite some time to expand and support what we feel best represents the kinds of skateboarding we back for each of the brands individually. I think with etnies, the plan has been visible for a while now, so you probably need to take a step further back to see where we’ve been building and focussing our energy. However, some of the difficult challenges we faced are now made easier as we have a larger family to realise our goals as opposed to just keeping them on our wish list.

Any changes to the skate marketing?

Kevin: Yes. It is early days in terms of what you can see externally, but hopefully you’ve noticed the etnies brand push we’ve made, tying us into Paris over the Olympics with our crew in the streets and that has performed really well whilst the rest of our gang were inside the stadium getting us onto TV screens in the contest itself. This is something Nidecker Group really backed. They really are about the laser focus on projects so we’ve been supported without distraction to execute. Then moving forward, this focus will also be seen, not just on the brand marketing, but the product marketing too. Amongst other things, we’ve got the Emerica Braden Hoban pro shoe coming up fast and I think you’ll see a nice step up for us there in terms of how we roll it all out, that will be a big story for us as the shoe has sold into retailers so well.

Currently what are the main trends in the skate footwear market?

Bas: Obviously we see a lot of 90’s and early 2000’s styles becoming popular in the market which is right up our alley, we are bringing back some of these styles in either 100% retro styles or cool updates. But as you say these are trends, they come and go, so we are also working on some cool new projects at the moment but we can’t say more than that!

What major new product releases do you have in the pipeline?

Bas: To back up the holiday season trends mentioned, we are releasing the SAL23 with etnies completely original colours, specs even the box is the same. Going into SP25 we are bringing some more retro styles back from the Scam to the LoCut but also we have an amazing collab with etnies and Sour! With Emerica, we are introducing a brand new pro model with Braden Hoban this Fall which is going to be big and our best vulc shoe in the line. éS has not been sitting still either, going into SP25, we are bringing an interesting new style elevating the Accel when it comes to fit and function as well as bringing back the Accel OG in its truest form as it was in 1995.

www.etnies.com, www.esskateboarding.com, www.emerica.com, www.nidecker.com