Columbia Sportswear Names Co-presidents, One of Whom Is a Boyle
Columbia Sportswear is getting closer to passing the baton to another Boyle.
On Wednesday, the Portland, Ore.-based brand named Joseph P. Boyle and Peter J. Bragdon co-presidents. Boyle will oversee the flagship Columbia brand while Bragdon will be responsible for the other brands in the portfolio as well as the international business.
Joseph Boyle is the son of the 76-year-old chairman and chief executive officer Tim Boyle and the grandson of Gert Boyle who is considered the founder of the modern Columbia Sportswear, which has grown into a leading outdoor brand.
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The business was actually founded in 1937 by Paul and Marie Lamfrom who had fled from Nazi Germany to the U.S. They settled in Portland and purchased a local hat distributorship that they eventually renamed the Columbia Hat Co., after the city’s Columbia River. In 1970, their daughter Gert Boyle took over the struggling operation and began to build the company into the $3 billion-plus business it is today. It was renamed Columbia Sportswear Co. in 1960 and went public in 1988.
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Under the new reporting structure, Bragdon, formerly executive vice president, chief administrative officer and general counsel, will oversee the Mountain Hardwear, Prana and Sorel brands as well as the international business. He will also continue his current oversight of certain administrative and international distributor sales functions.
Joseph Boyle will continue to be responsible for the Columbia brand, including the North American business which he was given oversight of this summer.
Under this new structure, the company said, Bragdon and Boyle will work together to “advance the commercial opportunities of the company.”
On Oct. 30, Columbia reported that in the third quarter, operating income decreased 40 percent to $67.4 million, compared with $112.5 million a year earlier. Net sales dipped 1 percent to $943.4 million.
Tim Boyle said the figures reflected “momentum in our international business, led by double-digit percent sales growth in our Europe-direct markets.” However, the picture wasn’t as bright in the U.S., where sales fell 4 percent to $546.7 million. To reverse the declines, he said the company needs to double down on its Accelerate growth strategy which is intended to elevate the Columbia brand’s presence with younger and more active consumers.
“In the U.S., we are focused on revitalizing the Columbia brand through our Accelerate Growth Strategy,” Tim Boyle added. “The launch of our new brand platform, ‘Engineered for Whatever,’ was a major milestone — celebrating the extremes of outdoor adventure and rekindling the brand’s irreverent spirit from the ’80s and ’90s. The early response has been overwhelmingly positive, and we intend to build upon that momentum with a robust pipeline of differentiated activations and other media investments during the important holiday sales period ahead.”
Columbia also projected that in the fourth quarter, net sales are expected to decline 5 to 8 percent with diluted earnings per share projected to slip a range of $1.04 to $1.34, down from $1.80 a year earlier.
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