New Balance stores in Portugal close on January 19 – Companies
The five official New Balance stores in Portugal, located in Lisbon, Porto, Alcochete, Faro and Vila do Conde, will definitively close on January 19, he told the Experience Group source Business, which manages the chain of stores for the sports equipment brand. on the Iberian Peninsula.
In Spain, according to Expansión, the closing of about two dozen stores will take place between 10 and 15 January, with workers, about 250, having already been notified of the extinction of jobs. It was not possible to determine the number of workers in Portugal affected by this decision.
New Balance, which offers equipment to clubs such as FC Porto, Liverpool, Seville or AS Roma, decided not to renew the agreement with the official distributor and owner of the sports brand’s stores in Portugal and Spain, due to a debt of over six million euros from the Experience Group. A partnership for the retail sales of the sports brand in the Iberian Peninsula, extinguished in 2013, comes to an end after a New Balance has announced that the current licensing agreement, which expires this Friday, December 31, will not be renewed.
Ao Negócios, an official source at New Balance in the Iberian Peninsula stated that the company is not involved in the decision to close the stores and the consequent redundancies. The source revealed that New Balance even plans to open its own stores in Portugal and Spain next year, but did not give further details.
“There are no plans to change our commercial strategy and we intend to open a number of stores around the world in the next few years”, reinforced the same source, own stores that the brand’s products, sports apparel and footwear will continue to be available in multi-shops. brand with which the company has supply agreements, after the end of the partnership with Grupo de Experiência.
Under the concession, New Balance transferred the brand and provided the merchandising and furniture available to the commercial spaces managed by the Experience Group, dedicated exclusively to the sale of the North American company’s products.
According to El País, in the neighboring country, the stores have already gone on sale this week on average, offering discounts on branded items between 40 and 50%, and which, starting next Monday, will reach 70% in all stores.
However, this is not the scenario in Portugal. Although the government prohibited commercial practices with price reduction on commercial equipment until January 9th, to avoid crowding in the face of the growing number of covid-19 cases.
Under the partnership, Alfico, Spanish subsidiary of New Balance, ensured the supply of goods to Experience Group stores with very specific payment terms, but since 2019, even before the pandemic, Experience Group has accumulated a debt of over six millions of euros. To Negócios, New Balance guarantees that Alfico gave the Experience Group flexibility to pay off the debt, but that it never complied with the defined payment plans.