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German Boardsports Market Insight February 2021

Happy New Year! Welcome to the super election year 2021! The federal parliament and six state parliaments are up for election. Candidates for chancellor are being sought and new party leaders appointed. In the country with the world’s second-largest parliament, many jobs, as well as influence and power, are at stake. This notoriously casts its shadow a long way ahead, which often translates into months of walking on eggshells and trench warfare within the parties. Whether such manoeuvring is compatible with a pandemic scenario, whose key insights can only be classified as “positive” or “negative”, is and remains the most crucial question right now. By Eric Bruweleit 

A look at the timeline of measures taken to contain the spread of COVID-19 since Q4/2020 reveals something similar, to say the least, to a salami tactics blueprint: partial lockdown from the 2nd of November, extension of the partial lockdown on the 2nd of December, hard lockdown from the 16th of December and extension of the hard lockdown on the 5th of January 2021 until the end of January. An extension of the lockdown for February seems to have been already decided, and more stringent regulations are currently under discussion.

The individual measures to contain the infection have been repeatedly changed and adjusted, and in part also often implemented in different ways in each federal state. Still a few days before Christmas, no one was really sure anymore in which setting they would be allowed to celebrate Christmas, or where they would be allowed or not allowed to set off the New Year’s Eve firecrackers, sales of which were not permitted. Predictably enough, in such a state of confusing uncertainty, the appeals made by the Chancellor and by the heads of the federal states did not really resonate with the public.

And so, in the days around the turn of the year, we witnessed spectacular scenes as Germany was covered in powder. The Winterberg mayor’s pleas in the media for people not to come to Sauerland went largely ignored. Max Bechen runs Stylefish snowboard shop in the town with one of the largest ski areas in Germany. He describes days of chaos caused by the influx of crowds from the Ruhr and Rhine-Main conurbations. For his shop, this has brought nothing. The ski area will remain closed until at least the end of January, and the shop had to close again two weeks after opening, when the hard lockdown began. “We are missing 100% of the income from our snowboard school and about 95% of the turnover from our shop. Normally, our work involves extensive on-site consultation. And that is something you can’t just do via WhatApp.” In the neighbouring Postwiese ski area, Stylefish is in charge of the snowboard park. “I don’t know if Postwiese will open at all this season. We depend on artificial snow here. And that has to be produced two weeks before the opening of the area. If we don’t have any planning security, this investment doesn’t make sense anymore. There’s simply no other way to put it, at the moment things just look like absolute shit!”

Similar words come from Jacqueline Gruber, who doesn’t feel like celebrating despite the upcoming 30th anniversary of her shop Edge 2 Edge in Garmisch. “We are missing about a third of the revenue for November compared to the year before. We lost over 40% of the important Christmas shopping revenue due to the hard lockdown. Without an online shop, we are trying to find buyers for our goods via a pick-up and delivery service, but that’s just a drop in the ocean.” With the mountains just outside the shop door, splitboarding was a hot topic, but due to the shortage of splitboard-specific bindings, it yielded limited success. “Snowboard hardware is giving me a hard time at the moment. Freestyle equipment sales are close to zero. Outerwear is also very sluggish. So far, streetwear remains our strongest category.” The bridging aid announced by the government for the second lockdown is currently nothing but a castle in the air, says Jacqueline. “No one knows what this aid will look like and when it will arrive. We haven’t been able to apply for anything yet and feel abandoned by the State! In two months, the summer goods will be here, and their cost also needs to be covered. The question is: from what revenue? If the war of discounts on winter goods kicks off, we’ll be facing big problems.”

In Münster, too, things are getting down to the wire, according to Jörn Schulte from Westside. “Every time new measures to tackle COVID-19 were introduced, they had a direct impact on our sales figures. When the press voiced some hope, sales promptly improved, only to collapse further each time new restrictions were announced. We are currently over 90% behind our result from last year as far as our retail business is concerned. Only our online shop is currently bringing in a little revenue. In addition to those from southern Germany, we receive a relatively large number of orders from other EU countries. Especially from Austria and the Balkans. But also online, we are losing about 50%.

In contrast to the snowboard market, which is a cause for concern, skateboarding continues to experience a boom. “The last quarter of 2020 has seen a significant growth compared to 2019, as had already been the case in the previous quarters,” summarises Jörg Ludewig of distribution company Urban Supplies. “This applies to skateboarding hardware. Our sales of clothing continue to be modest. There was a particular increase in the sales of complete boards and trucks.” However, the problems associated with the pandemic are affecting this segment as well. Limited production and transport capacity meet higher demand. As a result, deliveries are increasingly delayed. “At the moment, the waiting time ranges from one to four months and also means that our orders have to be dispatched as partial shipments over a period of several weeks, rather than all at once.” In the hope that the supply chain will continue to perform, Jörg is very optimistic: “Judging by the orders already taken for Spring/Summer 2021, the outlook is very positive. The growth we had already had from Spring/Summer 2019 to 2020 has been surpassed. Now all we have to do is hope that the production capacity suffices to deliver all orders as planned.”

The boardsports market presents itself as very ambivalent at the moment. More than trends and seasonality, what currently seems to influence demand are the restrictions and measures taken to combat the pandemic. “What am I allowed to do where?” is the question consumers are asking. And demand is met based on the answer.

We now wait for the meeting of the Federation and the heads of the federal states, which has been brought forward to 19 January. We wait for the likely extension of the lockdown and for a further package of measures. Various mutations of the coronavirus with significantly higher transmissibility are putting the chancellor and the heads of the federal states under pressure. The start of the vaccination campaign at the end of December was expected to be the light at the end of the tunnel and to provide a certain degree of reliability in planning, but that is exactly what the politicians cannot currently deliver. A pandemic does not follow a timetable. Difficult times for large parts of the retail trade.