Jarden Corp. is planning for its ski business, which includes K2, Volkl, Marker and Marmot, to be down around 10% this year.  Speaking at the Barclays Capital investor conference in Boston, MA, Martin Franklin, Jarden's CEO, noted that unlike a number of other ski companies, Jarden builds to order. As a result, the ski group had early on “kept a very conservative view on how the ski business should be for the 2009/2010 season” because retailers have been delaying orders.


“The whole market is predicted to be down some close to 18% to 20%,” said Franklin. “We will be down probably less than half of that, which is a little better prognostication than we probably would have had about a month and a half ago…It's because people have tended to make orders later.”


COO Jim Lillie said JAH has been adjusting expenses throughout the year since Jarden's ski team takes orders for the business in Q1. “So we've known all year long that our business was going to be down  – call it 12% – and we adjusted our expense base accordingly,” said Lillie. “So from an EBITDA standpoint, it's a negligible hit to us. And now because we budgeted conservatively to the extent that sales are down 7% to 10%, we may have a little bit of positive news moving through the back end of the year.”


Regarding other businesses in its Outdoor Solutions segment, Franklin said Jarden has seen a “very healthy season in the fishing business, mostly in the consumables which are good margin businesses.”  Like many of Jarden's businesses, value offerings are doing better in fishing than higher-priced reels and rods. “So the hard goods have done less well, but overall the fishing business has been very healthy,” said Franklin.  Fishing brands include Berkley, Shakespeare, Abu Garcia, Penn, and Ugly Stick.


The company did not elaborate on its other two major sports brands,  Coleman and Rawlings, although Martin noted that Coleman does over $500 million a year. He also listed Rawlings, along with K2 and Berkley, as among its brands that do between $125 million to $250 million annually.