Mammut Sports Group AG will sell the Toko brand to a new subsidiary of the Norwegian company Swix Sport AS so it can focus on growing its Mammut brand in the outdoor market. Swix will take over the entire Toko team September 1 and operate the business out of Altstätten, Switzerland, Toko's former home. Current Toko Brand Manager Thorsten Walter will continue to lead the company, which will change its name to Toko-Swix Sport AG. Toko is profitable and well known in Europe for its ski wax, tools and care products. But the brand generates a mere 5% of Mammut Sports Group's annual sales while taking up 10 to 15% of Mammut executives’ time, Schmid said in an interview from his office in Switzerland. “On the Mammut side, there is so much more that we could do and the reason we don't do it is we don’t' have time to do it,” said Schmid, noting that Mammut experienced record sales in 2009.
Mammut has grown from $25 million to $125 million in annual sales in the last 12 years, propelled in part by acquisitions. The company’s goal is to continue growing sales 10% a year with much of that growth coming from the United States and Asia. “We have limited growth in Switzerland because we are three times bigger than the next competitor,” Schmid said. “We still have big opportunities in Germany, but we see the States as our biggest opportunity.”
