Cristina Fernández : So following up on that comment around the U.S. market and consumer. I wanted to ask how do you feel about your wholesale distribution as far as the doors and the points where you are in. If you think about the strategy do you feel like you need to make changes to the partners where the product is showing off that?
Bjorn Gulden : Well, again, all good retailers should have more adidas products. That’s number one. I think that the share we have with some of the retailers is far too low, and that is a consequence of us focusing on D2C. And also, I don’t think during the last couple of years, focused enough to work with them. That’s changed dramatically. Most retailers that you know in the world are interested in a strong adi. And that’s why I feel that the feedback we have with them and the process we’ve had with them over the last 9 months has developed more and more positive. But again, the real result of that is first visible in autumn/winter24 because that’s the time lines that you’re working to, and that’s why I’m very optimistic about the order book.
I think we will see growth in the wholesale business also in the first half, but then less than what you’ve seen in the second half. There are segments of retail that we have totally, what should I say, gone out of. I mean running specialty is one of them where we divested from physically servicing them, and we thought we could do it only digital. We’re changing that. The good thing is now we have the product. As I said, I think we have the best running product in the high-end market, but we lack distribution. So that is one area that we need to win back again. There are areas in special sports, tennis, for example, where we need better distribution where we have the product, but it’s almost not visible. And then in the U.S., all the U.S. sports, if you do American football or you do basketball, you do baseball, it’s obvious that on the performance side, both distribution wise and what should I say, partner-wise have a lot to do.
When it gets to all other general sports distribution or sports fashion, I think we’re working with all the partners. It’s just that they haven’t felt that we service them properly. And that’s why the share of the wall is not what it used to be. With many of these retailers, we have half of the SKUs on the wall now than we had 10 years ago. But the good thing is I haven’t met one retailer yet who doesn’t say that they want to grow fast with us, and it’s now up to us and to show that we can give them the product and the marketing and the heat they need so they can make real money with us because remember, the only reason for a retailer to buy a brand is that they can make money with us, and that’s what we’re trying to do. And over time, I’m very, very convinced that, that will happen.
Cristina Fernández : And one other question I had was on the inventory, you’re not going to have Yeezy drop in the fourth quarter. Do you still expect improvement in the terms of year-over-year decline in inventory? Or from here, it’s really more about the composition of the inventory until you decide what to do with Yeezy?
Bjorn Gulden : If you take Yeezy out, you have €4.5 billion in inventory, I think that’s a healthy level. There is, of course, some more inventory still in the U.S., but that’s — I would say, if we can keep this inventory level but have a high quality of the inventory, I think we’ll be in good shape. And then remember, in our guidance, it is then the assumption that the Yeezy inventory is going to be written off in the current status, right? And we will make all the necessary analysis to see how we will treat that inventory. And should we decide that we will sell it, then, of course, we will not write it off. So that you also have to have in your mind when you look at the value of the inventory.
Sebastian Steffen : All right. Thanks very much, Cristina. Thanks very much, Andrea. Thanks very much, Bjorn and Harm. And also thanks very much to all of you for joining the call on this very busy day and for mostly sticking to the 2-question rule. This concludes our Q3 2023 conference call. If you have any open questions, be it today, tomorrow or over the next couple of weeks, as always, please feel free to reach out to Philip or myself. We will be happy to connect with you. And with that, thanks very much again. Have a good remainder of the day. All the best. Bye-bye, and take care.
