On Holding AG (NYSE:ONON) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Aubrey Tianello: Congrats on the quarter, and thanks for squeezing me in here. First question I wanted to ask is on the Roger Federer retirement. Could you guys maybe talk a little bit about the Laver Cup event? What that did in terms of impacting the brand’s visibility? And then now that he’s officially retired, how do you plan to work with Roger and, more broadly, the Tennis franchise overall where you have other athletes as well?

David Allemann: So, Aubrey, I mean, of course, that was an emotional moment for us when he retired. But probably the upside from that is that he will have more time. And you have to understand that he — the Roger, for us, is a co-entrepreneur and spends a lot of time probably 20 days of the year in the lab working with us on the Roger Pro, so Pro tennis shoes, but then also on the other parts of the franchise. And now we’re just going to spend more time together because we’re doubling down on the tennis business and continue to grow the franchise. So it’s very important that we spend time together. And Roger is very committed to that. You probably know as well that his house is short 20-minute drive from our lab. So that comes together well.

Aubrey Tianello: That’s great to hear. And then maybe if I could just one follow-up on China. Can you guys talk about the decision you made to own and operate your On stores there as opposed to maybe going with a partner like other brands have. What are the benefits that you see by taking — by going this route?

Marc Maurer: I think it’s €“ what’s very important to us is that we’re able to bring a very unique and also consistent consumer experience to life. So wherever you experience On, you should do that in a premium way. And we felt for China, the best way to do it, that is on our own. So we decided to do most of our stores completely on our own. We are partnering with local franchisees in Tier 2 cities where we feel they have better access to staff or also to certain retail locations. So you will see, and we already see franchise stores in China, but not we’ve launch master franchising partners. And obviously, those has a positive margin impact than if we’re able to operate the stores completely on our own. And we very much feel On is a Chinese brand with the Swiss .

So we have a completely local team, and feel we understand the market very well. We feel we have access to the best locations. For example, we just relocated stores into ground floor level in some of the key malls, and that was very, very important to us to get even more traffic into the stores. So we feel we can all reach €“ reach all of that on our own, and that’s why we decided to pursue the opportunity without large multi franchising partners.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.