Brent Hunsberger, the man behind the Playbooks and Profiles blog at The Oregonian, is reporting that Le Coq Sportif plans to scale back its North American operations, a move likely brought on by the weak dollar and slow U.S. economy. Which is sad, considering that the company just launched the Spring 2008 line (reviewed here) and the Myth shoe (here); and they made a splash signing basketball up-and-comer Joakim Noah, son of French tennis great and longtime LCS spokeperson Yannick Noah, to endorse the brand.
LCS set up its North American shop in Portland, Ore. (also home to Nike), with CEO Tim McCool at the helm. Hunsberger asked him what was going on:
When asked if Le Coq was shutting Portland operations, McCool said, “I’ll give you more details tomorrow (Tuesday).” The company planned to publicly announce its changes later this week, he said.
I hope the news isn’t too bad. But even if that fizzles out, the chicken lives on!
Moving out: It’s highly likely that they’ll leave the apparel enclave of the Pacific Northwest (where adidas and Nike are based) and shift their management and operations to the East Coast.
Reaching out: LCS will focus on consumers of the “lifestyle” product focusing around fashion collections. Once that’s in place, they’ll move on to the “performers” aka tennis players.
