The Swiss Mammut Sports Group AG will sell the Toko brand, including all of its activities and products, to a new subsidiary of the Norwegian company Swix Sport AS, effective September 1, 2010.
By taking this step, Mammut Sports Group AG is underlining its intention of focusing on the outdoor sports market and its main brand MAMMUT. “MAMMUT’s rapid growth over recent years and the challenges of its future worldwide expansion require all our efforts and these are the driving factors behind this transaction,” states Rolf G. Schmid, CEO of Mammut Sports Group.
Toko, which occupies a leading position in central Europe, has a long tradition in ski waxing and today offers a wide range of Swiss-quality ski wax, tools and care products for top performance. The brand’s logo, with its yellow on black colours, is well known in all international ski markets. Toko represents around 5% of the Mammut Sports Group’s annual turnover.
After the purchase, Toko will maintain its Swiss identity and Swix Sport AS will pursue a two brand strategy, with separate product portfolios and distribution channels. Both brands, Toko and Swix, will benefit from collective investments in product development, production and logistics. “Toko’s leading position in central Europe and strong presence in alpine markets, together with our nordic focus is a perfect match in order to offer new and superior products in the future,” states Ulf Bjerknes, CEO of Swix Sport AS.
Swix, the new brand owner, will take over the entire Toko team and operate the Toko business out of Altstätten (Switzerland), Toko’s former home. The current Toko brand manager, Thorsten Walter, will lead this new company called Toko-Swix Sport AG. “We are very pleased that in Swix Sport AS Toko has found a new owner that knows the business by heart and is able to take advantage of everything we have built up over the years,” states Rolf G. Schmid.
It is important to recognize that Toko will retain its independence and identity as a Swiss company. Ian Harvey will continue to run the Toko brand for the US market and all Toko sales reps will be retained as per Ian’s judgment. Toko marketing activities will continue to be independent from Swix.
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2010/08/Swix-Toko.jpg" "Swix Toko - logos")
8 comments
nexer
August 11, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Guess this answers the question: Swix or Toko?
ben.arians
August 11, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Umm, not really.
” It is important to recognize that Toko will retain its independence and identity as a Swiss company.”
RonBott
August 11, 2010 at 5:10 pm
All the more reason to try another wax line.
Jon44
August 11, 2010 at 7:44 pm
“Umm, not really.
” It is important to recognize that Toko will retain its independence and identity as a Swiss company.” ”
That sounds great in theory, but this really isn’t like a peanut butter manufacturer buying a jelly manufacturer (an image the Press Release seems to encourage). It’s Coke buying Pepsi. Hard to imagine it makes much economic sense to keep investing in both brands over time…
teamepokeedsbyn
August 11, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Swix all the way… 🙂
freeheels
August 12, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Jon44 – Apparently you don’t follow modern business practices.
Chevy/Ford/Toyota/Honda all own multiple brands with varying degree of success. The ski business is owned by three companies, Amer, K2 Inc, Quicksilver. P&G owns probably a third of what is on the shelves of your grocery store. The list goes on….
Jon44
August 12, 2010 at 6:45 pm
@freeheels – I take your point, but still wonder where the logic in this particular case is. To me, Swix and Toko don’t have any particularly different “brand” image–choosing betweent them comes down to who gives the better deal, or whether I find a paste or a liquid easier to work with for a particular product. (I.e., ski wax is closer to being a commodity.)
Also, both companies target exactly the same (relatively small) group of customers (as opposed to “Toyota” and “Lexus” which target different (very large) demographics).
If they want to keep the Toko brand, it would jsut seem “cleaner” from the consumers point of view, if they segregated them by, say, having Toko be high-performance waxing, tools, clothing and Swix be recreational, easy-to-use stuff…
Tim Kelley
August 12, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Costs are not driven up when different companies compete with each other for market share. Now Swix will no longer be competing with Toko, because they are now under the same parent company. So this merger is likely a bad deal for the consumer. MSRP is about $220 for 30g of Cera F … will probably be $500 in a couple of years. Mergers like this are bad for skiing. The higher the economic barriers, the lower the number of people that can get into the sport of ski racing.