K-Swiss Global Brands purchases Supra and Kr3w

By

Olivier Guyot

Published
Jun 2, 2015

K-Swiss Global Brands (KSGB) is expanding its portfolio. The American group, which was acquired by Korean giant E-Land in January 2013, is growing bigger still. It has just purchased the Californian company One Distribution and its streetwear brands Supra Footwear and Kr3w, for an undisclosed sum.

This is the second acquisition led by the K-Swiss group in two years. Indeed it purchased the little known shoe brand OTZ in May 2013. Its portfolio thus currently includes five shoewear brands, K-Swiss, Palladium, PLDM, OTZ and Supra, and one apparel brand, Kr3w.

One Distribution belongs to investment capital company Bertram Capital and to a group of individual investors, including founders Angel Cabada, Scott VanDerripe and Scott Bailey. These three created One Distribution in 2002 and the latter two launched the brand Split at the end of the 80s.

They launched Kr3w, a darker denim brand created by and for skateboarders in 2002, and then initiated the street shoes brand Supra in 2006.

Supra, which combines skateboarding, basketball and hip-hop, is distributed in 60 countries and has stores in Santa Monica, Angeles, New York, Paris, Mexico and Tokyo. One Distribution has regional head offices in Fountain Valley, California; Barcelona, Spain; Sydney, Australia and Dongguan in China.

The KSGB group has offices in Westlake Village in California; Toronto, Canada; Haarlem, Netherland; Lyon, France; Hong Kong and Taipei, and is distributed in 100 countries with a goal of having 500 stores around the world by the end of 2015.

For now the group has not announced its strategy concerning possible restructuring of teams per region. However, Larry Remington, CEO of K-Swiss Global Brands, has appointed Robert Capener president of the Supra and Kr3w brands. Capener is notably familiar with the world of basketball, having served on the management teams of Adidas Basketball and No Fear. Since the beginning of 2014 he had been the Chief Brand Officer of the Galaxy Brands group, which owns the brands Heaton and And1.