Outdoor goods retailer Kathmandu has built on a record year, with strong comparable sales growth in the first 15 weeks of FY19.

The retailer lifted total sales for its Kathmandu brand by 8.4 per cent over the period, with same store sales increasing 7.1 per cent in Australia and 5.2 per cent in New Zealand.

US-based footwear brand Oboz, which Kathmandu acquired earlier this year, saw sales of NZ$15.7 million during the first quarter of FY19, with a gross margin of 39.8 per cent.

“We have achieved good sales growth leading into the Christmas trading period, and we expect first half profit to be strongly above last year,” Kathmandu’s chief executive Xavier Simonet said.

“However, as always our first half-year results is highly dependent on the success of our summer sale.”

Kathmandu chairman David Kirk said that the success of FY18 has put the business in a good position for future growth. Going forward, he said, the retailer is committed to continuous improvement in its core markets, but will also push to develop new international wholesale channels for Oboz and Kathmandu.

“Kathmandu and Oboz are both authentic product and customer-led brands,” Kirk said at the company’s annual general meeting on Friday, November 23.

“We are focused on answering the needs of our customers by designing original, sustainable, engineered and adaptive products.”

The business outlined its desires to evolve from a retailer to a brand, a local business to a global one, and a bricks-and-mortar retailer to an omnichannel business, while noting a customer-centric, channel-agnostic strategy.

Kathmandu unveiled its first global marketing campaign last month, Kathmandu World Ready, in an effort to raise the brand’s profile overseas.

The campaign will run in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and US, and extend the company’s PR activations, sponsorships and community work in 2019.

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