Car dealers, department stores, grocery stores, electronics retailers and sports goods shops all reported a fall in business.
The troubles of Nike, a firm making sports goods that fell foul of the activists in 1997, speeded up this transformation, as other multinationals scrambled to avoid similar boycotts.
At this stage the deal only covers some 8, 000 working children in 30 villages, but having already gained experience in the sports goods sector, the ILO says that it is taking a step by step approach and hopes to extend the project in the future.
The company expects not only to win a bigger share of the German sports-goods market largely by taking over uncompetitive small firms but also to fatten its margins, 2.3% last year, to 6% in 2005.
The company is made up of two main types of business - luxury goods and sports and lifestyle brands.
"Robert was scarred by L.A. Gear, " recalls Michael Rubin, chief of Global Sports, a Web sporting goods retailer.
Today the company's products end up in goods ranging from cars to electrical goods, cosmetics, sports equipment and medical devices.
Mukhtiar Singh, a Sikh with a trademark passion for sports, ran two successful sporting goods stores in Indonesia and in 1969 opened a small buying office in Singapore to be closer to regional distributors.
But those potential qualities are inherent in the goods themselves the sports car, the designer sunglasses, the fitted kitchen.
Hibbett Sports, Inc. is an operator of sporting goods retail stores in small to mid-sized markets predominately in the Southeast, Southwest, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions of the United States.
To stay active, boomers also buy more sporting-goods equipment, like golf clubs and sports apparel from Nike (nyse: NKE - news - people ).
He sent the copies to the 900 retail sporting goods stores that use the Nation's Best Sports buying consortium.
Subtract the patronage checks and you still have a pretax margin of 4.5%, almost double that of Sports Authority, a publicly traded U.S. sporting goods chain.
According to the National Sporting Goods Association, women's participation in shooting sports has surged by more than 50% for target shooting in the past decade and by more than 40% for hunting.
Another 8 million tons go into soda, baked goods, cereal, candy, ice cream, sports drinks and more. (These figures do not include 11.5 million tons of corn sweeteners.) If the price of sucrose remains at 35 cents to 40 cents a pound, sugar users in the U.S. will spend a billion dollars more this year than last.
Participation in sports is trending downward in the U.S., reports the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association.
Sporting goods and musical instrument stores are also potentially headed for stronger business as students gear up for fall sports and new music classes, Schaefer said.
Jarden, the listed owner of sporting goods brands such as Rawlings, K2 and Marmot, could be interested in Bushnell, as could Amer Sports, the listed owner of Wilson and Precor, the report said.
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