Rocky Brand Group, the parent company to brands like Rocky, Durango, Creative Recreation, and Georgia Boot, suffered a fiscal year net sale decrease of 3.4% to $260.3 million, compared to net sales of $269.3 million for FY2015.
On Friday, the company reported a net loss of $2.1 million, or ($0.29) per diluted share, for FY2016, compared with to $6.6 million, or $0.87 per diluted share, for FY2015. The fourth quarter saw a wholesale sales decrease of 8.9% to $42.4 million, down from $46.5 million during the same time last year, while retail sales increased marginally in the fourth quarter to $13.7 million from $13.5 million during the same time last year.
The biggest driver, however, came from military segment sales, increasing a whopping 16.4% to $10.9 million—a huge jump compared to $5.3 million during the same time last year. The military sales carry lower gross margins than wholesale and retail.
However, the brand reported a marginal net sales increase in the fourth quarter by 2.6% to $67 million—up from $65.3 million during the same time period in 2015.
“The fundamentals of our business continued to improve in the fourth quarter following a difficult start to 2016. While our full year results were disappointing, we’ve taken a number of actions that we believe will improve our earnings power going forward. These include reorganizing our sales teams and reducing headcount in order to lower our expense structure. We also improved the efficiency of our expanded domestic manufacturing facility which allows us to more profitably capitalize on the growing demand for military footwear,” said CEO Mike Brooks.
“In addition, we recently signed a licensing agreement for the Creative Recreation brand in Europe that will help enhance our overall margins,” he added. “As 2017 gets underway, I’m confident that the changes we’ve made to our operating strategies and leadership team in response to the challenges of the past 12-months have made us a stronger organization and better positions Rocky Brands to return greater value to its shareholders over the long-term.”