Schöffel, the German marketer of snow and outdoor apparel, is about to enter the Japanese market. The company, which is already selling its products directly in South Korea and Taiwan, has signed a distribution and licensing deal with Osaka-based SSK Corporation. SSK has been a family-run firm for seven decades and is controlled by its owner and president, Kyoichi Sasaki. The Japanese partner will partly design its own Schöffel-branded line of garments to adapt them to Japanese taste and fitting. SSK will start marketing the summer collection by summer next year and will concentrate on basics. SSK says it services 3,300 clients in Japan. It also operates some stores. It distributes baseball equipment under its own name and distributes Hummel, the Danish team sports brand, in the country. In 2013, SSK had sales of 54.7 billion yen (€398.00m-$502.23m) compared with ¥47.0 billion in the prior year. Net earnings were up to ¥339 million (€2.47m-$3.11m) from ¥235 million in 2012.

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