Sport 2000 seeks UK deals, focuses on PoS data and omnichannel

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 11, 2018

Sport 2000 International saw its comparable revenue rising to €3.818 billion during 2017 as it gained a foothold in four new licensing countries, although total revenue fell. It’s also focusing on omnichannel and is actively seeking UK and Polish partnerships.

The group said that it has a clear future strategy (its 2021 plan) and is “intensifying its journey toward being an integrated, vertically oriented retail service organisation.”

Sport 2000 is one of the world's largest purchasing cooperatives comprising independent sports retailers and is the second largest buying group in sports retail in Europe. It has 4,154 stores in 25 countries with the company’s CEO Margit Gosau saying that last year's comparable revenue was “satisfying” even though its was only “a slight increase” year-on-year. However, it was well down on the €6.9 billion total revenue figure of a year ago, with variations in revenue figures achieved in the last few years being “attributable to changes to the license holders,” she said.

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Gosau, who is still new in the job, said the company achieved some key milestones in its latest year, signing important partners in new licensing markets—Spain, Belgium, the Middle East and Hungary—and joining forces with giant European sports retail group, Base. Gosau also said the group “will continue its expansion drive in the future” and is “open to strategic partnerships in Great Britain and Poland, in particular” as part of the 2021 strategy.

The company said it’s also focusing on the development of new retail formats as well as working towards a standardised omnichannel platform. This will be implemented in its core markets within the next two years.

Why such a relatively long time scale given the importance of online sales? “A holistic omnichannel solution presupposes that all retailers, national central warehouses and brand partners are connected,” Gosau said. “It’s a very complex project which will occupy us intensively in the near future, not least because of the different retail structures in the various countries.”

Additionally, the company has been consolidating point of sale (PoS) data internationally and Gosau added: “The consolidation of PoS data at the international level has been strongly driven forward internally and will be very much the focus of the next few months. We see enormous future potential in trans-national PoS data collection to offer our retailers an even higher level of service in assortment strategy, and to convince consumers at the point of sale.”