Confirming our previous report on the subject, Adidas and the biggest Russian sports retailer announced that they had signed a new partnership agreement in a joint statement on July 23. For many years, Adidas had refused to sell it products to Sportmaster, focusing instead on its own large network of directly operated stores, which it recently trimmed.
Under the new partnership, which does not cover the Reebok brand, Adidas expects to get its products sold at 30 Sportmaster stores in 15 key Russian cities for a start. Later, Adidas products will be offered at 450 Sportmaster stores throughout the post-Soviet Community of Independent States (CIS). With the Adidas brand operating about 400 mono-brand stores directly and working with many franchisees, this should give it exposure in a total of about 1,000 physical locations in the region.
Adidas and Sportmaster have also agreed to collaborate in e-commerce. Taking advantage of access to Adidas' rather young customer base, Sportmaster aims at strengthening the position of its own online store in Russia.
Adidas will implement a segmented distribution strategy, tailoring its product range to the types of consumers that tend to shop in each specific Sportmaster store.
Thanks to the new agreement, Sportmaster will be able to offer “products of national importance” such as the sportswear of the Russian Olympic team and the Russian national football team, which are sponsored by Adidas, as well as football souvenirs for the Euro 2020 tournament.
By the way, we didn't give a good figure about the turnover of Sportmaster in our last issue, where we reported about its acquisition of Go Sport Poland. The company's sports division alone generated sales of more than $2.1 billion in the financial year ended in August 2018, although this includes the exclusive wholesale distribution of important sports brands like Columbia, Kettler and Skechers. Sportmaster declines to break down wholesale and retail revenues.
