In part one of our interview with Margit Gosau, CEO Sport 2000 International GmbH and Managing Director Sport 2000 GmbH (5 Country Organization), she discussed last year’s successes. In the second part of our exclusive interview, we look to the future: What the new Sport 2000 specialist concept could look like, sustainability and the most important topics and trends of 2023.
SGI: How do you assess the cost situation? Will inflation and retail prices continue to rise?
Margit Gosau: Yes, prices will probably still rise slightly. But if you look at the forecasts of the European Commission, inflation is expected to calm down because energy prices will also go down again. You can see it already.
The uncertain component remains the war in Ukraine, which is having an impact on inflation through procurement problems and food cost increases, for example. Although probably not to the same extent as in 2022, with inflation rates of over 12 percent.
In the sports market, we expect price increases that could be around 5 to 8 percent, but no longer over ten percent.
Sport 2000’s specialist concept
How is your specialist concept developing?
We are pushing our specialist concept, “Absolute Run,” and more and more high-quality retailers in Europe are joining our “Running Experts” Europe group, for example, in Austria, France, Belgium and Denmark. So, we bundle all the high-quality retailers in Europe under the Running Experts umbrella and work closely with them.
The same is true for Teamsport. We are expanding very strongly with Absolute Teamsport, and as of today, we have 26 stores open across Europe, by the end of the year, it will be 30 to 35. Again, we are bundling the best team sports retailers in Europe into our group.
In Germany, for example, we have the Outdoor Profi Group, which contains the best outdoor retailers, which will be called Outdoor Experts in the future.
The general trend at Sport 2000 is to group together high-quality, specialized retailers under the term Experts, in line with our brand claim “Home of Experts.” Part of the strategy is to group the individual experience areas with the best-specialized retailers into different interest groups, and this is how we are also setting ourselves up organizationally.
Sustainability: “For now, we’re working on the basics.”
Sustainability is another important topic. What impetus do you give your retailers to do better here?
We have been in the process of developing our sustainability strategy for several months. We are doing this together with the Vaude Academy. This will result in action recommendations for our dealers. But we’re not finished yet.
There are already some initiatives that we are doing for ourselves and that we are taking to the dealer community. In cooperation with the Klimaverbund, a German-government-sponsored association that advises trade associations on climate protection, we have had two employees trained as climate professionals who are to provide our dealers with very specific advice on saving carbon emissions. The aim is also to improve the retailers’ very high-cost structure and to be able to reinvest the freed-up budget in their service.
At some point in the future, we will also have to bundle and centralize all the sustainability initiatives in the sports sector because otherwise, the end consumer will no longer be able to find any orientation.
There is still no uniform standard in the sports retail sector; everyone does things for themselves. We would be happy if one day there could be something like a climate score for sports retailers, like nutrition scores – a clear measurement criterion for sustainable products and not so many different labels. But that is the second step.
Does sustainability also play a role in the Witeblaze own label?
Of course. That has been one of the key criteria for our new brand right from the start.
Are you thinking about expanding rental services?
As part of the sustainability roadmap, we will also look at circular economy, which includes rental, repairing, second hand and so on. We’re not there yet. For now, we’re working on the basics. But that is becoming more and more important.
I was recently at Bever, a large outdoor chain in the Netherlands, and they are already working very intensively on these concepts. For example, they take products back for recycling, and they repair products.
Goals and trends in 2023
What consumer trends do you see for this year? For example, where will Running be after the ups and downs of the last few years?
Running is generally not a very volatile category but a stable business (except, of course, for the extreme peak during the Covid-19 crisis, when an extremely large amount was sold at a high price). That is now leveling out a bit, and so sales figures are somewhat lower than in the Covid-19 period. But Running is still at a very, very high level. Because we really have the best dealers in Europe, we are convinced that Running will grow at a high level and in terms of quality.
What is the perspective goal for the generalists?
We are advising the generalists in the direction of becoming multi-category retailers. We help them to focus, not to offer a bit of everything but the right thing, and then focus more deeply.
For example, instead of having 11 experience areas over 200 sqm, there might only be 2-3 experience areas. And these can then be presented and advised with more competence. We’re going deep into consulting; from shopfitting to product ranges to marketing.
What are the big issues for you in 2023?
On the one hand, it’s exactly that: providing expert positioning advice to specialist retailers in the generalist sector and continuing to drive forward our specialization under the Absolute and Experts concept.
And the other topic is, of course, the digitalization of our dealers and our own organization. This starts with digital tools used in retail, such as merchandise management systems, data flows, EDI management, and extends to the Sport 2000 e-commerce platform.
These are the three important topics.
