Decathlon has announced that it will close its only two existing stores in the U.S. – both located in the Bay Area of San Francisco – at the beginning of this year, while focusing on sales online and continuing to work through a growing number of retail partners - including Walmart, Target and Curated – “to make sports and outdoors more accessible in the USA.”
While the French retailer will continue to operate through physical stores in Canada, where it already has 11 sites in operation in addition to its local web store, no new ones are planned in the U.S. for the moment, said a spokesperson for Decathlon USA. “We are changing our business model to adapt to current market conditions and to better meet the needs of our customers,” said Christian Ollier, CEO of Decathlon USA, while stressing that Decathlon’s own private label products are “well-received in the U.S. market – and “we’ve seen record growth over the last few years.”
The two Decathlon stores are located at Emeryville, near Oakland, California, and in the Potrero Center shopping mall of San Francisco. They were both opened in 2019, one year after the company launched a pop-up “lab store” in downtown San Francisco, on Market Street, to gauge the market’s response to its own products.
Meanwhile, following a business model that it has also adopted in France and Switzerland, the company started to work with Walmart in April 2020, offering a selection of its own private label items with Decathlon branding and packaging. After an initial test phase, the cooperation was extended to a growing number of Walmart stores in the U.S. as well as Mexico, and also on its website.
In Walmart’s stores, bicycles and other Decathlon products are displayed in the respective section for the product category, along with Walmart’s own private label items and those of other brands. On Walmart.com and on other partner marketplaces, Decathlon is offering a dedicated online collection.
According to Decathlon USA’s spokesperson, its products have received an average customer rating of 4.28/5 in 2021. Decathlon also received outstanding reviews and awards for products like the Forclaz Trek 100 Down Jacket, 2 Second Easy Tent, Snow Shoes and the Inesis Rangefinder.
The closure of its physical stores marks a new chapter in Decathlon’s difficult ride in the U.S. market, which started in 1999 with its acquisition of some of the assets of the former 20-store MVP Sports chain in Massachusetts. The stores were renamed as Decathlon, but the last four of them were closed in 2006.
