Decathlon grows by 12%

Without providing a more specific figure, Decathlon announced a few days ago another increase of 12 percent in its total sales to a new record of around €10 billion before sales taxes for 2016. It also reached a new record with one billion items sold at its stores around the world in the course of the year. The absolute growth rate was the same as the one it had reported for 2015, but it was due this time more to an increase in the number of stores and the gradual expansion of its online retail operations than to organic growth.

On a same-store basis, the world's largest integrated sports retailer raised its sales by 4.4 percent in 2016, after a rise of 5 percent in the previous year. The number of new store openings went up to 164 from 140 in 2015, and the company entered five new markets. It is now trading in 28 countries with a total of 1,176 points of sale, including three franchised stores, two in the United Arab Emirates and one in Lebanon. Some of the new stores in France, Spain and other countries are based on the new, smaller Decathlon City and Decathlon Essentiel formats.

The five new markets for Decathlon were last year the Ivory Coast, Mexico, Singapore, Slovenia and Malaysia. The retailer continued to expand most strongly in China and Taiwan, adding 51 new stores in the course of the year to reach a total of 214 units. It also opened 11 new stores in Germany, 11 more in Russia, 11 more India and 17 more in Spain.

France remains the biggest market for Decathlon, with 301 stores, or seven more than at the end of 2016 after eight new openings, the expansion of three stores and the relocation of three others. One of the new stores opened in our town, Bry-sur-Marne. Including online sales, the company's turnover in its domestic market grew by 3.1 percent to €3.3 billion. With a total of 1.7 million clients, sales over the internet accounted for 4.1 percent of its turnover in the country, up from 3.1 percent in 2015.

France represented 33 percent of the company's turnover last year, but the management admitted that Decathlon's growth in France was not as vigorous as expected, despite an aggressive pricing policy and the release of many innovative products. Decathlon blamed poor weather during the spring season, social unrest in June and terrorist attacks, yet its biggest competitor in the country, Intersport, booked a sales increase of 7 percent last year. Nevertheless, Decathlon noted that 82 percent of the French people have trust in the banner, according to a recent survey, and that the number of people visiting its French stores or its website grew by 1.8 percent to more than 89 million.