As it has already done with Kant, one of the major multi-brand sports retailers in Russia, Decathlon has embarked on an unusual cooperation with a major Russian e-tailer, Ozon, which is pushing its own marketplace. The highly verticalized French sports retailer has announced a contract with Ozon to sell 1,500 sporting goods items through its internet platform.
Decathlon has also struck a partnership in Kazakhstan with a local marketplace, Kaspi, ensuring the availability of 80 percent of its products in the country during the local retail lockdown.
Decathlon said its partnership with Ozon will give it an opportunity to further boost its sales, reaching out to new customers and complementing the sales that it is generating in Russia through its own internet store. For Decathlon, this is the second contract of the kind after it began to work with Tmall, the big Chinese marketplace, last December.
Ozon is rapidly expanding the list of partners on its marketplace, which is currently offering the products of 9,500 companies. In the first half of April, sales of sporting goods at Ozon enjoyed a three-fold increase as Russians are apparently eager to maintain a healthy lifestyle while being confined at home due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The Russian government ordered all brick-and-mortar stores selling sporting goods and other non-essential products in most regions to stop operations on March 28, affecting major players like Decathlon and Sportmaster after a big jump in the sporting goods market during the first half of the same month. The retail lockdown is now expected to be extended at least until mid-May.
At the same time, almost all the online retailers in Russia have experienced a big hike in their sales. The biggest one of them, Wildberries, reported a doubling in its turnover during the first quarter of 2020, delivering 60,500 million orders worth 75.3 billion rubles (€920m-$1.01bn). Sales of sporting goods almost tripled, Wildberries said, without providing any further details. The company’s sales in the fashion segment climbed by 57 percent to 43.7 billion rubles (€538m-$581m).
