Decathlon opened its first store in Slovenia last week, as it continues to spread in the eastern part of the European Union. The store opened on 2,700 square meters in Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, and the French retailer said that it could open a second store in the country later this year. Online sales have started on Decathlon.si as well.
Decathlon moved into the Croatian market in November 2014 with a store in Zagreb. It has since opened two more stores in Rijeka and Zadar and is preparing a fourth opening this weekend in Zagreb, its second store in the Croatian capital. The retailer said it was studying other markets in the former Yugoslavia but without concrete plans so far.
The start of the operations in Slovenia, where there is strong participation in outdoor activities, cycling and several other sports, has been relying on teams from adjacent countries, from Croatia to Hungary and Italy. The manager of the Ljubljana store is from the Italian team.
At the same time, Decathlon continues to expand in much larger and more remote international markets, with the start of online sales in Australia this month. Orders are to be dispatched from a warehouse in Sydney, which will also handle deliveries to New Zealand after a few months.
Sylvain Baudens, chief financial officer for Decathlon in Australia, told the Australian Financial Review in March that the French retailer intends to open 35 to 40 stores in Australia in the next decade, with six locations already identified in Sydney and Melbourne. Gaudens, who was the CFO of Decathlon U.K. until September, added that the project was to have about 100 stores across the country in the long term. Decathlon says it could open a store in Australia in 2017, although it has yet to pick a precise location.
While expanding rapidly in China and India, Decathlon has been planting its flag in an increasing number of Asian countries in the last two years. The eastern expansion has led to openings in Thailand in 2015 and Singapore earlier this year.
In Australia, Decathlon will compete head-on with Rebel Sport, a sports retailer with a relatively small format focusing on shopping malls; and Amart Sports, which has a larger format and is owned by the same company, Super Retail Group. Together, the two chains run about 150 stores. Super Retail Group reported a turnover of 835.9 million Australian dollars (€573.4m-$645.8m) in the year ended June 27, 2015 for its sports division, which also includes several smaller chains focusing on fitness and outdoor products. Another international player that moved into the Australian market is Intersport, which had 51 stores in the country at the end of 2015.
As previously reported, Decathlon raised its global sales by 12 percent to €9.1 billion excluding tax last year, with a comparable store sales increase of 5 percent. Decathlon added 140 stores to form a network of 1,030 outlets at the end of 2015. The share of international sales reached about 65 percent of the group's turnover last year, against 35 percent for France.
