Major Russian marketplace Lamoda plans to invest 30 billion rubles (€300m) over the next three years to open 300 brick-and-mortar stores in the country, partly taking over a former Adidas branch. The first 50 stores are expected to be operational by the end of 2023, a source close to the company told Russian news agency RBC. The company is negotiating to lease store space in 20 Russian cities, in many cases targeting former Adidas stores.
Lamoda is one of Russia’s largest marketplaces, focusing almost exclusively on selling fashion items. The source revealed that Lamoda plans to sell goods of well-known foreign brands, some local companies and some Asian manufacturers. The actual structure of the product line is to be determined shortly before the launch. Sporting goods and sportswear are one of the largest segments in Lamoda’s marketplace. In this segment, the company sells 250 brands, the most famous of which are Adidas, Puma, Reebok, Nike and Vans.
By opening offline stores, Lamoda aims to strengthen its position on the Russian sporting goods market and provide its customers with more convenient services, the company said. Maksim Grishakov, General Director of Lamoda, said that the structure of the Russian fashion market has changed dramatically over the past year, forcing the company to revise its business development strategy.
This is not the first time Lamoda has made a foray into brick-and-mortar retail. In 2019, the company opened a discount store in a Moscow shopping center. With this move, Lamoda hoped to catch up with Wildberries, Russia’s largest marketplace, in terms of sales. However, that project was halted in short order because it reportedly did not meet management’s original expectations.
The ambitious development plans could cost Lamoda around 30 billion rubles, estimated Ilya Yaroshenko, president of Baon, a Russian footwear company. He added that the company is in an excellent position to undertake such a project because it “sees the fashion market from the above” and has an enormous portfolio.
The Russian fashion market has recently entered the final phase of repartition, triggered by the departure of foreign brands, according to Anna Lebsak-Kleymans, CEO of Fashion Consulting Group, a Moscow-based think tank. The market is overheated by growth expectations, and the scale of planned expansions is significantly higher than the sales volume of the exiting players, especially given the declining purchasing power of the Russian population, she added.
