For the 2014 financial year, Hervis Sports, the Austrian sporting goods chain owned by the Spar food retailing group, has reported sales of €425 million before VAT. In constant currencies, the overall sales growth was just 0.22 percent, but the company says it grew by 2.38 percent in the Austrian market, which is said to have declined by 4.1 percent, mainly due to poor snow conditions.
At the end of last year, the chain had 189 stores. Of those, 87 were in Austria, and the others in Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia and Germany. We are unable provide a precise figure for comparable store sales, but we estimate that they were actually down over the period, given the fact that Hervis added 13 doors to its portfolio, including a prominent store at Vienna's railway station and its second German shop in Nuremberg.
The price-driven retailer has three topics on its agenda. First, pushing multi-channel retailing online and offline, and second, the development of small pop-up stores to promote the idea of click & collect on small selling spaces. The first one of that type premiered in the Tyrolian capital of Innsbruck on just 100 square meters in December.
International expansion is the third and the most important topic for this retailer. Very much at the top of the agenda is the German state of Bavaria where Hervis already has two stores, located in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Nuremberg. A new one opened yesterday in Rosenheim on a selling space of 800 square meters. Three more doors are planned for Germany this year, but the locations have not yet been revealed. The company has indicated, however, that it wants to expand not only in Germany, but also in the other markets where it operates.
