Tradeinn enjoyed a stellar year in 2020, as pandemic restrictions played to the strengths of the Spanish e-tailer’s business. The results for 2021, however, surprised even its CEO, David Martín, as he confessed to CMDsport. What Martín calls the “doping” effects of the pandemic produced a 52 percent increase in annual sales to €288 million for 2020, which was followed by a further 31 percent rise in sales to €378 million in 2021.
Only about a fifth of these sales originated in Spain. The rest came from foreign countries, notably Germany, France, the U.K. and Italy. Tradeinn operates its 16 e-commerce sites, each dedicated to a separate sports category, in 159 countries.
Tradeinn has continued its success in part by facing down supply problems. It has doubled its logistical hub, from 15,000 to 35,000 square meters, and can now handle some 25,000 orders per day. It has also increased its standing inventory to a value of about €60 million. Despite these efforts, however, Martín believes that maintaining smooth supplies will be tough this year.
There has been another shift in the business as well. Until last year, the company’s top e-tail platform was Trekkinn, which is dedicated to mountain sports, but Bikeinn has since overtaken it. Tradeinn has spent years boosting its cycling site, culminating in a recent agreement to host the American brand Specialized. Bikeinn carries 64 brands in all. According to Martín, Bikeinn would be doing even better if it did not face supply-chain problems like many other companies involved in the booming bike market.
After Trekkinn, the company’s other top websites are Runnerinn and Snowinn, which, after a moribund 2020, enjoyed a 40 percent year-on-year increase in sales in December 2021.
At present Tradeinn operates a single physical store – at the company’s headquarters, in Celrá, near Girona – and has no plans to establish a bigger footprint in traditional retail. “Our business is online,” Martín tells CMDsport. “It’s what we know how to do and what we want to continue dedicating ourselves to.” Tradeinn takes pride, he says, in being the only sports retailer in Spain that is entirely Spanish-owned, evidently referring to the Iberian Sports Retail Group’s recent takeover of Deporvillage. On the other hand, Tradeinn might consider acquiring a foreign operator with solid logistics, but for the moment “we don’t know of any such opportunity.” In any case, he continues, the benefits would have to outweigh those of creating a foreign operation itself from scratch.
As for the existing business, Tradeinn has set no revenue targets for the present year, according to CMDsport.
