German Sport 2000 has more members but is snubbed by big brands

At Ispo Munich, the management of Sport 2000 Germany, expressed its concern about changes in the distribution policy of its two largest vendors, Nike and Adidas. Andreas Rudolf, managing director, said that Nike intends to raise the minimum order for each retailer from the current €10,000 to €25,000, effective next year. He pointed out that about 200 of the affiliated retailers would drop out of Nike's list of customers.

The buying group said that it would negotiate this issue with Nike's management. Apparently, Nike is treating the smaller retailers affiliated with Intersport more kindly, accepting smaller orders for them, because Intersport bundles their purchases of Nike products into a single order, invoicing the company in their behalf.

Meanwhile, Adidas decided to no longer offer its iconic Adilette sandal to sporting goods retailers. With its “channeling” approach, Adidas aims, according to Sport 2000, to sell the item through fashion retail shops only. The buying group suspects a general trend for the large vendors to optimize costs by doing more sales with fewer accounts.

In the financial year 2015, Sport 2000 Germany's turnover at retail level improved by 1.1 percent over the prior year to €1.77 billion including VAT. The evolution is no surprise given a rise in the number of new affiliated retailers. Altogether, the number of retailers increased by 121 to 936 partner companies. Most of the new members came from the specialty retail sectors, notably from running and outdoor.

The strong growth in affiliated retailers, compared with the overall gain in sales by just a little more than 1 percent, suggests that there was a decline in comparable store sales. Sport 2000 Germany traditionally has a considerable number of team sports retailers in its ranks, which naturally suffered in 2015 when compared with the excellent World Cup year of 2014. In addition, the group, very much like German sports retail in general, was affected by a weak December in which sales declined by 8 percent compared with that month in the previous year.