At Ispo, Andreas Rudolf, managing director of Sport 2000 Germany, was happy about the retailer's policy of not slashing prices on skis and other winter-related products in spite of a drop in sales of some 20 percent in this category. Rudolf saw one reason for the reasonable pricing on the retail side: Finally, new and innovative skis incorporating rocker technology made it onto the shelves in the shops.
Altogether, the affiliated retailers of Sport 2000 made it fairly well through 2011 in spite of unfavorable weather conditions. At the retail level, sales went down by 2.6 percent to €1.49 billion. Rudolf pointed out that the entire German sporting goods market was down by 4.7 percent to the “official” level of €7.54 billion. Therefore, even with its own shrinking business, Sport 2000 gained market share by 0.6 percentage points.
By showing the evolution of sales in the longer run, Rudolf highlighted the fact that 2010 was an exceptionally strong year where the affiliated retailers' turnover increased by 7.4 percent. The average growth over the past five years has been 3.9 percent annually.
Partially due to the excellent previous year, pre-orders were up and fueled centralized invoicing and settlements in 2011: The organization's turnover increased by 9.6 percent and reached €722.2 million. This includes centralized purchases of the affiliated retailers in Switzerland, which reached a level of some €45 million.
Also, the group welcomed a significant number of new members last year: 167 retailers joined the group while 39 left, taking the total number of retailers to 950. The number of doors grew by 186 to 1,316 in total. One factor of the healthy growth in membership was the merger of Sport 2000's parent, ANWR, and Garant, another important group of shoe retailers. Out of the Garant members affiliated with its former sports buying group, Fair Play, 47 switched to Sport 2000 at the beginning of last year.
Highly significant is Sport 2000's ranking of its top vendors in 2011 compared with the previous year. The top four remained unchanged: Adidas, Nike, Jack Wolfskin and Puma. Asics slipped from No. 5 to No. 6, switching places with Salomon. This reflects to some extent the decision of LEX, the specialty running retailer group, of which most members are also Sport 2000 partners, to no longer work with Asics as a premium vendor. Generally speaking, the ski brands lost some ground, basically due to last year's weather conditions: Völkl is now No. 20 (2010: No. 19), Head No. 15 (No. 13) and Fischer No. 17 (No. 15).
In contrast, the leading outdoor brands in the country managed again to strengthen their position with Sport 2000 retailers: Following Jack Wolfskin and Salomon, Lowa is now in seventh place (from No. 8), followed by Mammut at No. 9 (No. 10). Schöffel significantly stepped up from No. 13 to No. 10, and Meindl is in 11th place, changing places with Odlo. Vaude managed strong progress, moving from No. 17 to No. 13, as did The North Face, up to No. 18 from No. 24. Meanwhile, Converse dropped heavily from No. 9 to No. 19, indicating that Chucks are no longer as popular in Germany as they were over the past years.
