GMS, a German buying group for shoe retailers formed nine years ago, has presented a new concept, SportXtreme, which addresses about 80 of its 1,000-odd retail members in Germany, Austria and the Benelux countries that carry some sports brands in the stores. It is also targeting sporting goods retailers specializing in sectors such as winter sports, outdoor, team sports, running, golf or water sports that want to pay low membership fees and get more help in the areas of marketing and merchandising than in purchasing. SportXtreme is meant to be an alternative to Intersport or Sport 2000, which work with two larger and more established footwear buying groups, Sabu and ANWR, respectively. A pilot store will be opened in the Netherlands before the end of the first half of this year. GMS, which stands for G-Lord Marketing & Service Verbund, was set up in 2004 by two former executives of the Metro group, Thomas Schulte-Heuermann and Karsten Niehus, with the backing of Hans-Dieter Cleven, a former manager of Metro and a former shareholder in Völkl and Marker. The shoe retailers affiliated with GMS had revenues of about €400 million in the last year.    

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