A new Danish sporting goods retailer, Forum Sport, wants to be the Danish low-cost alternative to Intersport, Sport Masters or Sportigan, somewhat like Ryanair or Sterling, the Danish low-cost airline company. It started off in February with its own e-commerce website, forumsport.dk, and it opened its first free-standing store at the beginning of this month.
Like the advent of Stadium from Sweden a few years ago, Forum Sport has aroused a big commotion in the relatively traditional Danish sporting goods landscape. The retailers are criticizing its tagline, which promises to the final customer that its standard prices are 20 percent below those charged in the regular stores throughout its product range.
Value-priced retailers like Stadium have an aggressive price policy that involves temporary discounts only on certain products from time to time, and a Danish Intersport retailer who had a store next door says it’s benefiting from its presence because it is drawing new traffic to the area. Traditional retailers grant discounts of 20 percent or more to members of certain sports clubs and other special clients, or during the end-of-season sales, but Forum Sport says it offers the same low prices on every item and to everybody all the time.
The company behind the new operation is ForumSport Danmark, which has nothing to do with Forum Sport of Spain. Kim Kristensen and Mads Nikolai Nielsen, two young managers who own and run the Danish company, say their low-price policy is made possible, like in the low-cost airline business, by a very lean organization, with few employees and minimal rental costs. Another factor is a strong concentration on few categories and on few important brands.
Forum Sport wants to be a specialist in running and football, as well as in children’s and women’s products. It works with only nine brands, starting off this season with Adidas, Nike, ASICS, Puma, Casall and Polar, and adding The North Face and Five Seasons for the cold season later this year. Next to its e-commerce operation, which is inexpensive by definition, it plans to set up a dozen free-standing stores in the smaller cities, provided they have a minimum population of about 20,000 people.
The new operation has started off well, following a big advertising campaign all over Denmark. The website is getting between 600 and 1,500 visits per day and the footfall in its first store has been much higher than expected. The first store, which is only 150 square meters wide, is located in Fredericia, a little town 20 kilometers south of Veijle.
Two or three other stores will open later this year at other locations in the country, but they will be more in the 250-300-sqm. range, and they will help to validate the concept before it is rolled out more widely. Kristensen and Nielsen have developed a special new type of sports shop that looks like an up-to-date fashion shop.
Kristensen and Nielsen come from Adidas’ Danish subsidiary, which came under new management recently. Kristensen, who is 29 years old, was key account manager. Nielsen, 31, was marketing manager. Kristensen worked previously for Esprit.
