Retail & Supply
From store openings and DTC strategies to distribution deals and supply chain shifts, retail is where sporting goods brands win or lose. SGI Europe tracks the decisions, technologies, and market dynamics reshaping how sporting goods reach consumers.
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Stores | E-commerce & DTC | Distribution | Sourcing & Supply | Trade & Tariffs | AI in Retail
LATEST
How FLYTEC Is Redefining High-Performance Hardshells
Technical innovation plays a central role in developing outdoor collections. The new hardshell from FLYTEC promises not only high performance.
A bank and a K-pop label dress runners in Hyosung yarn
Race organizers with no sportswear business are sourcing recycled kit from the spandex maker, from yarn to finished garment.
Peloton adds specialist retail partner in Canada
CEO Peter Stern has said retail matters more as Peloton enters new product categories, the first due in fall 2027.
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Explore Retail and Supply
What comdaily’s AI study means for sporting goods brands
SGIE exclusive: GEO specialist comdaily tested 504 German-language AI answers on running shoes, training apparel and wearables. Here are the findings.
SportsShoes.com launches AI gait analysis with Ochy
The free tool rates running technique from a short phone clip, covering hips, knees and symmetry as well as footstrike.
Atleet adds Runnea AI shoe recommender to web store
A running review site’s tester data now guides online shoppers across a network of independently run stores.
ChatGPT adds virtual try-on to shopping results
A Try on button turns a selfie into a preview of apparel and accessories, and Favorites saves products to a Library.
El Corte Inglés is serving sneakerheads in Madrid
Spanish department store El Corte Inglés has opened a dedicated sneaker and urban fashion destination at its flagship Madrid Preciados-Callao location, stocking exclusive drops from Nike, Adidas, New Balance and over a dozen other major brands.
AI agents can now shop JD Sports like a person would
Two years after adopting Algolia’s search platform, JD Sports has become one of retail’s earliest agentic commerce test cases.
MARKET DATA AND ANALYSIS
European sports retail 2025: the top five in review
Vertical integration compounds. Specialist cooperatives hold. Fashion footwear exposure bites. Retail is sorting by structural logic.
SGI Analysis: The 20 biggest sports retailers in Europe
Europe’s 20 largest sports retailers grew sales by 4 percent in 2024, with market leaders like Decathlon and JD Sports driving growth.
SGI Analysis: The Top 50 Global Sports Retailers
The world’s 50 largest sporting goods retailers increased sales by 2 percent to $149 billion in 2024, with European players gaining market share whilst Asian growth stalled and US retailers faced consumer headwinds.
REPORTS
Exclusive data: How Chinese consumers shop for outdoor apparel online
Explore key insights from the 2024–25 China Outdoor Apparel: 2024–25 Ecomm Report, including platform shifts, premiumization trends, and brand strategies from Nike, Anta and Hoka One.
Exclusive data: How chinese consumers shop for sports footwear online
Explore key insights from the 2024–25 China Sports Footwear Ecomm Report, including platform shifts, premiumisation trends, and brand strategies from Nike, Anta and Hoka One.
The German Performance Running Market 2025
How German runners choose, buy, and value their shoes. Drawing on 1,001 active runners and pricing analysis, the report covers consumer profiles, buying behaviour, channel preferences, brand choices, pricing strategy, and sustainability’s influence on purchasing decisions.
Peloton adds specialist retail partner in Canada
CEO Peter Stern has said retail matters more as Peloton enters new product categories, the first due in fall 2027.
SATISFY as a store, but not a running store
SATISFY’s first Paris store has no product descriptions, items on slabs on the floor, and a custom scent modeled on a luxury fashion store.
Skims makes store debut in Spain, at El Corte Inglés
Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims has entered Spain through El Corte Inglés, adding to a rapid international retail rollout that includes new flagships in London, Dubai and Hong Kong as CEO Jens Grede targets more than 100 stores by the end of 2027.
El Corte Inglés is serving sneakerheads in Madrid
Spanish department store El Corte Inglés has opened a dedicated sneaker and urban fashion destination at its flagship Madrid Preciados-Callao location, stocking exclusive drops from Nike, Adidas, New Balance and over a dozen other major brands.
Foot Locker to open new kind of neighborhood store in LA
Foot Locker opens a community-oriented store in LA’s Crenshaw on Aug. 22, co-developed with Nike, Jordan Brand and Converse, highlighting shifts at both Nike and Foot Locker under Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Intersport opens in Portugal
Intersport has entered its 41st country as Intersport France opens a flagship-format store in Felgueiras, Portugal, anchoring a new Iberian subsidiary that combines the Portuguese debut with roughly 30 inherited Spanish stores.
Running brands bet on Europe to win the DTC race
On, HOKA and New Balance lead a wider field, including Asics and Saucony, investing in Europe’s community-led retail boom.
Fabletics plans retail expansion, at home and abroad
Fabletics has crossed the billion-dollar revenue threshold and is now targeting aggressive store growth in the US and abroad, with new markets including India, the UAE and deeper penetration across Latin America.
Under Armour outsources US tactical line to distributor
Tactical runs on small dealers and public tenders. Under Armour is letting a specialist wholesaler handle that work.
The German software behind Adidas warehouses
TUP, which also controls material flow at Zalando’s Lahr hub, now holds BITMi’s “Software Made in Germany” certificate.
Bleckmann enters Germany with a base in Lingen
One carve-out gives the Dutch 3PL an automated site, a trained workforce and a decade of contracted volume in Germany.
Puma’s new French logistics hub sets a four-hour target
Ten years into its partnership with ID Logistics, Puma gets automated capacity in Alsace sized for volume growth to 2030.
Hyrox moves into gym apps through ABC Fitness deal
Hyrox has struck a partnership with gym software giant ABC Fitness to embed its official Hyrox365 programming directly into gym-branded apps, removing the need for a separate Hyrox download and giving affiliated operators a new tool to differentiate their offer.
Columbia Sportswear gives GXO its European distribution hub
Columbia now has logistics provider GXO running its Cambrai, France, hub, the main node for continental Europe.
Technogym launches its first Pilates reformer in the US
Technogym prices its US reformer at $13,670: four times what US retailers quote for professional reformers.
Onitsuka Tiger sets up in Spain ahead of Asics split
The Japanese lifestyle brand has quietly established a dedicated Iberian entity on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia, signalling accelerating European ambitions as its separation from parent company Asics draws closer.
How FLYTEC Is Redefining High-Performance Hardshells
Technical innovation plays a central role in developing outdoor collections. The new hardshell from FLYTEC promises not only high performance.
Pentland Brands selects Inspectorio for supply compliance
The group behind Speedo and Berghaus links product journey data to supplier compliance, and supplier rollout is under way.
Closing the distance: inside LTP’s clubhouse in Saigon
LTP Group has opened a dedicated development space in Ho Chi Minh City that compresses performance apparel sampling from months to fourteen days.
Worldly appoints Senior VP of Growth
On Aug. 11 Worldly appointed Léyoh Goodall Senior Vice President of Growth, tasking her with aligning the supply-chain platform’s commercial and customer teams around “verified data” – rather than “estimates or averages” – in an era of “tariff pressure, tightening regulation, and multi-tier complexity.”
China sport exports grow fastest beyond the West
Skateboard shipments rose 20.4 percent as China’s global export share topped 40 percent in the first half.
Nike’s refund check has arrived. The growth story hasn’t.
Nike has recovered nearly all of its $986 million tariff refund, but the cash windfall does little to answer lingering questions about growth, China and the progress of its turnaround.
Decathlon doubles down on warehouse robots
French robotics firm Exotec has deployed its Skyfleet program across seven Decathlon warehouse sites in five European countries, with some facilities doubling daily order output.
Why trade fairs are critical infrastructure in tariff-disrupted markets
Sporting goods manufacturers are rediscovering fairs as essential tools for material validation. LTP Group explains why tactile interaction has become a strategic necessity.
Nike may pocket the tariff refund. Consumers want it back.
Footwear giant raised prices by up to $10 to offset $1bn in import costs. Now the tariffs are gone — and so is its commitment to refund shoppers.
Trump tariff refunds: are you in the queue?
$127 billion enters the queue — but not all at once
US Customs race to build IEEPA tariff refund system
Around 330,000 US importers await refunds on $166bn in IEEPA tariffs as CBP builds a new processing system under court supervision.
EU-Mercosur deal in force provisionally May 1
Provisional tariff cuts on footwear and apparel into South America start May 1 – but full ratification is still years away.
Sports brands and retailers in line for tariff refunds
A court order now extends refund rights to all importers — not just those who sued. But the government is already appealing.
Spain to tighten borders to low-value foreign e-commerce
New measures target platforms like Shein and Temu, aligning with EU policy whilst introducing additional scrutiny.
Sportswear stocks surge then slump in tariff whiplash
Nike closes lower on the day the Supreme Court won the tariff argument. The sector’s reaction tells a bigger story about what comes next.
US ready to cut India tariffs to 18% from 50%
Agreement reduces tariffs dramatically but lacks detail on implementation. Sporting goods manufacturers face new sourcing calculus.
RESALE & RENTAL
Tersus CEO Whitcomb: resale runs on economics, not mandates
Peter Whitcomb on why brands now come to Tersus with their CFO, not their sustainability tea
StockX launches possessionless trading
New Store at StockX removes the logistics loop that drives up costs for resellers, letting buyers own, store and relist products without handling them.
New Balance expands resale program to include apparel
The Boston brand brings apparel into its two-year-old resale program after recirculating more than 100,000 pairs of shoes.
UK startup raises £500,000 to modernize golf resale
Scottish golf tech startup Hosel targets a $3bn pre-owned market long dominated by generalist platforms with poor pricing transparency.
AI IN RETAIL
JD Sports hits 98% on-shelf availability with RFID
Zebra devices and Checkpoint software made JD’s replenishment 20% faster across its UK and Irish store network.
What comdaily’s AI study means for sporting goods brands
SGIE exclusive: GEO specialist comdaily tested 504 German-language AI answers on running shoes, training apparel and wearables. Here are the findings.
SportsShoes.com launches AI gait analysis with Ochy
The free tool rates running technique from a short phone clip, covering hips, knees and symmetry as well as footstrike.
Atleet adds Runnea AI shoe recommender to web store
A running review site’s tester data now guides online shoppers across a network of independently run stores.
ChatGPT adds virtual try-on to shopping results
A Try on button turns a selfie into a preview of apparel and accessories, and Favorites saves products to a Library.
AI agents can now shop JD Sports like a person would
Two years after adopting Algolia’s search platform, JD Sports has become one of retail’s earliest agentic commerce test cases.
Intelligence, analysis and advice for the global sporting goods industry.
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