Ignoring the shakeup in the Austrian sporting goods retail landscape caused by Sport Eybl & Sports Experts' crisis, one of its competitors, Hervis Sports, has announced ambitious plans for expansion inside and outside Austria. The chain, a subsidiary of the Spar food chain, plans to open 10 new doors in the course of this year, two of them abroad. It is most likely that the chain will add at least one door in Germany, where it opened its first outlet last autumn in the winter sports town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The management already revealed three of the eight new locations, which will be opened in the towns of Melk and Freistadt as well as one in Wien Mitte, praised by the company as the largest specialty sporting goods store in Austria's capital of Vienna with a selling surface of 1,500 square meters. As reported, Hervis posted retail sales of €441 million last year, corresponding to a slight increase of 0.8 percent. Currently, Hervis runs 76 stores in Austria and 97 abroad. The most important foreign market is Hungary, with 29 doors, followed by the Czech Republic (26 stores) and Slovenia (16). The chain also has own shops in Croatia, Romania and Germany.

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