Two of the three major buying groups in the Dutch sports retail trade, Euretco Sport and Intres, outperformed their fast-expanding domestic market last year, catching up after their weak performance in 2005.

While the growth of the Dutch sports retailer trade averaged 6.8 percent last year, softening substantially at the end of the year, Euretco Sport saw its central settlements increased by 7.2 percent. Among the various banners serviced by the group, Sport 2000 saw its Dutch retail sales jump to €92.8 million after VAT, up by 12.3 percent on a same-store basis.

Runnersworld, a running specialist retail chain also serviced by Euretco, lifted its retail sales by 11 percent on a comparable basis, reaching a total of €24.3 million. Its results have been improving sharply after a face-lift in 2005. Three additional Runnersworld stores were opened in the Netherlands earlier this year, expanding the network to 22 outlets.

Combining purchasing by Intersport, Coach and other assorted independent retailers, the country’s other major cooperative, Intersport Nederland, saw its central settlements in behalf of national retailers rise by just 2 percent, but this tally disguises a robust performance by Intersport stores. With 118 stores at the end of the year, Intersport outlets enjoyed a sales jump of 9 percent on a same-store basis and reached a level of €235 million after VAT, validating a strategy, implemented over the last years, intended to sharpen the banner’s profile as a sports specialist and to invest more in marketing. While Intersport has clearly benefited from the football World Cup, it points to strong expansion in other sports like running and fitness as well.

Although bad weather conditions have hit its sales in the two openings months of 2007, Intersport’s comparable sales still rose by 4 percent for first the 5 months of the year, again driven by higher sales of functional sports products.

The retailer will continue to expand with the opening of two large-format stores before the end of the year, followed next March by a 4,000-square-meters mega-store in a new retail development in Roermond. Furthermore, a chain of five high-quality specialist stores in the Amsterdam region, called Duo Sports, will be joining Intersport from the beginning of July.

Meanwhile, Coach, the 49-store sports lifestyle banner belonging to Intersport Nederland, slightly under-performed the market with a sales increase of 6 percent to about €25 million for 2006. On the other hand, its stores have enjoyed a comparable sales rise of about 10 percent for the first 5 months of 2007, with an improved product mix.

So far this year, Dutch sports retailers’ sales have continued to expand robustly, but with considerable variations from one category to the next. According to the Mitex Sportmonitor, for the first 12 weeks of the year, sports footwear sales were up by 12.7 percent, compared with a slight increase of just 0.9 percent for sports apparel, and a decline of 5.5 percent for sports hardware.