Kesko, Finland’s leading retail group, has decided to open a second Budget Sport store of more than 2,500 square meters in a new shopping center near Tampere, called Idea Park, next April. The investment follows better than expected results at the first Budget Sport store, opened in a shopping center near Helsinki’s airport last May, in spite of the warmest and driest summer in Finland in more than 100 years.
Featuring striking colors, Budget Sport is the latest new store concept of Intersport International, of which Kesko is the licensee in Finland. Customers use regular shopping carts to collect the numerous items offered in the store at an average discount of about 15 percent from regular prices. Intersport’s private label products represent about 25 percent of the SKUs. Some closeouts are offered at even lower prices in a “Best of the Best” section of the store. The products are displayed by sports activity and by size rather than by brand.
Intersport made a presentation of the Budget Sport concept at its annual meeting in Barcelona earlier this month. Kesko, which also owns the Kesport and CityMarket chains, is considering setting up a total of seven such stores throughout the country. The program is viewed as a pre-emptive move against XXL, a new Norwegian chain of low-priced superstores, which indicates an intention to move into Sweden or Finland after opening at least 4-5 more stores in its home market – a process that is taking longer than expected.
The Budget Sport store is the brainchild of Jussi Mikkola, a sports enthusiast who was recently promoted as sporting goods manager of the whole Kesko group, responsible also for the sporting goods departments of its hypermarkets. The group’s total sales in this segment have grown to about €800 million annually, including VAT. These operations including those of Intersport Finland, a new company formed last June to combine its wholesale and retail activities. A former purchasing manager, Vesa Mattila, has been placed in charge of international development, reporting to Mikkola.
