While the current Russian licensee of Intersport is winding down its loss-making operations, the court of arbitration of the Russian republic of Buryatia has found an Intersport store in the city of Ulan-Ude guilty of selling counterfeit sporting goods under the brands of Adidas, Reebok and Nike.
The court ordered a fine of 100,000 rubles (€1,500-$1650) against Megasport, the Russian company that has been running the store. The management of Intersport International Corp. in Switzerland said it was considering taking legal action, too.
A routine inspection by the regional prosecution office in June revealed that the store was selling shoes under these three brands, although the company had no contracts with any of them to distribute their products, the tribunal said. The prosecution office said that the fake sporting products were been offered while the store was running a liquidation sale in view of the closure of the store.
In a statement released earlier in 2019, Intersport Russia said that it was on its way to completely leaving the Russian market. The company closed 26 stores under the Athlete’s Foot flag and stopped online sales.
According to Spark-Interfax, Intersport Russia made a net loss of 262 million rubles (€3.42m-$4.2m) in 2015 on revenues of 844m rubles (€11.2m-$13m). There has been no further information about the company’s financial performance since that time.
As previously reported (SGI Europe Vol. 30 N° 33+34 of Dec. 4, 2019), Russian consumers are still readily purchasing counterfeit items claiming to be from the major sports brands because of their low purchasing power.
