Like Andrea Morino, who went to the other side of the fence to run Sport Alliance a few months ago, another Italian executive from the sporting goods industry has moved into retailing. Volfango Bondi, who spent 22 years at Nike and Puma, has been appointed general manager of Intersport Italia.
Bondi, who will be 50 on Dec. 4, takes the place of Bruno Antonioli, who is reportedly planning to take a long break after running the retail organization for the past two years, while continuing to act at the same time as purchasing director of Cisalfa Sport. His position at Cisalfa, which is Italy's largest sporting goods retailer and the parent company of Intersport Italia, will remain vacant until further notice.
Bondi has been acting most recently as Puma's general manager for Europe, with responsibility for the seven main areas of the continent where the brand has its own sales offices. After serving as sales director of Nike Italy for seven years, he first joined Puma in 2009 to take care of its apparel wholesale business worldwide. Shortly afterwards his sales responsibilities were extended to supervise Puma's wholesale operations for all products, first at the European level and then globally. In his previous 15 years at Nike, Bondi held various sales roles in Italy and at its European head office.
The executive feels that he can capitalize on his international experience to speed up Intersport Italia's store franchising program and to re-introduce The Athlete's Foot in the country. Stronger partnerships with the brands and greater closeness to the consumer are also on his agenda.
TAF stopped trading in Italy many years ago, but TAF's takeover by Intersport International two years ago is opening up new opportunities for the banner in the country. The general idea is to focus it especially on the lifestyle segment of the market, which is particularly strong in Italy. Intersport Italia plans to launch the first TAF pilot stores in the course of 2016 after analyzing the market to fine-tune its positioning. With some 160 highly profitable stores in the country, Foot Locker is regarded as the biggest competitor.
At the same time, Cisalfa plans to launch an innovative new retail concept early next year in reopening a store in Milan and opening a new store of more than 3,000 square meters in Rome. It will have a new store fit that is expected to provide some inspiration for the evolution of the Intersport franchise in Italy, with a stronger component of service to the consumer. There are only 18 full-fledged franchised Intersport stores in the country. Most of Intersport Italia's 133 retail members continue to run their 362 stores under their own banners, co-branding them with Intersport.
