While looking at some other markets, Sport 2000 International has entered Bulgaria and restructured its presence in Latvia. The partner in Bulgaria is Sport Depot, a rather dynamic wholesaler and retailer that will become the exclusive franchisee of Sport 2000 in the country next month.

Sport Depot is planning to set up 20 rather technical-oriented Sport 2000 stores in Bulgaria in the next three to four years, based on the concept of the new Sport 2000 shop near Munich. The first two will be in Sofia and in the Gabrowo Mall. Five of its six existing franchised Sport Depot shops will be rebranded as Sport 2000.

Using its own more lifestyle-oriented format, the company is also planning to open a very big Sport Depot store of more than 2,500 square meters in Sofia. The company already owns eight Sport Depot stores in Bulgaria, four of which have a surface of more than 1,000 m², and they will all carry a small Sport 2000 sign on the front.

Sport Depot also has four mono-brand Lotto stores and five dual-brand shops selling Lotto and Puma products under the same roof. The company is the exclusive distributor in Bulgaria of Kettler, Body Sculpture, Lotto, Sergio Tacchini, Mikasa, Elan, K2, Alpina, Icepeak, Trespass, Lafuma, Lowa and other brands.

Its deal with Sport 2000 is limited to the Bulgarian market, but Sport Depot is looking for a strategic partner in Romania to open at least three stores in Bucharest by the end of 2010. The company, which we described in detail last year in our reports on Southwestern Europe, already has offices in Serbia and Romania, where it acts only as a wholesaler, supplying mainly big international mass merchants such as Metro, Carrefour, Real, Tempo and Interrex. It has a mono-brand Kettler shop in Belgrade.

The deal in Latvia is with a local company, L.A. Metro, which plans to set up a total of about 15 Sport 2000 stores in the country, some of which would be owned by franchisees. The people behind this company are Aivars Bunde and Laura Lapina. They founded a little chain of very technical sporting goods stores, called 100% Sport, that they sold in 2003 to Sportland International, the large Estonia-based wholesale and retail group, keeping a minority stake in the operation.
The chain was a buying partner of Sport 2000 International before the change of ownership and remained in that role afterward, but Sportland recently decided not to continue the partnership. Bunde and Lapina have now agreed to sell their remaining shares to Sportland in exchange for the ownership of two of its eight stores in Latvia.

These two stores, which are located in Riga and Sigulda, will be renamed Sport 2000. Two more Sport 2000 shops may be opened before the end of this year, focusing on such sports as fitness, Nordic ski, basketball, racquet sports, running and cycling. Aside from other activities, the new Latvian licensees have been operating a Trek bike shop in Riga for the past three years and they opened a Marathon running store in the capital two months ago.