The organizers report a total of 6,823 visitors over the four-day period of the fair, a marked improvement from just over 4,000 one year ago, when it was still called In-Sports, but below the attendance of last September, which was marked by the cancellation of the MISS fair. The collaboration with Messe München, which began with the first ISPO Russia fair last September, helped to improve service levels and attracted many important Western brands including two leaders in the ski sector, Fischer and Rossignol, and many of the brands represented by the Sportmaster group.
A total of 230 brands from 21 countries exhibited on 11,000 square meters in one of the halls of the Crocus Expo exhibition center on Moscow’s ring road, next to a relatively quiet jeans show. The vast majority of the brands were international and the quality of the visitors was said to have improved considerably. Only about 40 percent of them came from the Moscow area, while the others came from 63 peripheral regions all the way to Vladivostok and from 24 other countries, including former member states of the Soviet Union.
ISPO Russia paid the lodging for about 120 buyers from outside the city, most of whom represented between 6 and 9 stores. Like the other visitors, they were looking in part for new brands as alternatives to those carried by the major chains. While many of the established retailers continue to visit the ISPO fair in Munich, ISPO Russia is targeting mainly the independents and the numerous new retailers that are coming into a booming sporting goods market, heavily dependent on imports, that we have analyzed in-depth in one of our market research reports.
Many exhibitors who came to the show without any preparation had problems finding new retail or wholesale partners, however. Sportalm of Austria, which has been in the market for a long time, had a very successful show, pulling in 80 percent of those it had invited to come over. Fischer and the Russian distributor of Rossignol, which held its pre-ordering session at the fair, said they met many new customers.
New accounts have in fact been responsible for about half of Rossignol’s growth of about 20 percent in Russia during the past selling season. Only 15-20 Russian retailers tend to visit Rossignol at ISPO in Munich. Fischer visited its established accounts before the show. Another major Russian importer of Western skis and clothing, Kant, held its pre-order session at its nice headquarters in Moscow, the “Moscow Alps,” during ISPO Russia (see article on Kant in the News Briefs).
Evidently, it’s going to take time to change habits in a young market economy that has been dominated by a handful of large wholesalers/retailers until now. The organizers of ISPO Russia intend to continue to keep in contact with the retailers in the regions. They will also sponsor a retail conference in Kazan next month. Plans to transfer the show to a downtown location have been cancelled, partly because of the huge traffic jams in the city.
