Boardsports and lifestyle specialist Blue Tomato, part of U.S. company Zumiez since 2012, has opened its first store in Italy. The omnichannel chain opened a 250-sqm store last week on Via Paolo Oss-Mazzurana in the historic center of Trento. Blue Tomato, founded in 1988 by former Austrian European snowboarding champion Gerfried Schuller, is one of the world’s largest online retailers for snowboarding, freeskiing, surfing, skateboarding and street style, with nearly 850 employees and more than 450,000 products. The website blue-tomato.com currently registers up to 125,000 visitors per day, according to the company. In recent years, Blue Tomato has also greatly expanded its presence in brick-and-mortar retail: It already operates more than 80 doors in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
The new store in Trento is run by Tiziano Taglianozzi as store manager and four employees. “With our unique, authentic vibe, we will be a great place to go for boardsport and fashion enthusiasts throughout Trentino,” he commented on the store near Trento’s cathedral square.
“The decision for Italy as a new target market for our network of locations has been on our agenda for a long time,” said Tillmann Ruprecht, Director of Sales & Service at Blue Tomato. “We register a large number of online customers from this country, and many Italians also store in our stores throughout Europe. In addition, many have contacted us with the desire for a Blue Tomato store in their city, which, of course, made us very happy. […] Perhaps we will soon be able to satisfactorily answer the multiple requests from various other cities – such as Modena.”
