Lamoda, a prominent Russian e-commerce retailer, has started opening its first brick-and-mortar stores as part of a project to build an offline retail chain in the country. The first two stores have been put into operation in Moscow and Mitishi, a town in the Moscow Oblast. The third store is about to open its doors in St. Petersburg before long, the company reported. The first three stores will serve as pilot operations to streamline the work of the supply chain and IT system before the project can be scaled up, Lamoda explained.
Lamoda, which specializes in fashion goods, rolled out plans to open 50 stores in 20 Russian cities within the first stage of the retail chain development. In the next three years, the company targets to expand this figure to 300 outlets, becoming one of the largest offline sporting goods retailers. Lamoda Sport is planned to be a multi-brand chain. It will offer a mix of Western, Asian and Russian brands, according to the company.
Ilya Yaroshenko, President of the Russian footwear company Baon, commented that Lamoda had established an order book of 250 sporting goods brands and can be tremendously flexible in forming the product range of its offline stores. Yaroshenko expressed an opinion that this is a particularly important competitive advantage that justifies the ambitious Lamoda expansion plans. According to him, the Russian offline sporting goods retail sector still offers excellent opportunities for investors, as the gaps left by the departure of Western companies have yet to be filled.
