Decathlon is testing a supermarket-style discount aisle in its UK and Ireland stores, app and website, betting that back-to-school bargains will keep price-driven shoppers loyal ahead of the retailer’s next seasonal drops.
Decathlon has introduced a “Sports Middle Aisle” in the UK and Ireland – in its stores, on its website and on its app. The design is to “take on discounters” and tie products to “seasonal moments.” According to the retailer, citing “recent data,” 45 percent of shoppers consider price first when deciding whether to buy.
The first such season is late summer and back-to-school, with such items as “school shoes, trainers, water bottles, and backpacks.” Prices on these items are “locked” through Aug. 30. Once school is back in, says Decathlon, “the shelves will completely reset with fresh bargains.”
Next up will be after-school and local sports (“Back to Sport”), “safety gear” (“Back to Commuting,” late September), fitness tech (Black Friday) and “stocking-fillers” (Christmas).
Stores taking part in the initiative have a literal middle aisle for the purpose. The website posts the same prices on the same items, and the app offers early alerts and previews of forthcoming items.
All purchases gain points for Decathlon Members, and “eligible” purchases come with “extended product warranties.”
A discounter’s museum piece
As an idea the middle aisle, at least in its modern form, seems to originate with a German discount supermarket. Aldi introduced periodic “Aktionstage” (action days) sometime around the 1990s.
In November 1995 it first stocked, of all things, an IBM clone. This didn’t sell too well, because it came with Windows 3.11 three months after Microsoft released Windows 95.
Two years later, though, Medion supplied Aldi with a Pentium 166 boxed with a 15-inch monitor, priced at about 1,800 Deutsche marks (about €920 at the time, about €1,700 today) – a few hundred marks less than at specialty retailers. Customers queued for hours.
One of those 1997 computers became on Sept. 23, 2025, the tease for the forthcoming permanent exhibit at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn, Germany’s federally funded museum of postwar history.
Back in the UK the middle aisle (at Aldi and Lidl) gave rise a few years ago to a documentary series: Secrets of the Middle Aisle.
