Over the last few years, new sporting goods chains such as Lamoda Sport and DeSport have emerged in Russia, replacing Western suppliers and constantly opening new doors.
Lamoda Sport, an offline subsidiary of a prominent Russian marketplace Lamoda, has recently launched a new store in Rostov, a big city in the south of the country. The company has already put over 50 outlets in operation, Maxim Grishakov, CEO of Lamoda, told a local news outlet, Retail. Grishakov disclosed that the plan is to launch 100 stores by the end of 2024 and add a few hundred more doors in the future.
Lamoda launches brick-and-mortar stores in four formats: Lamoda Sport, Lamoda Sport Kids, Lamoda Sport Urban and Lamoda Sport Outlet. Normally, each store has around 350 sqm of shopping space, but the flagship Moscow store is 1,200 sqm. Grishakov said that each store sells popular Western brands like Puma, Adidas and Nike and unique sports brands not available elsewhere in Russia. “Lamoda [the marketplace] has hundreds of thousands of items, and we cannot place all positions in retail. So, we thought about what range to offer,” he said, adding that the company decided to primarily focus on casual sporting goods and athletic apparel.
DeSport, a sporting goods retailer primarily developing former Decathlon stores in Russia, has already launched 25 outlets in nine Russian cities and is looking into opening five more in the foreseeable future, the company has revealed. Anton Shvedov, Director of DeSport’s product development and sourcing department, said the company prioritizes expanding sales of private-label goods.
DeSport works with 160 Russian suppliers and places orders in factories in China, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, many of which are former Decathlon suppliers. New private label products are due to emerge in the DeSport range already during the spring-summer season, Shvedov said, adding those are going to be budget as well as some technologically advanced products expected to gradually replace Decathlon goods in the product range. The long-term goal is to boost the share of the private label goods in DeSport sales to 50 percent, he reported.
