Stephan Zoll, a former executive at eBay, has been appointed as chief executive of the recently formed Signa Sports Group, which has become a leading specialist online sports retailer in Europe after multiple acquisitions in the last years.
Zoll, who will take the lead at the German-based group in Berlin at the start of July, is switching from Sears, the U.S. retail group, where he was online manager. He was previously in charge of eBay in Germany and part of the management at eBay Europe. Zoll will supervise an online retailing group including Internetstores, Tennis-Point, Outfitter, Probikeshop and Stylefile.
Most active in the bicycle, outdoor, tennis, team sports and leisure markets, the Signa Sports Group is targeting online sales of over €500 million in 2018. Apart from the above online sales brands, the company is the owner of the big Karstadt Sports chain of physical sporting goods stores.
Altogether, the Signa Sports Group had sales of about €650 million last year through 45 brick-and-mortar locations in the German-speaking countries and 58 web stores operating in 17 countries. Every month, it sees more than two million customers visiting its physical stores and gets more than eight million visits online, according to the company.
The group claims that the combination of physical and electronic retailing has turned it into the leading multi-channel platform for sports products in Germany, and one of the five leading players in Europe. Earlier this year Signa sealed a partnership with Intersport Deutschland, under which Karstadt Sports will purchase products through the leading German buying group.
Signa said Zoll would help to propel the European and international expansion of the online sports retailer. Along with his function as the group's CEO, Zoll will be acting managing director of Internetstores, replacing Markus Winter who is leaving the company by mutual agreement.
The high-profile appointment comes about two months after a report from Bloomberg that René Benko, the Austrian real estate magnate who controls the Signa Sports Group, is envisaging a spin-off of the sports retail group to get it listed on the stock exchange. The unconfirmed report says that the initial public offering could take place as early as the second half of 2018, and that the retailer's potential stock market value could reach €1.2 billion.
Benko's Signa group also owns the Karstadt chain of department stores and shares with Italy's La Rinascente the KaDeWe Group, with premium department stores in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. Last year, the group acquired Mybestbrands, regarded as Germany's largest online shopping mall.
