The retailers affiliated with Sport 2000 France, a cooperative that belongs to the Sport 2000 International network, gathered on a French island in the Mediterranean on Sept. 22-23 to discuss a new “CUP 24” (Cooperative Up) strategic plan, which calls for an increase in their sales from €621 million in 2018 to €700 million in 2021 and €900 million by 2025. The strategy outlined by the management to achieve these targets mainly revolves around the two aspects of digitalization and an ongoing focus of attention on urban areas with fewer than 80,000 inhabitants.
Thanks to digitalization, the affiliated retailers of Sport 2000 France will be pooling their inventories as of 2020. Each store will be able to offer products from any other store in the group, which means that customers will benefit at the same time from the human relationship and the advice given by the personnel in a relatively small store and the advantages of a large product assortment. The system will gradually become a common e-commerce platform once all the retail stores are connected.
Next year, to make the most out of this project, Sport 2000 will be launching a “Sport 2000 Académie” to train employees on the digital aspects of the new strategy and other ways to improve the customer experience.
As for the second cornerstone of the strategy, revolving around mid-sized towns with fewer than 80,000 inhabitants, the CUP 2024 plan provides for the opening of around 15 new stores per year in these areas, where 80 percent of the Sport 2000 stores are already located. It is a specialty of the banner that allows the retailers to cover areas that are often neglected by competitors, which are focusing on larger urban areas.
Outside the bigger cities, the average Sport 2000 store in France has an area of 1,000-1,200 square meters, in contrast with the generally larger surfaces of competitors including Decathlon, Intersport and Go Sport. The retail members operate under the generalist Sport 2000 banner or other more specialized ones like Espace Montagne (outdoor & ski), S2 Sneakers Specialist, Mondovelo (cycling) or WAS We Are Select (premium sports fashion).
On Sept. 25, in another new initiative, Sport 2000 launched a loyalty program, called Livret Sport, in association with Sport Heroes, a French start-up whose system enables its users to get their physical activity rewarded by measuring it through digital devices, collecting points that are redeemed at the stores through discounts. It is also a system to collect e-mail addresses. Curiously, the Leclercq family, which established Decathlon and still owns a big stake in it, made an investment of €4 million in Sport Heroes last year through an investment vehicle, Genairgy (SGI Europe Vol. 29 N° 21+22 of July 3, 2018). Genairgy has now invested in E-Liberty, a platform for the sale of ski passes that is being adopted by Decathlon (see the related article in this issue).
Sport 2000 France changed its status back to that of a cooperative last year after its affiliated retailers approved the acquisition of the 52 percent stake held by Activa Capital in their company at an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on Nov. 22 (as reported by SGI Europe – Vol. 29 n°37+38). The investment fund had taken over the control of the company in 2011 to help finance an expansion plan involving the establishment of directly owned stores, which in the end did not work out. The retail members of Sport 2000 France now own 100 percent of its shares.
