Meanwhile, Sport 2000 International says it has made considerable progress internally toward the consolidation of POS data at the international level, with the aim of launching an international database by Dec. 31.
It aims to help the national organizations to make better purchasing decisions for the design of their product ranges, benchmarking themselves against each other and providing a more differentiated approach in the various regions of Europe. As everybody knows, the southern part of Europe is more lifestyle-oriented and the northern part is more performance-oriented, but Sport 2000 wants to go deeper in the analysis.
According to Grosau, the French Sport 2000 organization is most advanced within the group in the collection of good-quality data that can be effectively used for all kinds of decisions. Germany and Denmark have gone far in this domain, and the process has started in other countries such as Austria, Italy and Spain.
Aside from product planning, the process is also expected to help in the development of a good standardized omnichannel solution for Sport 2000 retailers in the core markets. At this stage, however, Sport 2000 International is letting the national organizations develop their own omni-channel systems.
The Dutch Sport 2000 operation already started two years ago. Base in Spain and Sport Alliance in Italy have their own systems, too. Switzerland is working on it and Austria has started moving online by setting up kiosks in affiliated stores. The Danish Sportmaster probably has the most advanced system in place right now. Sport 2000 Germany is preparing a very sophisticated solution that will go live at the end of 2019 and that may be used as a platform on which the future international omni-channel operation may be built.
