Sport Depot, which became the licensee of Sport 2000 in Bulgaria in the summer of 2009, has seen its partnership extended to Serbia. It is opening the first Serbian Sport 2000 store on 300 square meters in Nish this week and following up with a 1,500 sq.m. location in Belgrade by the end of this year. It will be the biggest multi-sport store in the country, and unlike those in Bulgaria, it will carry the Sport 2000 banner alone.
There are already 10 stores and two outlets (two shops) carrying the Sport 2000 Sport Depot banner in Bulgaria, of which one is being opened at the end of March and one will be open in early April. Together, they have a total selling surface of more than 7,500 square meters, making the multi-brand sporting goods chain the biggest one in Bulgaria.
The company plans to expand the total surface of its stores to 10,000 m² by 2011, including new locations in some of Bulgaria’s bigger cities.
Sport Depot is still the biggest independent wholesaler for sporting goods in Bulgaria. While sourcing some 20 other brands locally, it already has exclusive wholesale deals with more than 40 companies including Lotto, Kettler, Elan, Luhta, Helly Hansen, Jack Wolfskin, Lafuma, Babolat, Stiga, Mikasa, Everlast, Roces, K2 and Harrows, and some of the brands are exclusively distributed in its own stores. It recently signed new deals with Salewa and Oase, and new contracts are expected to be signed soon with Odlo and Keen.
The Bulgarian company, which was refinanced at the end of 2007, reached a turnover of more than €9 million in 2009, down by 7 percent from 2008, but in spite of the recession, its stores saw their revenues grow by almost 30 percent on a comparable basis. They continued to grow by more than 25 percent in the first two months of this year.
These figures make Sport Depot second only to Adidas in the country, whose size was generally estimated at less than €70 million at retail in 2009. The market went down considerably in 2009. Sport Depot feels that sales of sporting goods fell by about 25 percent, including a drop of more than 20 percent at Metro. Its own sales to third parties fell by nearly 40 percent as many small retailers went bankrupt.
