Over the coming months, the Iberian Sports Retail Group of JD Sports Fashion will be setting up a marketplace for Sport Zone, under whose banner more than a hundred physical stores are operating in Portugal and the Canary Islands. The group hopes to replicate the success of its Sprinter marketplace, set up in November 2019 and placed under the management of Queena Lin, who has now spoken with the Spanish trade publication CMDsport. According to Lin, not only did Sprinter enjoy a four-digit increase in sales for 2020, thanks to the pandemic-inspired online boom, but sales have continued to rise by 60 percent so far in 2021. Sprinter’s selection has increased as well, from last summer’s 28,000 items from 300 brands to 50,000 items now from 800 brands. Most of the buyers on the marketplace, Lin said, are urban athletes aged 29 to 49. Other sources within the group have revealed to CMDsport plans to extend the marketplace concept to other unspecified markets outside Spain by sometime in 2022.

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