Sportmaster has decided to further develop its own digital “ecosystem,” said Victoria Bondarenko, a product development director with Russia’s biggest sports retailer, in an interview recently published in the local Retail online news service. She noted that Sportmaster has a strong brand that is quite popular on the Russian market, with a large base of loyal customers. “We work on several development directions, involving health care, improving athletic skills, and so on,” Bondarenko said, indicating that Sportmaster is considering to enlarge the offer of services, going beyond the sale of actual products. At the same time, the company’s own e-commerce will be expanded in the next three to four years “several times over,” Bondarenko said. While the competition with marketplaces is getting fiercer on the Russian market, Sportmaster has decided not to work with Wildberries, the country’s largest online retailer, but it will continue to work with two other major Russian online retailers, Lamoda and Ozon, hoping to expand its partnership with them, improving logistics and adjusting the product range. “We almost immediately left Wildberries due to the lack of control over the final price. The pricing policy of this marketplace appeared to be unacceptable for us,” Bondarenko said.

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