The leading Russian sporting goods retailer is to open three stores in Uzbekistan, starting in March, in three of its shopping malls in Uzebistan’s capital city of Tashkent, said a local real estate operator, The Tower MMG. The new stores will occupy 1,100 to 1,270 square meters each.
Ilya Titarenko, director of the distribution department of Sportmaster, said that the group has not yet made a firm decision to enter the market but is keeping an eye on it because of the high share of its young population, which is increasingly engaged in sports and outdoor activities, with fast economic growth and a growing social openness to the modern culture of consumption.
Sportmaster has stores in other former Soviet republics – Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan – as well as in China. As reported elsewhere in this issue, it is moving strongly into Western Europe with the acquisition of the Sport-Master chain in Denmark, after its takeover of Go Sport’s stores in Poland.
