After developing a network of large stores in the country's bigger cities, SportScheck, Germany's leading integrated sporting goods retailer is now determined to make it into smaller towns as well. With smaller stores with a selling surface of some 1,000 square meters, Scheck is targeting urban areas with between 100,000 and 250,000 inhabitants.
A two-story storey pilot shop will open on 1,200 square meters in the city of Reutlingen, in the Stuttgart region, next July. Located at a distance of 40 kilometers from Stuttgart, the new shop can count on a catchment area of half a million people. Besides its online and catalog retail business, Scheck currently operates 16 stores across the country, each with a surface of at least 2,200 square meters.
If the pilot store turns out to work well, more stores of the type are set to pop up across the country. Scheck sees a potential of 20-25 stores. In fact, there are 50-odd cities of that size in Germany.
Stefan Herzog, head of the executive board, told this publication that he sees this new initiative as a tool to strengthen Scheck's multi-channel strategy. The chain wants to give additional service to existing customers who have been ordering through the web or by catalog so far.
Due to its smaller surface, the assortment of the new type of store will be different from the existing big outlets. Herzog said that some categories would drop out due to space restrictions, but it has yet to define which ones. That will depend on the local environment and the local competitors, depending on their strengths and weaknesses.
