Tennis-Point has struck a four-year deal to take charge of and operate under its own banner the pro shop at a well-known Spanish tennis academy, the Emilio Sánchez Academy in El Prat de Llobregat, a municipality outside the city of Barcelona. The deal could lead to other pro-shop opportunities for the multichannel retailer, as the Spanish racquet sports academy operates in China and the U.S. as well. According to an article in CMDsport, Tennis-Point Iberia’s chief executive, Miquel Just, believes the deal “enables us to project ourselves and become known as something more than a store.”
This will be Tennis-Point’s fifth physical store in Spain, after one in Mataró, one in Madrid and two in Barcelona proper. Spain will become the retailer’s number-three European country in terms of the number of physical stores, behind Germany – where Tennis-Point’s owner, Signa Sports United, is headquartered – and Austria but ahead of Italy, Switzerland, France, Turkey and Croatia. Moreover, this year should see the opening of three more Spanish stores: in Valencia, in Málaga and somewhere in the historical Catalonian county of Vallès. By 2023 Tennis-Point hopes to be operating in Spain’s 12 largest cities. The first of these, in Valencia, could open within the first half of 2022, measuring about 1,000 square meters – smaller than the store in Madrid and bigger than either store in Barcelona.
According to Just, the chain generated revenues of €12 million in Spain for its 2020-21 fiscal year, ended on Sept. 30, for a year-on-year increase of 20 percent – a result that “lends credibility” to the expansion plan. The stores in Madrid and Barcelona lead the pack in Spain, where offline sales outstrip online. “This is not the usual thing in most of the markets where Tennis-Point operates, but it occurs also in Italy and France.”
Tennis-Point entered Spain in late February 2020, when Signa acquired a tennis shop called 5sets and placed its owner, Miquel Just, in charge of its new Iberian subsidiary. Just is now handling the international expansion of Tennis-Point’s pádel division as well.
