Last year Nike made Italy’s Percassi Group its preferred partner in southern Europe, opening six stores with the Italian firm in Greece, Italy and Portugal as well as a flagship on a major thoroughfare in Barcelona, Paseo de Gracia. According to Palco23, a Spanish news service covering the sports business, the brand is now opening a second store through Percassi in the Catalonian capital, at the L’illa Diagonal mall. This one is replacing another Nike franchise at the same mall, which has begun liquidating its stock.
Nike operates 35 stores in Spain. For the past four years, in keeping with its ambitions in verticalization, the brand has been restructuring its European franchises to limit the number of intermediaries and limit the stores under its direct management to the best performers. Online sales there enjoy a ten-point advantage in gross margin over wholesale revenues, and Nike is focusing on direct-to-consumer (DTC) accordingly.
On the retail side in Spain, Nike narrowed its distribution last year to nine operators and buying groups, according to Palco23: El Corte Inglés, Foot Locker, Décimas, JD Sports and Sprinter (both part of the Iberian Sports Retail Group), Forum Sport, Atmósfera Sport, Base, Intersport and Tréndico. Together, these represent about 2,000 points of sale.
Nike is also working in Spain with a few specialized retailers such as Futbol Emotion, Bikila, 24segons, Basketworld or BND Sport. In order to service end users more quickly, it is setting up a regional distribution center in Spain, similar to the one it opened near Los Angeles a year ago.
As we have previously reported, Adidas and Asics too have started following more selective distribution policies in Spain, particularly in their relations with smaller buying groups. According to an industry observer, this has led many independent retailers that have been cut off to work more closely with other sports brands, such as Puma, Lotto and Joma, which in some cases are offering better margins.
