Decathlon expects India to become among its top five markets, to ramp up sourcing

Decathlon is betting big on India’s growth story at a time when Indian consumers are increasingly embracing sports and healthier lifestyles. The leading sports goods retailer expects India to be among its top five markets within the next few years. The company, which operates in India under the single-brand retail FDI policy, also aims to ramp up sourcing from the country as part of its efforts to maintain the accessibility of its products.

On Tuesday, the company launched a new positioning and brand identity, which includes the new “orbit” logo, while deploying a new strategy based on a sharper focus on innovation and sustainability. At a press meet, Barbara Martin Coppola, Global CEO of Decathlon, stated,” At Decathlon, we want to have a greater positive impact on humans, society and the planet by ‘Moving People Through the Wonders of Sport.” Anchored to this new purpose, we have created a new strategy to concretely evolve many aspects of our business. This includes recreating our customer experience, accelerating the movement towards sustainability, and modernising our company end-to-end.”

Sports goods

Speaking at the sidelines of the press event, Steve Dykes, Chief Retail and Countries Officer, Decathlon said that India is a “big priority market” for the company and considers it to be among the key “leapfrog” markets. He added that the company believes it has a key role in expanding the sports goods market in India and encouraging more consumers to get into sports. “India is already among the top ten markets (in terms of revenue contribution). We believe it has potential to become among the top five markets. We are on the right track at the moment. Let’s hope within five years it can get to that,” he added.

As per RoC filing, Decathlon India clocked about ₹3,955 crores in sales in FY23 up 37 per cent.

Retail expansion

The sports goods retailer operates 122 stores in India. Dykes said that the company wants to maintain a good pace of opening ten stores per year. These will be a mix of smaller and the bigger format stores that can go up to 4,000 sq metres with a large play area.“In India, we like to treat every city like a country. That works quiet well because we see certain sports being more popular in some cities like Badminton is in Hyderabad or running is picking up in Delhi and we can change our offerings accordingly as it is “not one size fits all”,” he added.

• Read: Decathlon opens 22 stores across 16 cities amid per lockdown relaxation guidelines

“We are also accelerating our online presence at the moment and strengthening our positioning digitally in the Indian market. Our smaller stores serve as satellite stores for our bigger stores,” Dykes noted.

Ramp up sourcing

Elaborating on plans to ramp up sourcing, Dykes pointed out that already 60 per cent of the products sold by the brand are made in India in quantity terms. “ There are only a few countries that have ever reached this mark. We want to get to 90-95 per cent as that helps us pass on the savings and make our products more accessible. With Prime Minister Modi pushing “Make-in-India” it has been quite a good partnership. We have the scale to be able to “Make-in-India” and export to the world,” Dykes added.

( The writer is in Paris at the invitation of Decathlon)

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