Russia:Sportmaster

Recently, Russia and CIS have enjoyed a huge increase in their sporting goods industry and in 2014, the value of the industry hit nearly $2.6 billion and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down as its one area of the economy that does not seem to be effected by the slow down in overall the Russian economy. Sportmaster (who sell everything from simple sporting goods to advanced technological equipment) have been the biggest sports retailer in Russia and CIS for nearly 16 years (judged by amount of stores and sales turnover) and have enjoyed rapid expansion since their opening in 1992.  Their first major deal came in 1995 where they teamed up with Kettler and went on to open their first retail store. Now, in 2015, they have over 475 retail stores in more than 100 Russian cities. In 2006, they launched their first ‘Sportmaster Hyper’ retail chain which made Sportmaster a multi-format player and they now have many ‘Sportmaster Hyper’ stores. Sportmaster are now the leading sports retailer in Eastern Europe and can be found in the list of top 10 biggest global sports and outdoor retail companies in the world.

The outdoor sporting goods market in Russia grew by nearly 10% in 2014 and the main players in this market are Sportmaster. Since agreeing deals with Fila and Nike amongst many others, they haven’t looked back and in the last few years have broken into Kazakhstan and China. This means that they now operate in 200 cities inside 5 countries (Russia, Belarus, China, Kazakhstan and Ukraine) and employ over 23,000 people, including those in branch offices in China, Bangladesh and Vietnam. They represent some of the world’s biggest sporting brands including Columbia, O’Neill, Sketchers and Speedo along with nearly 150 others. Some brands are even exclusive to Sportmaster.

Sportmaster have also become a franchisor with multi-format businesses such as Columbia and Sketchers as well as with their own franchise formats ‘Sportlandia’ and ‘Weekender’. Sportmaster are now the biggest franchisor in the sporting goods market and are close to the top of the list of franchisors in the whole of Russia, with more than 230 franchised stores in 2015.

As well as franchising, Sportmaster have also become huge distributors of sporting goods, supporting and supplying over 300 sports retailers. They have been distribution partners with Kettler and Columbia for many years, 20 and 18 respectively, but have now joined with others including CAT, Merrell, Mountain Hardware and Tecnica.

Over the last few years, Sportmaster have only been getting stronger as they agreed a licensing agreement with Fila in 2011, a strategic agreement with Nike in 2012 and even became the official retail operator for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Sportmaster have come from 1 million visitors a year in 1999 to over 180 million visitors a year today and with close to 800,000 square metres of sales floor, Sportmaster is and will be the major sports goods retailer in Eastern Europe for years to come as they also look to expand worldwide.

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