The market is divided among specialist retailers like Hervis, Intersport and Decathlon, single brand stores – Adidas, Nike, online stores and hypermarket chains. The rising appetite of Romanian consumers for sporting goods has made new names enter the country, so the number of specialist retailers has doubled in the past four or five years.
“The sporting goods retail segment has tremendous development potential on the local market. In Romania, the percentage of those who exercise regularly is less than 10% compared with 70% in Austria or other countries in Europe,” Catalin Pozdarie, CEO of sporting goods retailer Hervis Romania, said.
The VAT cut on food to 9% (2015) and non-food products to 19% (in 2017) left Romanian consumers with more money to spend on non-essential things such as sporting goods.
The upward trend should continue until 2023 and the consumers’ spending appetite should take the market to EUR560 million, according to Euromonitor estimates. The market should go beyond EUR500 million next year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)