“The Romanian industry has also developed rapidly in the last two years, after a long period of stagnation, and is expected to increase further,” reveals a survey conducted by British-American market research company PMR Research.
The survey says that one of the most important events on the sporting goods market was the arrival of Decathlon in 2009.
Decathlon saw sales reach 76.7 million lei (EUR18 million) in 2010, double the sales in 2009. The French retailer, which already has six stores on the local market, thus came close to the oldest and largest competitor on this market, Intersport.
Intersport stores were introduced in Romania via a franchise deal by Greek-held Fourlis Group through its Genco Trade subsidiary in 2004.
The third-largest company on the market is Hervis, the sporting goods retail unit of the Spar group, which began expansion in early 2007, when it opened five stores outside Bucharest. The retailer saw its sales climb 30% to RON55.7 million (EUR13 million) in 2010.
The PMR survey reveals that Slovak-held network Exisport announced plans to expand to Romania and Hungary. Exisport said it planned to become a leading sports retailer in Central and Eastern Europe with over 100 stores in Slovakia, Poland and Romania. The company announced a store opening in the Mundo shopping center in Budapest; however, the investment, formerly scheduled for 2010, was postponed to 2013.
Exisport is not the only sporting goods retailer in the CEE region that has not established a presence in Romania yet. Out of seven retailers with a regional presence, only three are already on this market, while one has announced interest in it.
Sportisimo (Czech Republic), the largest chain in CEE after Intersport, along with A3 Sport (Czech Republic) and Gigasport (Austria) have not announced any interest in the Romanian market yet.
(EUR1=RON4.2792)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu; Editing by Radu Bostan)