“I think last year was a good year, with an increase in sales of about 13% compared with 2015. The growth was because of the rise in consumer spending, especially on the non-food segment,” Antoniu Nituleasa, 40, says.
Nituleasa spent 11 years working for grocery retailers like Penny Market, Real and Kaufland and joined Intersport four years ago as chief operating officer. Shortly afterwards the general manager left and he served as interim general manager for a year before taking the reins of the business.
Intersport’s competitors on the EUR500 million sporting goods market, as estimated by ZF, are specialist retailers like Decathlon and Hervis and single-brand and multi-brand stores of companies like Adidas and FF Group and hypermarket chains.
Its 2016 sales put among the top three sporting goods retailers along with Decathlon (EUR136 million) and FF Group, holder of Nike and Converse franchises (EUR40 million).
Intersport opened three stores in Bucharest (ParkLake mall), Timisoara and Piatra Neamt last year.
“We did not close any stores in 2016, so we had 31 at the end of the year. This year we have already closed two – in Oradea and Arad, due to the poor performance of the malls in those cities. We opened a store in Oradea, though, in another shopping center, before closing the other store.”
The retailer plans to close a store and one open by yearend.
“’We will close another store in a poorly performing shopping center.”
Intersport only has one street front store, in Piata Unirii in Bucharest, which is average in terms of performance, Antoniu Nituleasa says. There is pedestrian traffic there it is not a good area for retail, he explains. “Street front locations do not do yield good results in Romania.”
“Our target is to grow to 45 stores in five years and have the online store to contribute 10% of the sales instead of the current 1%.”
Antoniu Nituleasa expects growth this year but not a double-digit rate as in 2016. “It’s exactly how we budgeted it at the beginning of the year.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)