The company has 190 stores in all, 105 of which in its home country, Czech Republic, 46 in Slovakia, 35 in Romania, two in Bulgaria and two in Hungary. The retailer arrived in Romania six years ago and has been expanding fast ever since, even during the pandemic. The floor area of the stores in Romania is 800 square meters on average but may range from 300 to 3,000 square meters.
“Despite the difficult context of the pandemic, we opened five stores in 2020 and did not close any. Moreover, we have already opened two stores at the beginning of this year, one in Sfantu Gheorghe and the other in Bucharest,” says Petru Andronic, country manager of Sportisimo Romania.
The second store in Bucharest operates in the Mega Mall shopping center and is the first flagship store in Romania and the third in Europe with a new design, after those in Prague and Bulgaria. The retailer will open five more stores in Romania by yearend.
“We have several projections (about the future of the business in Romania i.e.), and one of them is about the number of stores we will open each year. We are noticing a very good performance of the stores already opened, so we plan to double the number of stores in five years.”
The retailer has had an online shop since 2015, when it arrived in Romania. The contribution of the online shop has increased to 20%, as a result of the restrictions caused by the pandemic and the change in consumer preferences, the official added.
Sportisimo ended last year with EUR47.5 million sales. It posted RON110 million (EUR23 million) sales in 2019, according to the latest publicly available data. Some retailers, however, record their online sales in their home country, so they are not included in these figures.
The sporting goods retailer expects sales to rise 20% in 2021.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)