The German sports goods manufacturer Adidas Group (brands Adidas and Reebok) expects that its sales in the Russian market will stop falling in 2018, Chief Executive Officer of the group Kasper Rorsted said this during a teleconference with investors for the first quarter of 2018.
In 2017, Adidas sales in Russia and the CIS fell 13% according to its reporting, and this is the only region where the company’s sales continue to fall. Moreover, the reduction has continued for at least the last three years (until 2014, the company did not provide separate data for Russia): during this time, sales fell by almost 2 times to 660 million euros. Because of this, Adidas closed stores in large quantities twice: in 2015 – about 160, in 2017 – about 200 points.
Already in the second quarter of 2018, Adidas expects to see sales growth compared to the previous quarter, Rorsted is sure, in part due to the fact that Adidas will open pop-up stores for the World Cup. A spokesman for the company’s headquarters confirmed the information, declining to comment. He redirected Vedomosti’s questions to the International Football Federation (FIFA).
The FIFA World Cup will take place in Russia from June 14 to July 15. Adidas will sell licensed products at all 12 FIFA World Cup stadiums, as well as 11 Fan Festival venues (fan zones), a FIFA spokesman said. According to him, from 8 to 20 pop-up stores will open at each stadium, which will be open on match days, and in fan zones – from 1 to 3 stores, which will be open every day throughout the tournament. The exact assortment and number of product names are now being finalized, said a FIFA spokesman.
Usually such shops are quite small: their area is up to 50 sq. m, and the number of product names is about 500, says Mikhail Burmistrov, General Director of Infoline-Analytics. It turns out that there will be very few new pop-up stores during the event, notes Alexey Andreev, managing partner of Depot WPF, this is a drop in the ocean against the background of all Adidas outlets in Russia. Most likely, this is an image move, Andreev suggests: customers will be able to take a small test drive of Adidas products at these points, and then, stimulated by such advertising, will come to full-fledged stores to shop.
According to Andreev, sales in such stores are quite small when compared with mono-brand Adidas boutiques or specialized sportswear supermarkets such as Kant or Vysshaya Liga. Due to the large-scale traffic in the stadiums, the aggregate sales when placing 1–2 stores at such facilities can exceed RUB 500 million, which corresponds to just over 1% of Adidas sales in Russia, Burmistrov calculated. On the drive from matches and events, fans buy a lot of products, agrees the general director of the RMA business school Kirill Kulakov, usually jersey, balls and souvenir paraphernalia.
Stores of a similar format often open at stadiums, says Kulakov. For example, soccer teams’ home stadiums always have a tech sponsor’s club shop; Bosco also opened similar stores during the Sochi Olympics, he recalls. Objects in stadiums and sports zones of other brands, such as Krasnaya Mashina or Bosco, are a completely different story, says Andreev: these brands generally have few retail stores, so such places become full-fledged equal points of sale for them.
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