26 branches nationwide, from Hamburg to Konstanz, from Aachen to Wildau. This is what SportScheck’s branch network could look like in the future. If the closings actually come as announced – and the ten remaining Karstadt Sports branches, as expected, will appear on the market under SportScheck in the future.
SportScheck is already on the door today
Aachen, Augsburg, Berlin-Mitte, Berlin-Steglitz (closes), Bielefeld, Dresden, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Kassel, Cologne, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Mönchengladbach, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart.
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Karstadt Sports is still at the door here today
Berlin-Steglitz, Bonn, Dresden, Erfurt, Göttingen, Hanover, Heidelberg, Constance, Münster, Wildau.
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On the list of closures: There could soon be nothing more than the door of these Karstadt Sports stores
Berlin Kranzler Eck, Braunschweig, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hamburg-Harburg, Hanau, Karlsruhe, Kiel, Cologne, Lübeck, Munich, Norderstedt, Rosenheim, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden (2x).
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The sports retail landscape is being dramatically mixed up with the announced closings of 20 Karstadt Sports branches and 62 department stores, some of which have large sports departments.
Example Frankfurt
Here, not only the four-story Karstadt Sports branch, which opened just nine months ago, is to be closed, but also the Karstadt-Haus with its sports department on three floors. This would mean that Frankfurt would lose several thousand square meters of sports in the city center in one fell swoop. Compensating for this will be difficult for SportScheck – because this branch will not necessarily benefit if customers finally write off the main shopping street Zeil as a sports destination.
The Frankfurt running shop proves that sport can be successfully pursued in the city, as it is closer to its customers than few others – and has kept in touch with its running-loving clientele during the week-long shutdown even without an online shop. But this highly specialized and personalized concept is hardly suitable as a blueprint for a corporation.
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Frankfurt running shop owner meets Amazon manager
“Sell on Amazon? As of today: No. “
In the third edition of the digital talk, which Marcus Diekmann organized as the head of the Dealers Helping Dealers initiative, two worlds collided: Jost Wiebelhaus, thoroughbred retailer and with his Frankfurt running shop firmly anchored in the city center and the local running community, and the longtime Amazon Germany boss Ralf Kleber.
How massively Decathlon strives into any terrain that others leave it to is also evident in Frankfurt. The sports trade has de facto been underrepresented here for many years, which Decathlon has already made use of. In the north-west center, the French have only just expanded – Karstadt Sports, in turn, has said goodbye. There are already other Decathlon branches in the vicinity in Dreieich and Offenbach, in Darmstadt-Weiterstadt the largest German store is due to open next year.
Example Wiesbaden
After the opening of the Karstadt Sports branch in the former sports arena last autumn, the company was even briefly represented with two shops in the Hessian state capital. It was foreseeable that this would not stay that way in the long term. But now both branches are threatened with extinction. Decathlon is already there, both in Wiesbaden and in neighboring Wallau.
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26% increase in sales in 2019
Decathlon continues to grow rapidly in Germany
The gap is growing: With a turnover increase of 26%, Decathlon significantly expanded its market leadership in the German market in 2019. Further expansion will be slowed down a little by the Corona crisis.
Example Munich
The fact that the goblet for SportScheck is apparently passing the expensive main building in Munich, which has long been rumored to be closed, causes astonishment among some observers. In the Bavarian capital, the Karstadt Sports branch is on the list. It is quite possible that in this negotiating situation the SportScheck landlords were prepared to make higher concessions than in the past.
Example Berlin
With Karstadt Sports at Kranzler Eck, the city’s largest sports store is closing. The branch in Steglitz will be retained. And thus not necessarily the most representative Karstadt Sports store. As reported, the SportScheck branch will be closed a few hundred meters. It will be exciting to see what actually changes at Karstadt Sports when SportScheck is written over the door in the future.
How will the integration work? As beautiful as the future of SportScheck may look on the map, the pound that the former Otto daughter brings is not the branch business. Rather, it is the first successes in developing SportScheck into an ecosystem. Bringing that together with Karstadt Sports will be challenging.
The integration of the online subsidiaries of Signa Sports United is – or was – no less challenging. A good two years ago, the first areas of fahrrad.de and Tennis-Point at Karstadt Sports made people sit up and take notice. A stronger alliance would make sense, but apparently this will not be pushed further and the independence of Karstadt Sports from Signa Sports United emphasized – and not just since the current protective shield proceedings.
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