French retailer Go Sport to open 20 to 40 stores in India, Sri Lanka

French sport retailer Go Sport, of the Rallye retail group, announced on Monday it has teamed up with Indian group Lulu, with a view to opening between 20 and 40 stores in India and Sri Lanka. In 2017, Go Sport recorded a revenue of €1 billion, growing 5% on an annual basis. The group has decided to make 2018 "the year of its international expansion," said CEO André Ségura to the AFP agency.

"With over one billion inhabitants and a booming consumer market, the economic situation [in India] is highly favourable for the group's retail brands. The [opening of the] first Go Sport store in India is planned for the first quarter 2019, after making a first move in Asia with the opening of a Go Sport store in Manila, Philippines, in the first quarter 2018," said the group in a press release.

According to André Ségura, "the increasing influence of the middle class in India is creating new needs in terms of health and well-being; sport is a formidable answer to them, and major international brands are hugely popular with consumers." 

Go Sport was created in the heart of the French Alps after the Grenoble Winter Olympics of 1968, and is currently present in Europe, the Arab Gulf countries, central Asia, the Mediterranean basin and Africa.

Thanks to partnerships with local operators and a strategy of opening stores within large-scale shopping malls, Go Sport targets a well-off clientèle keen on international brands, seen as a mark of social standing, according to Ségura.

Nowadays, "20% of our revenue is generated outside France, and we are targeting a 25% share by 2020," said Ségura to AFP.

In July 2017, Go Sport and the Mercure International Group opened the first Go Sport store in Casablanca (Morocco), a 2,100 m2 flagship which is "Go Sport's largest store in Africa," said the group.

Go Sport already operates some thirty stores in Poland, and is looking at a potential 40 openings in Spain in the next five years.

The sector - dominated by Décathlon, the world's number one sport retailer with a revenue of €11 billion in 2017 - is enjoying an upward trend, and the Go Sport group is benefiting from this, especially its sport footwear retailer Courir. In the last three years, Courir has performed strongly, and now accounts for 37% of the Go Sport group's total revenue.