SportsShoes.com has achieved an 11 per cent year-on-year increase in turnover to £90m and acquired 663,000 new customers in the 12 months to 29 February 2024. In addition, the online running shoes, running clothing and outdoor gear retailer said it secured 749,000 orders from repeat customers over the same period.
Established in 1982, Bradford-based SportsShoes.com offers customers more than 17,000 products from 150 global running and outdoor brands. From a running perspective, these include Asics, Nike, Adidas, Hoka, New Balance and Brooks, whilst in terms of outdoor, they include Salomon, Montane, Rab and Patagonia. The retailer has attributed the year’s performance to a combination of successful running shoe launches – including Nike Vaporfly 3, Nike ZoomX Ultrafly, Asics Nimbus 26 and Hoka Clifton 9 – and high impact activation initiatives.
This January, SportsShoes.com announced an exclusive retail partnership with community event network parkrun. Supporting more than nine million registered parkrunners across 23 countries, this marks the biggest retail partnership the company has secured to date. In total, SportsShoes.com was involved in the delivery of more than 20 activation events over the 12 month period both in the UK and internationally. This approach enables SportsShoes.com to have a physical presence globally as a digital retailer which included having activations at the Tokyo, New York, Boston and Paris marathons. The retailer has also had success with its athlete ambassadors. These include British distance runner, Emile Cairess, who will make his Olympic debut in Paris this year, and Imogen Boddy who broke the National Three Peaks Challenge record that stood for 45 years in May this year.
SportsShoes.com managing director, Brett Bannister, said: “Our mission at SportsShoes.com is to help as many people as possible lead happier, healthier lives through running and fitness. Having this focus enables us to continually develop and improve our business for the benefit of our customers, brand partners and people.
“We want to build upon the success of our product launches and activation events for both elite and casual runners. A great example of this was our hugely successful inaugural Podium Festival which we held in Leicester this March that was attended by 1,000 runners. We are also growing our international sales, particularly in France, Germany, Spain and Italy, and feel there is a clear opportunity to establish a premium online retail brand in our space in Europe and beyond. Our start for the first quarter of this financial year has been a strong one as we have maintained the momentum we built up over the previous 12 months.”
To enable its growth, SportsShoes.com has invested £4.6m over the last three years in its people, processes, technologies and facilities. This includes the opening in May last year of a £2.5m, 10,750 sq ft creative and tech hub called U2. Located adjacent to the company’s warehouse facilities, it is home to 224 SportsShoes.com employees. In addition, during the 12 month period SportsShoes.com replatformed its UK and European websites to provide customers with a range of online retail features and benefits. These include enhanced user journeys with increased levels of personalisation across both product discovery and product advice.
Brett added: “Our investments have been made to provide the foundations for ongoing sustainable profitable growth. We also believe it’s no fun standing still, so we are always looking at what inventive ways we can come up with for everything we do, whether it’s a product launch, brand activation or sales promotion. We know that if we continue to deliver fresh and exciting ideas for our customers and brand partners the sales will look after themselves.”
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