DHAKA: Just under two months since opening its first store in Dhaka’s Uttara, French sporting goods retailer Decathlon’s management team is “happy with the first month sales” and “quite optimistic” about Bangladesh’s growing market of health consciousness and fitness .
French family-owned company, which opened the Dhaka store on July 12, will source products from its warehouse in India, local publication Daily Star reports.
This comes despite Bangladesh ranking as the third biggest after China and Vietnam among the over 28 countries, including India and Sri Lanka, which the sports goods retailer has on its list of sourcing destinations.
Annually, the company sources 100 million pieces of items like tents, shoes and metal frames of bicycles from 50 suppliers in Bangladesh, creating employment for some 50,000 people.
“We have some four (dedicated) industrial partners,” said Deepak Dsouza, country manager of Decathlon in Bangladesh, told the daily.
Explaining why it went for opening a store in Bangladesh, Dsouza said: “Decathlon is trying to make sports accessible for everybody in Bangladesh. So we are initially concentrating only on sports equipment.”
Cricket is the first choice of people in Bangladesh and football second, he said.
Despite this, interest in other sports such as cycling and running, is growing, especially in Dhaka, which has a very big sports community, said Dsouza.
Explaining why it went for opening a store in Bangladesh, he said, “Decathlon is trying to make sports accessible for everybody in Bangladesh. So we are initially concentrating only on sports equipment.”
Cricket is the first choice of people in Bangladesh and football second, he said.
Despite this, interest on other sports is growing, especially in Dhaka, such as cycling and running, which have a very big sports community, said Dsouza.
“Obviously, Bangladesh is now a very potential country with more than 160 million people.”
There is also a growing group of middle-income people and many of them are becoming health conscious and taking part in sports to remain fit, he said. It is creating an opportunity for Decathlon to come and strengthen its presence in Bangladesh, Dsouza said.
“Bangladesh is still growing and that’s exactly the reasons why we came. Because we understood that there is a rapid growth that is really not comparable to other countries,” he said.
Sabrina Jacksteit, retail leader of Decathlon, said the company’s full year market study states that Bangladesh’s sports market was going to turn bigger soon.
“We are happy with the first month sales and we are quite optimistic,” said Jacksteit.
“Bangladesh is like a blue ocean for the company as still there is no competitor here. We definitely hope that one day we will be able to open our typical Decathlon store in different cities in Bangladesh in future,” she said.
“The company has been planning to sell the goods through online like Amazon. We will open the website soon for selling the products online,” she added.
