Adidas to cut ties with retailers amid ambitious growth plans

Adidas is planning to cut ties with retailers and focus on direct-to-consumer sales amid ambitious plans to grow sales by a third by 2025.

Adidas is following in the footsteps of its larger rival Nike and shifting away from third-party retail sales and sharply towards maximising sales via its own platforms.

The German sportswear giant unveiled its bold five-year plan yesterday, promising to double payouts to shareholders and drive revenues to more than €30 billion (£25.6 billion) over the next four years.




To achieve this Adidas plans to dramatically increase the amount of sales made directly to consumers through its own stores and ecommerce platforms.

Adidas says it expects a whopping 80 per cent of its growth to come from direct-to-consumer sales, driven primarily by a significant digital expansion.

READ MORE: Nike slashes ties with 9 major wholesalers as it pushes to “create the marketplace of the future”

Over the next four years it plans to invest €1 billion (£860 million) into digital operations, helping double online sales to €9 billion (£7.7 billion) over the period.

By 2025 Adidas hopes to sell half of all products to consumers directly through its first-party channels, up from around a third prior to the pandemic.

It comes after Nike announced last August that it had cut ties with nine major wholesalers in a move which will see its products no longer stocked in over 1000 stores.

As part of its relentless shift towards a digital direct-to-consumer model, Nike said it would stop selling its products to a host of “strategic partners” including Zappos, Belk, Dillards, Boscov’s, Bob’s Stores, Fred Meyer, EBLens, VIM, and City Blue.

Collectively this means that its products will no longer appear in over 1000 stores, marking a major step in its “Consumer Direct Offense” strategy, aimed at driving customers to its own websites.

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4 Comments. Leave new

  • Rick Carpenter
    March 17, 2021 10:15 am

    Maybe you should consider beefing up your online security so the bots don’t get all new releases and consumer /collectors gets a chance to buy new releases.

    Reply
  • Adidas releases always a farce due to bots getting them all in 2 seconds flat

    Reply
  • Bye bye corrupt ” Size ”
    It’s been a long time coming.

    Reply
  • Not good for the small independent retailers who have stocked Adidas for 30 years . Again the big boys helping to destroy the High Streets very sad

    Reply

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