Bradford-based online running shoes, clothing and outdoor gear retailer SportsShoes.com has reported sales up 4% to £93.3m and a 13.3% year-on-year increase in EBITDA to £6m in the 12 months to 28 February 2025.
Premium inline sales rose by a third (34%) and the company acquired 672,465 new customers during the period.
The company said the growth was, in part, related to the launch of its app last August. The app has hit more than 200,000 downloads in the past 12 months and now accounts for 12% of revenues.
The company also operates a strong physical presence, with more than 100 activation events over the 12-month period, both in the UK and internationally. These included Nike Test and Trial initiatives, Parkrun, RunThrough UK events, Kendal Mountain Festival and activations at nine marathons, including London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, New York and Osaka. The retailer says this allowed Sportshoe.com to reach seven million consumers physically last year.
Established in 1982, SportsShoes.com offers customers in the UK, Europe and Scandinavia more than 17,000 products from 150 global running and outdoor brands, including Asics, Nike, Adidas, Salomon, Montane, Rab and Patagonia.
Ambitious vision
SportsShoes.com managing director, Brett Bannister, said: “Our vision is to be unrivalled in running, a disrupter of the outdoor category and Europe’s number one performance destination.”
“It’s striving to achieve this vision which drives our creativity when it comes to customer engagement through physical activations, and customer retention due to an outstanding online shopping experience.”
“A guiding principle for our business is ‘do it first and be remembered’. By always applying this to our thinking, whether it’s how we launch a product for a brand partner or what we do to refine our internal business processes, the result is continuous innovation and improvement.”
SportsShoes.com also operates a partnerships strategy to generate revenue. This included the announcement in January of a partnership with health and life insurer Vitality and its 1.8m members, which rewards physically active members with access to exclusive offers on clothing and trainers.
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