Success Story
Decathlon India
Discover how The FISH! Philosophy energized Decathlon’s retail teams, helping the global sports retailer deliver an unforgettable customer experience and achieve rapid growth in the Indian market.
Decathlon is a leading sports retail brand known for its unique in-store experience, affordable in-house products, and strong focus on customer engagement—especially with youth.
Situation
The French sports goods major retailer had an ambitious strategy to enter India with its global model of flagship stores. The market for sports goods in India was dominated by smaller unorganized retailers and this was a challenge for the company.Objectives
The main objectives were to have energized retail staff that could create an unusual customer experience and increase footfalls resulting in higher sales.FISH! Approach
The first workshop was for the managers who immediately saw value from this intervention and then workshops were conducted across various stores. Using playstorm and stinky fish exercises, several ideas were generated leading to tremendous success of decathlon in India.Results
The entire team demonstrated a very high commitment to customers—especially children and young adults—through better customer engagement, experimentation, and creating opportunities to play, handle, experiment, understand, practice, and master a sport. They offer free coaching and a play area in every store!
- This has resulted in tremendous success and an increase in the number of stores from 0 to 69 in India.
- Decathlon offers an unusual and engaging store experience for shoppers.
- Its sales are the highest in the sports retail industry in India. With 70 large, warehouse-like stores, Decathlon’s product pricing is about 30–40% lower than competing products, as it sells everything from running shoes to mountaineering equipment under its own brands. This also helps the retailer earn higher operating margins.
