This SECRET Brand is KILLING Nike and Adidas in India? | Decathlon Business Case Study

The Indian sports industry is one of the fastest growing in the world, albeit on a smaller base and

this

is considerably higher than the five per cent growth that the world is seeing in terms of the sports industry in the last five years. A big obstacle with many small children. practicing a variety of sports is generally a problem of equipment and equipment where to buy a good badminton racket for babies where to find equipment for sports such as horse riding or archery or even for hiking well, we have the answer for you the

decathlon

mega store in Bangalore, so we are not talking about a toy store, but a mega sportsman.

This episode is for you if you are someone who wants to learn how to spot a gap in a crowded market,

this

episode is for you because the story I am going to tell you today is the story of a

brand

that has defeated giants. like Nike and Adidas at their own game in India, while their competitors are endorsed by star studded celebrities, this

brand

does not have any celebrity endorsements, does not have any TV advertisement and yet generates more revenue in India than Nike, Adidas and Reebok. Combined, this brand I am talking about is none other than Decathlon and you will be surprised to know that while Adidas made a revenue of Rs 1551 million, Nike stood at Rs 814 million, Reebok stood at Rs 417 million, while Decathlon alone earned a revenue of Rs 2,936 crore.

The question is without a huge marketing budget without a celebrity endorsement, how on earth did Decathlon manage to make its way into the Indian market? What are the

business

strategies that allowed them to stand out in the crowded Indian sports market and what are the

business

lessons we should learn from the iconic rise of

decathlon

in India. This video is presented through the GPT chat plus the communication master class. Course people. If you are someone who has difficulty expressing your ideas in public. If you are someone who lacks the confidence to speak in public or if you are someone. which she often murmurs while presenting her thoughts to him.

I highly recommend you join our Communication Masterclass course. This course is a six week course where I will take you step by step from a business level to a tedx presentation level, the best part. is that if you have any questions I will talk to you personally during your weekly live sessions to help you overcome every fear you have, you will also get special access to the GPD chat module through which I will teach you how to use

secret

proms in GPT chat to telling stories for business research and even for speaking English, that's why now this is a communication masterclass plus a chat GPT course, so if you also want to master your art of communication and if you want to present your ideas of In the most powerful way possible, join our Communication Masterclass course using the link below and I will see you in the live session to understand the genius behind Decathlon.

Let me take you to the nostalgic Indian market of the 1990s and early 2000s. Most of it is the

secret

to my energy. baby active big kids, this was a time when you and I were super energetic kids who spent every summer playing cricket under the scorching heat of the sun and during that time if you remember buying a tennis ball was a big deal , this was because it required equal contribution from all 10 children and after many fights and fights, by the time we started playing. Five balls later, there used to always be a kid hitting the ball at some grumpy uncle's house and the game was over afterward. that we had no choice but to go home and drink rasna, good old days, isn't it now?

Tell me when we bought those tennis balls? Do we buy them in a brand store? It's not quite right. We used to visit that old neighborhood. shop where our Chacha sold sporting goods and the collection he had was always limited to mrf bats, locally produced soccer balls, bicycles and at best a cricket kit. This was the story of every middle-class household in India, at the same time, for the wealthy people that they were. High end brands like Nike Reebok and Adidas in the mall but even in those brand stores they only sold shoes and in April that's it but if you look at the Indian sports market objectively it was way beyond cricket and football and was far beyond just Gully Cricket, this market had four categories of people, the first type of customers were hopeful customers, they were people like you and me who had good skills with the game but were always on a tight budget, in words simple, they could choose between English Willow and Kashmir below.

I always bought a Kashmir Willow because it was cheap the second type of customers were beginners they were people who had less skills and a smaller budget and they were people who occasionally bought sporting goods just to try a sport and surprisingly there are beginners in every sport in India, from tennis to badminton and even squash, but somehow back then the equipment for these ports was not easily available. The third type of customer was casual enthusiasts. These people have no skills but are rich enough to buy great products, for example, us. I always had a boy who never scored More than 10 runs but always wore a Nike shoe and always played with an SG bat among the adults, they are rich people who buy branded products even for a trip to Goa, so for them the items brands are mainly fashion options and finally, there are Elites, these are individuals who possess superior skills and financial flexibility, they would buy products not for a hobby but to improve their performance, basically professional players, this is a broad categorization of the sports market of the India now, if we look at the brands for With these different types of customers, we will see that Nike, Adidas and Sketchers always catered and continue to cater to the elites and casual style enthusiasts in the market, but in the early 2000s there was a huge market of aspirants and beginners who bought products only in neighborhood stores. in the unorganized market to put that in perspective in 2012-13, while India's sporting goods market was worth $2 billion, 75 per cent of this market was unorganized and only 25 per cent was organized , so three out of four Indians bought products from the neighborhood.

Chacha instead of Nike and Atilas, so when Decathlon entered the Indian market in 2009, instead of competing in the small market with the big players, they decided to compete with the smaller players in the large unorganized market, so Instead of making products for elites and casual enthusiasts, we make products for aspirants and beginners with tight pockets. In India, this is where we saw the rise of Decathlon stores across the country. There are 1,600 stores in nearly 60 countries across the country. world we are now in a rapid acceleration from one store in 2009 to four stores in total in half a century today in India we offer more than 50 sports ranging from badminton to inline skates, each decathlon store offers an amazing user experience through store events and workshops.

Now this brings us to the second step which is your Store Strategy Now If you have ever been to a Decathlon store, you know that it is nothing less than a sportsman's paradise and there is something very special that makes you want to buy everything. If you've ever felt this, you're not the only one. The layout of Decathlon's story is so striking that, according to one

study

, 37 percent of people who entered a Decathlon store ended up with a walk-in purchase, as they were simply passing by and decided to buy something from Decathlon. The question is, are you so extraordinary about your store design, well, there are three elements that make Athlon geek stores super effective.

First of all, if you have ever been to a decathlon store, you will realize that it offers an immersive experience and inside the store, each section has a complete set of gears for each sport and each section gives you enough space to play and use the products freely. This is what entices you to buy the product in the retail business. It is called the endowment effect, so when customers touch or hold a product, they begin to feel a sense of ownership over it and this feeling can make the product seem more valuable to them, which eventually increases the probability of sale in terms of statistics.

Research says that shoppers who touch products are willing to pay more for them than shoppers who just look. In fact, in one experiment, participants who could touch a cup were willing to pay $60 more for the cup than participants who could only see the cup. Another

study

published in a magazine stated that the longer a shopper holds an item, the more likely they are to purchase it, the study found that shoppers who held an item for 30 seconds were more likely to purchase it compared to shoppers who held the item for 10 seconds. Do you see which Decathlon stores make you touch and feel? product so well that automatically the endowment effect is activated and makes you want to buy the product the second element of the store has to do with its wonderful employees did you know that decathlon chooses only those people who are sports enthusiasts as its Executives and they do they choose deliberately?

Only those people who actively practice the sport, in addition to that, during their training period, receive three instructions. never sell to the customer, always educate the customers and most importantly always allow the customers to freely use the products without disturbing them, for example, if you are a beginner looking for tennis shoes and you see three shoes that cost two thousand three thousand five thousand. Ideally, if you have the budget, the staff should convince you to buy the Rs 5,000 product, but even then a Decathlon staff would insist you buy the Rs 2,000 one. product just because it would be good enough for you and not just because she is an athlete herself, she will also explain to you why that product is better for you and these interactions cultivate a speed of trust so incredible that you can walk into a Decathlon store. without being afraid of upsells or hard sales and finally Decathlon's product placement is what we found very, very interesting.

We saw that Decathlon offers products from just Rs 100 to Rs 1 lakh and they very cleverly place their cheapest products at the entrance. so that they can create an impression of affordable prices, secondly, just like Walmart keeps milk packets inside the store, even Decathlon places frequently purchased products inside so that as you walk in, you can see others products and, therefore, increases the probability of impulsive purchasing. According to a study, 84 percent of customers spent more than 30 minutes in the DC Athlon store and as we saw before, the more time they spend on the products, the more likely they are to purchase them and lastly, to ensure that repeat customers, Decathlon always offers value for money by offering great quality products at reasonable prices, their products are durable, offer long-lasting guarantees such as a two-year warranty on shoelaces and finally, they offer a price that It is 30 to 40 percent cheaper than the competition, but the question here is how Earth, are they able to sell such good quality products at such low prices?

Well, there are three simple reasons for that: number one, like Dmart, R stores are rented, second, they don't spend aggressively on marketing and they don't spend on making their stores. They are elegant and, most importantly, they manufacture their products in the same country they sell, for example in India. They currently have eight associated factories where they manufacture their products and by 2026 their goal is to produce 85 percent of their products locally. Now this begs the question if only The cost was their USB, then how did Decathlon differentiate itself from other cheap brands and how did they stand out in the Indian unorganized market?

Well, this is where your innovation quadrant comes into play. This coordinate has four product categories. The first category of products is products. with small improvements and innovations, for example in the unorganized market, the basic headlamp was available with a 20 hour battery and a light brightness of 30 lumens, but Decathlon worked on it and they optimized the product in such a way that they made a rechargeable headlamp with a brightness of 200 lumens with a battery life of 30 hours and with multiple lighting modes, so by default the product stands out simply because of the specifications and this brings us to the second category where there are products that have technical innovations incorporated, for example.

Then when you took normal bikes to amountainous terrain, you needed to change gears manually. That's when Decathlon created a long-distance 920e connected bike. This bike offered an automatic shifting system that automatically changed gears depending on the terrain. It made idling much smoother and easier, so again the product stands out due to the technical innovation that makes it much better and easier to use. The third category of products are products that have an extraordinary user experience. Innovation, for example, they worked obsessively to reduce the weight of trekking products from 15 to 20 now for people like you and me 15 to 20 lighter is not a significant improvement, but if you go and talk to a trekking enthusiast or a mountaineer, they will tell you that a weight reduction of 15 to 20 is a blessing and sometimes could even be a lifesaver and Decathlon not only made trekking instruments lighter but they even made trekking clothing lighter.

Once upon a time their shots weighed around 130 grams in size L but they worked very hard on it and reduced it to only 100 grams, so if you wear 10 pieces of clothing, 300 grams are reduced in just clothing and their best record is to make a t-shirt that weighs a record of only 50 grams and this brings us to the last category of innovation, which are revolutionary innovations and These innovations are literally breakthrough innovations, for example, 10 years ago, the time to pitch a tent was between 20 and 30 minutes, but you know, the Catalans came up with a keshua tent that could be set up in just two seconds.

Yes, you heard that two seconds ago, this was groundbreaking because it saved hikers a lot. of time a lot of energy and gave them extraordinary ease when they were in harsh weather conditions. It also had the great feature of having the tent completely dark so that sunlight would not penetrate and disturb the Trekker while he was sleeping. You realize? When you see products that are so good that you don't need a celebrity or a fancy ad to convince you to buy them, that's how you tap into the untapped market of beginners and wannabes, build immersive and amazing stores, and most importantly, become obsessed with the innovation of products for four decades decathlon became a legend not only in India but all over the world and this brings us to the last part of the episode which is the lessons we must learn from the iconic rise of decathlon, lesson number one while most Of the entrepreneurs are trying to compete in the organized market of India, the unorganized market of India is actually a very big market which has a huge scope of both profit and growth and it is not just Decathlon but even other legendary companies like Haldiram and Havells, have built a multi-million dollar business by capturing this lesson number two of India's unorganized market, with the rise of the e-commerce wave in India, the touch and feel factor has become one of the most powerful and yet most underrated elements in business, so while you may start your business online, never ignore the physical touch and feel factor that offline stores can offer to your products and, Lastly, always remember product innovation will always trump marketing innovation, in short, if you fundamentally make marketing great products a secondary sales instrument and that is a mark of an extraordinary business that is all about Isis today guys if you learned anything available make sure to click the like button to make YouTube happy and for more interesting political and business

case

studies please subscribe to our channel.

Thank you so much. by looking see you next time goodbye