Adidas has announced plans to close a number of stores in the next few years as it seeks to ramp up its online offering.
In an interview with the Financial Times, chief executive Kasper Rorsted said Adidas’ website “is the most important store we have in the world”, adding that he wanted to have fewer, better stores in the future.
“Ten years ago, our stores were a revenue-driver,” Rorsted said.
“In the future, they will also be a driver for the brand.”
This comes amid the sportswear retailer’s plan to raise its online revenue to €4 billion (£3.48 billion) by 2020, more than doubling its reported turn over last year.
To achieve this Adidas has embarked on a recruitment drive, aiming to hire 200 digitally focused staff.
Rorsted is also dramatically ramping up company expenditure, aiming to spend €900 million this year after already boosting expenditure by 40 per cent since he joined in 2016.
A main area of focus has also been logistics and distribution and Rorsted said Adidas’ network was “totally different”.
“When you ship to a big retail chain, you ship pallets of shoes,” he said.
“But when you sell to the end customer, you ship maybe one pair of shoes, some socks and maybe some shorts.”
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