French sporting goods brand Decathlon bets on try-it-before-you-buy-it model to battle industry heavyweights in Hong Kong
- Company opens third store covering 36,000 sq ft in Tseung Kwan O
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Marc Zielinski, Decathlon Hong Kong’s chief executive, loves to run outside work hours. But when it comes to expanding the French sports equipment company in Hong Kong, he says: “It is not a race.”
“Yes, we have plans to expand. But we like to say we open where we are needed,” Zielinski told the South China Morning Post this month during the soft launch of Decathlon’s third store in Tseung Kwan O, about two years after the brand first entered Hong Kong.
The 36,000 sq ft retail space, which the company said was the largest sports retail store in the city, opened to the public last Saturday, June 15.
Unlike its first two stores in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, where rent is among the most expensive in the world, it opted for Link Reit’s Sheung Tak Plaza, a neighbourhood mall located among public housing.
“If we want people to test [our equipment], we need space,” Zielinski said. “At the same time, we need to adapt to a Hong Kong reality where we don’t have space everywhere.”