JD Sports prepares Paris opening, broadens retail footprint across France
British sneakers and sportswear chain JD Sports arrived on the French market in 2010 and currently operates 70 branches in the country, but it has not yet opened a flagship in Paris. The sport retailer will plug this gap next year, when it will open a store at 118-120 rue de Rivoli, a re-energised commercial thoroughfare on which the La Samaritaine shopping centre is set to open next spring, possibly also joined by Uniqlo.
JD Sports will take over premises of just under 2,000 m2 formerly occupied by H&M, and is planning to open around the third week of May. The store is currently being renovated, but its shop windows already feature the yellow and black JD logo. JD Sports is clearly keen on opening megastores in major world cities: it inaugurated a new store in Stockholm in December, and it plans to open a flagship branch in New York next year.
In 2020, the Paris branch will be the highlight for JD Sports in France, but the sport retailer is also planning further new stores in the country, its number two market after the UK. Eight other locations have already been signed off for openings next year: at the Lillenium shopping mall in Lille, in Tourville-la-Rivière, Toulon (Mayol), Nantes (Beaulieu), Nancy (Houdemont), inside the La Vache Noire shopping centre in Arcueil and in Strasbourg (Vendenheim).
The JD Sports group owns the eponymous chain, which has approximately 690 stores worldwide, as well as Size, Footpatrol and Chausport, and altogether operates 2,400 stores in 18 countries. In H1 of the 2019-20 financial year, the group reported a significant rise in sales, which grew by 47% to reach GBP2.721 billion (€3.047 billion), including sales by newly acquired chains Footasylum, Pretty Green and Finish Line. The group’s Sport Fashion division, which includes the JD franchise, grew by 12% in like-for-like terms, proof that, besides the new acquisitions, the group is in excellent shape.
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