Fedas General Assembly 2010 in Amsterdam

Fedas members are well prepared for competition

The participants at the Fedas General Assembly in Amsterdam had to deal with a comprehensive agenda.

Amsterdam - The member associations of Fedas – the European Federation of the sports retail trade associations – and the specialist retailers they represent not only live up to the fierce competition on the European sports goods market; they even benefit from it to acquire further market shares. This is the balance drawn at the annual Fedas conference, which the Dutch association Mitex and its managing director, Dave Quadvlieg, hosted in Amsterdam for the association’s representatives from France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Fedas managing director, Claude Benoit, from Bern, and Fedas president, Werner Haizmann, from Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt focused their business reports mainly on the association’s extremely successful work and, above all, on the standardization of the electronic data exchange in the framework of the product classification key that has been created by Fedas and is operated by the federation. It has now become a standard feature all across Europe and will remain so in the future. This will be guaranteed by the FSO, the Fedas Standardization Organization, whose activities are extended even further by all members and which is to be presided over by a professional managing director in the future.

As before, Fedas attempts to advance the establishment of common Fedas statistics in close cooperation with the relevant bodies of the European Union. In this area, it is not only Pierre Gogin, CEO of the French retail association FPS, who is involved, but also Kommerzialrat Ernst Aichinger from the Austrian industry and commerce association VSSÖ, who is, at the same time, chairman of the statistics committee of the European association of sports goods manufacturers, FESI. Supported by Fedas president, Werner Haizmann, and Fedas secretary general, Claude Benoit, further steps will be taken next autumn.

The major topic of the Amsterdam meeting focused on the trends in sports goods distribution across Europe and on the question as to what structures will achieve on the market. Amongst other things, problems were discussed with the viewpoints of the various associations in mind centering on problems such as: Will the big devour the small? Will discounters oust the specialist trade and online traders the brick-and-mortar trade?

Pierre Gogin, head of FPS, gave one of the key lectures on this subject. He presented the development of his largest member, Décathlon, in great detail and highlighted the roots of the world’s biggest sports goods retailer in the specialist trade. In this context, he answered the question as to the significance of the company, which dominates almost 50 percent of the French market, saying that the entire French market had grown along with Décathlon with, however, the latter’s share having remained unchanged. This is proof of the tremendous boost in competition that Decathlon has triggered in France and various other European countries and which Intersport International and Sport 2000 face increasingly and with great success.

In its entirety, he said, Fedas is still convinced that above all the medium-sized specialist trade will maintain its position on the market in the concert of further concentrations, and also in the face of the multi-channel marketing of the future. Of course, all Fedas member associations have to be prepared for this development and look for possibilities of an active cooperation with the entire sector. First steps have already been taken in cooperation with FESI with the establishment of working groups.

The members of the Fedas annual meeting thanked president, Werner Haizmann, and secretary general, Claude Benoit, for their outstanding associational work over the past year. They also praised Mitex managing director, Dave Quadvlieg, for the excellent organization of the meeting.

The next Fedas annual meeting will be arranged by the Italian partner organization in Rome from May 22 to 24, 2011.

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Pierre Gogin, head of the French retailer association FPS, introduced the development of his largest member – Decathlon – to his colleagues in great detail.