Decathlon eyes multi-brand retail in India

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Mar 3, 2023

French Sportswear business Decathlon is in talks with the Indian government to enable it to retail products from other brands in its brick-and-mortar stores in the country. This would make the business a multi-brand retailer in India, which is how it operates in numerous other countries. 

“We are a single-brand retailer- so we are asking [the Indian government] for the possibility of selling different brands in our shops,” Decathlon’s global CEO Barbara Martin Coppola told the Economic Times in an interview. “Right now, we only sell Decathlon products and what we would want is to have the license for opening up to other brands.” 
 
The reason that Decathlon has so far only retailed its own labels in India, despite operating as a multi-brand retailer in other countries, is that Indian Foreign Direct Investment regulations prevent 100% FDI in business-to-customer multi-brand retail. This means that international businesses either need to partner with Indian businesses for their B2B multi-brand operations in the country or need to exclusively cater to the business-to-customer market. The government has stated that this is designed to stop foreign brands from undermining local businesses. 

“We believe in offering our customers the widest choice across sporting products and categories, including seeking a provision for sports industry in India where single-brand retailers can also offer up to 20% of their inventory from other local and global brands across their sales channels,” said Coppola. “India has been a good country to business in and that’s why we want to accelerate.”