Decathlon, a French athletic goods retailer, has announced the opening of a subsidiary named Pulse in addition to revealing its new strategic plan and visual identity earlier this year. Decathlon established Pulse to create new business units and concepts internally, invest in creative start-ups, and purchase existing brands and stores outright in an effort to find new growth drivers.
At the moment, Decathlon runs 1,700 locations. The group has not revealed how much money it has set aside for the Pulse initiative. Exploring “new frontiers and generating additional growth in the long term” is Pulse’s stated goal. Decathlon’s global revenue surged by 12% in the fiscal year 2022, but only by 1.15% last year, to reach €15.6 billion.
Ultimately, Decathlon has stated that it wants to take advantage of outside chances in order to expand. The intention is to purchase well-known, “solid,” brands as well as sporting goods merchants who are “forward-looking and able to revolutionise the sector.”
“Decathlon Pulse is a distinct and complementary entity to Decathlon, and shares its same ambition to move humanity through the wonders of sport. Decathlon Pulse will be dedicated to finding new growth drivers and game-changing innovations in the sports market,” said Barbara Martin Coppola, CEO of Decathlon since 2022.
In order to drive this initiative, which will also help Decathlon expedite “the adoption of new sustainable business models,” the organisation named Franck Vigo as managing director of Pulse, who would oversee an autonomous ad hoc staff. After working for Decathlon for 21 years, Vigo assumed leadership of the company’s merger and acquisition division in 2019 and dubbed it the “exploration” department. Pulse has named Martin Coppola as its new president.
