Adidas announced it will be closing a number of stores in the coming years to focus more on online sales.
The news comes after that Footlocker announced it will close around 110 stores in the United States in 2018 alone.
In an interview with the Financial Times, CEO Kasper Rørsted said:
“Over time, we will have fewer stores but they will be better… Our website is the most important store we have in the world.”
The sportswear giant is the latest company to fall into the “retail apocalypse,” with in-store sales falling across the board and a growing number of retailers shifting their focus to e-commerce.
Adidas is aiming to double its online revenue to $4.91 billion by 2020. The athletic company has 2,500 stores globally and 13,000 additional mono-branded franchise stores.
Adidas plans to launch a recruitment drive, aiming to hire 200 digitally focused staff.
Rørsted is increasing company expenditure, aiming to spend €900 million this year after already boosting expenditure by 40 percent since he joined in 2016. Logistics and distribution is also a primary area of focus for the company and Rørsted said Adidas’ network was “totally different”.
“When you ship to a big retail chain, you ship pallets of shoes,” he said. “But when you sell to the end customer, you ship maybe one pair of shoes, some socks and maybe some shorts.”
The transition to digital has been in the works for a while for the sportswear retailer. Reebok, which is owned by Adidas Group, had closed 35 Reebok stores in the U.S.