Adidas store numbers to contract as focus shifts to online

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In an interview with Financial Times regarding the push into online, Adidas chief executive Kasper Rorsted said that brick and mortar store numbers will "contract slightly" but that these stores will be better in future.

“Our website is the most important store we have in the world,” said Rorsted. “It has priority when we hire, when we allocate our resources and when we build our infrastructure.”

As part of its focus to improve the online shopping experience, Financial Times reports that the German activewear brand has already introduced a highly personalised smartphone app in the US, the UK and Germany, with plans to expand to more countries in the coming months.

Rorsted noted that one of the key areas of investment for the group is logistics and infrastructure, such as fulfilment warehouses for online shoppers. “The entire logistics is totally different ... When you ship to a big retail chain, you ship pallets of shoes; but when you sell to the end customer, you ship maybe one pair of shoes, some socks and maybe some shorts.”