International sporting brand Decathlon has announced the opening of its second store in Melbourne, on the back of strong success with other domestic locations.
Located at 1464 Ferntree Gully Road, Knoxfield, the store will commence trading in November this year.
Today’s announcement forms part of Decathlon’s expansion plans for Australia.
In June, Decathlon announced it would be opening a second store in Auburn, Sydney this year and up to five new stores in Victoria within the next two years with its first store opening in Box Hill South in November.
Arriving in Australia in 2017, Decathlon opened its first store in Tempe, New South Wales late last year.
Since opening, the store has enjoyed strong success, selling over 60,000 items on average per month, attracting 500,000 visitors per month and selling over 600,000 items to date in total including online sales.
The brand is one of the world’s largest sporting retailers, often likened to the Ikea of sporting goods, and originates from France.
It has 1200 stores across the globe in 30 countries and 80,000 staff worldwide.
Decathlon Australia CEO Olivier Robinet said the brand is now well and truly part of Australia.
“We are extremely pleased to be expanding our presence across Australia.
“Building on the success of our website and our first store in Tempe, Sydney, we want to maintain the momentum by opening further stores across Australia. The people of Australia have embraced our brand and we are excited about this.
“Today’s announcement confirms our commitment to the Australian market and demonstrates our passion to share our wonderful brand with as many Australians as possible.
“In keeping with our generous warehouse design, the stores will be over 3800 square metres in size, represent over 70 sports and carry more than 7,000 different products, with walls and aisles lined with an endless array of unique and innovative items.
“Australians are some of the most active people in the world, the whole country is like a playground! Prior to our arrival, many Australians had to spend hundreds of dollars to get a quality product. Decathlon has now changed this.
“We offer high quality products at affordable prices with great service and interactive experiences in store. Customers can try and test out our wonderful products in our ‘active zones’ and even take products home to try them for up to a week.
“We employ many local staff and our whole team is focused on assisting customers to fall in love with sport and benefit from our great products, affordable prices and wonderful service.
“In fact, our expansion means that we will be providing jobs for hundreds of Australians. Each store employs up to 100 people. I encourage everyone to go to our website as we are currently hiring for our new stores in Melbourne and Sydney. We also source services through local suppliers.”