eCommerce Strategy

At the beginning of 2010, a leadership team was put in place to define and outline the strategic direction of the Group’s eCommerce activities for the adidas and Reebok brands. Although both brands have made advances with their respective platforms in recent years, we believe there is considerable untapped potential for the Group in this channel of distribution.

As part of our Group-wide strategic business plan Route 2015, eCommerce has defined its strategic priorities which include:

• Establish eCommerce as the third sales pillar
• Balance Wholesale and eCommerce activities by implementing a new distribution policy
• Create one consumer destination by integrating brand, shop and customisation sites
• Build a best-in-class technology platform
• Drive attraction, conversion and retention by building enhanced e-marketing capabilities.

The success of our eCommerce strategy will rest on our ability to attract, convert and retain the consumer in a crowded marketplace. To attract the consumer, we need to better optimise the visibility of our site and how it ranks in online searches.

We also have to improve our management of paid placement and link our own site to social media to attract larger numbers of the right type of consumer. To drive higher conversion rates, we intend to simplify and improve functionality of our e-commerce platforms to create best-in-class shopping experiences. Finally, to retain consumers we will strive to create targeted communication as we gain a deeper knowledge through improved CRM solutions that will allow for more robust consumer interaction. In this respect, social media will play an important role as it facilitates a deepening of the dialogue with our consumers and a more evolving relationship with them.

With these initiatives, the Group targets to generate € 500 million in sales from eCommerce by 2015.