After developing a network of large stores in the country’s bigger cities, SportScheck, Germany’s leading sporting goods retailer, is now determined to make it into smaller towns as well.

With smaller stores with a selling surface of some 1,000 square meters, Scheck is targeting urban areas with more than 100,000 inhabitants.

A two-story pilot shop will open on 1,200 square meters in the city of Reutlingen, in the Stuttgart region, next July. Located at a distance of 40 kilometers from Stuttgart, the new shop can count on a catchment area of half a million people.

Besides its online and catalog retail business, Scheck currently operates 16 stores across the country, each with a surface of well beyond 2,000 square meters. In its financial year 2011/12, Scheck had total sales of €408 million after VAT.

( by SGI Europe through Ispo Newsblog )