Decathlon is a French company specializing in the retail of sports and leisure
products. Founded in 1976, the Decathlon group now has more than 1,700 stores
across 64 countries.
Thibault is the Head of Business Development Europe within Decathlon
Marketplace. His job is to expand and enrich the offerings in 13 European
countries through an ecosystem of partner sellers who offer desired and leading
brands in the sports market.
Decathlon has been using Foxintelligence for over a year and a half and has 220
platform users, making it Foxintelligence’s largest client in terms of active users.
Before Foxintelligence
- Declarative market studies based on the information provided by brands and retailers. Understanding the digital sports market relied on convictions, assumptions, hypotheses, and observations of sports users.
- An incomplete view of the sports market and its ecosystem.
With Foxintelligence
- Objective data: quantified online market shares and validated beliefs.
- Visibility into segments that perform or underperform at Decathlon compared to the market, enabling the enrichment of these segments with additional offerings preferred by sports customers.
- The precise position of Decathlon in its market, relative to other sports retailers.
Decathlon uses Foxintelligence to manage its
e-commerce activity
With Foxintelligence data, Thibault precisely understands Decathlon’s position as
a retailer in its market, enabling a comparison between what Decathlon offers and
what sports customers want.
“Knowing Decathlon’s data-driven position in the sports market is invaluable. We
not only understand our position in the market but also, for example, our running
brands’ position in the running market. Foxintelligence data allows us to validate
and support our decisions.”
At Decathlon, Foxintelligence data is applied across multiple levels.
Daily management of the marketplace:
“Foxintelligence data has allowed us to understand Decathlon’s positions in the
sports market for prioritizing, as well as the market share of each brand.
”Foxintelligence helps us identify brands, product types, and popular products for
sports customers, allowing us to meet their expectations through our Marketplace
partners.”
Foxintelligence helps Decathlon identify underperforming categories to enhance
and offer more to their customers.
“We focus daily on what is important to our customers and sports users. Our goal
was to increase Decathlon’s market share in sports by offering to our customers
brands that are leading or popular in the sports market, justified by their market
share. It’s as simple as that.”
Thibault also uses the “top brands/top products” feature, which shows the best-selling products for each brand. “Once a seller is onboarded on our marketplace,
the goal is to offer these products under the right conditions to satisfy our
customers and sports users.”
For Adhoc Studies at the Board Level
Occasionally, Decathlon conducts specific studies by sport, country, or category.
These adhoc studies help the Consumer & Market Insights team make informed
decisions and enrich internal publications to support or validate strategic
directions.
For Exploratory Benchmarking:
Foxintelligence also enables Decathlon to benchmark. Recently, they explored
aspects such as fulfillment, delivery conditions, and how sports customers
generally shop outside of Decathlon.
“In the future, we plan to explore the Merchant Switch and Brand Switch features
to better understand our buyers’ behavior when they shop outside Decathlon.”
A comprehensive view of the sports market with indisputable data
Before Foxintelligence, Decathlon understood the sports market through
purchased market studies, which were often declarative and relied on data
provided by retailers, brands, or other sports stakeholders.
“For several years, I searched for data that could give us a comprehensive view
of the sports market. With Foxintelligence, we now have real, objective, and
indisputable data. I finally have this comprehensive and objective view of the
sports market and consumption habits in the digital space.”
This data has allowed Decathlon to save time and work more efficiently. “We have
moved from supposition to confirmation of conviction through proof. “We are less
involved in debates about positions, assumptions, or convictions. This fosters a
more constructive environment”
For marketplace seller management, Thibault uses Foxintelligence daily. “For
example, when our visitors search for luggage on Decathlon e-commerce sites, I
recently used Foxintelligence to identify the most popular brands and the largest
online marketplace resellers of these brands.”
The Foxintelligence platform enables Thibault’s teams to be more precise and
efficient in prospecting future Marketplace partners.
Customized onboarding and support
At Foxintelligence, each client has a dedicated Customer Success Manager
(CSM). For Decathlon, it’s Muriel. Muriel is deeply involved in training future users
during the onboarding phase and supports them daily in using the platform.
“We had as many training and onboarding sessions as needed. Whether there are
5, 10, or 40 users, someone at Foxintelligence will always train us and ensure we
use the platform as effectively and quickly as possible.”
“We collaborated on setting up dashboards to establish a common analysis
framework and shared understanding across the company. It’s user-friendly.”
During the onboarding phase, Decathlon’s CSM set up dashboards to enhance
tool comprehension and usage for all users.
“Our CSM is highly accessible and proactive, always focusing on solutions. They
are both friendly and serious, which is greatly appreciated.”
“With Foxintelligence, we have access to indisputable data based on sports customers’ online purchases, providing us with a comprehensive and objective view of the sports market.”
