SportsShoes.com grew sales by four per cent to achieve a record turnover of £93.3m and a 13.3 per cent year-on-year increase in EBITDA to £6m in the 12 months to 28 February 2025.
During the same period, the online running shoes, running clothing and outdoor gear retailer said its premium inline sales rose by 34 per cent and 672,465 new customers were acquired.
Established in 1982, the Bradford-based business offers customers in the UK, Europe and Scandinavia more than 17,000 products from 150 global running and outdoor brands.
From a running perspective these include Asics, Nike, Adidas, Hoka, New Balance and Brooks whilst in terms of outdoor they include Salomon, Montane, Rab and Patagonia.
SportsShoes.com has attributed the year’s performance to a combination of elements which form part of its ongoing sustainable growth strategy. These include the launch of its app last August which has now hit more than 200,000 downloads and accounts for 12 per cent of revenues.
In addition, the business prides itself on being the most physically present digital retailer in its space. In total, SportsShoes.com was involved in the delivery of more than 100 activation events over the 12 month period both in the UK and internationally.
These included Nike Test and Trial initiatives, Parkrun, RunThrough UK events, Kendal Mountain Festival and activations at nine marathons, including London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, New York and Osaka. The retailer says this allowed them to reach seven million consumers physically last year.
Thanks to its strong brand partner relationships, which SportsShoes.com terms its “super connection strategy”, the retailer benefitted from a number of successful running shoe launches during the period. These included the New Balance London Marathon Collection, Nike Alphafly, Hoka Cielo X1 2.0 and Adidas Adizero Adios Pro 4.
Commenting on the results, SportsShoes.com managing director, Brett Bannister, said: “Our vision is to be unrivalled in running, a disrupter of the outdoor category and Europe’s number one performance destination.
“It’s striving to achieve this vision which drives our creativity when it comes to customer engagement through physical activations, and customer retention due to an outstanding online shopping experience.
“A guiding principle for our business is ‘do it first and be remembered’. By always applying this to our thinking, whether it’s how we launch a product for a brand partner or what we do to refine our internal business processes, the result is continuous innovation and improvement.
“We want to power every runner and adventurer to run faster, go further and climb higher whatever their ability and, by doing so, positively contribute to their health and wellbeing.
“Staying true to these core beliefs is what keeps us honest and gives us our momentum as we continue to evolve SportsShoes.com as a premium online retail brand.”
Further revenue during the period was driven by the retailer’s partnerships strategy. This included the announcement in January of a partnership with health and life insurer Vitality and its 1.8m members.
This incentivises members to live healthier and more active lives by rewarding them with access to exclusive offers on clothing and trainers.
SportsShoes.com also had success with its athlete ambassadors and sponsorships programmes. Most high profile of these are the M11 track club, of which 800m Olympic gold winner, Keely Hodgkinson, is a member, and SportsShoes.com’s Athletes in Residence to Olympian partnership with Nike.
The latter includes triathlete Hayden Wilde and sprinter Imani-Lara Lansiquot who both competed at Paris 2024 and won silver medals.
Bannister added: “The partnerships, athlete ambassadors and sponsorships elements of SportsShoes.com have been hugely successful and we are continuing to seek out new ones.
“Our ambassador and sponsorship programmes with elite Olympic athletes inspire all of us within the business and they embody another one of our guiding principles which is to be ‘driven by greatness’.
“At the same time, our partnership with Vitality demonstrates the inclusiveness of our brand and our ability to play a role in helping everyone achieve their goals, whatever they might be.”
