Global Sales
Our Global Sales function drives the commercial performance of the company by converting brand desire into profitable and sustained business growth. We aim to deliver the best service to our retail partners and the best shopping experience for our consumers across all touchpoints. Our goal is to establish scalable business solutions that deliver premium experiences, thereby meeting and surpassing consumer expectations with an integrated brand offering.
In 2023, we enhanced our relationships and brand spaces with key retailers to win consumers at every touchpoint, sustained a strong global presence by maintaining a consistent global framework with around 1,860 own retail stores, and amplified our own e-commerce.
Navigating a challenging market environment
The challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions in 2023 continued to impact our business, with some markets affected more than others. To address these challenges, we focused on strongly reducing our inventory levels by significantly reducing our buying volumes and tactically repurposing existing inventory as well as reducing discounting activity to lay the foundation for a better 2024. In Wholesale, we focused on building better partnerships with our customers and executed our conservative sell-in strategy. In own retail, we strategically reduced our store portfolio. Aiming at improving the overall profitability, we have been prioritizing strategic locations to offer consumers the opportunity to experience the brand’s pinnacle offerings. Within our e-commerce platform, we focused on drastically reducing promotional activity, driving full-price sales and building brand desire through relevant storytelling around key products and events. We continued to provide premium, connected, and personalized shopping experiences through exclusive products and engaging member offerings in 67 countries.
2023 channel mix
Wholesale remained our largest channel, accounting for 59% of total net sales in 2023 (2022: 61%). The share of DTC business, consisting of own retail and e-commerce sales, was 41% in 2023 (2022: 39%). Our ‘adiClub’ membership program is now established in around 50 countries, enabling us to build direct relationships with our consumers.
Net sales by channel
Wholesale
Our primary goal in Wholesale in 2023 was to improve our relationships with our partners and collaborate with them to navigate in a challenging retail environment. Through meticulous planning and strategic foresight, we executed transition plans with the explicit aim of regaining trust and achieving a significantly improved business set-up by year-end. Employing a conservative sell-in strategy, we vigilantly tracked customer sell-out and inventory levels. Additionally, we actively supported initiatives to reduce inventory levels in the market by assessing the customer’s performance and agreeing on a transition plan. We created specific action plans for each key account to ensure we had cleaner inventory levels, a more focused sell-in, and better in-store presentation.
Our goal was to reset the marketplace and invest in future growth with our partners. Progress was made with our branded space initiative, which involved rolling out enhanced footwear walls globally with improved visual merchandising. The initiative also supports us to elevate our brand and ensure we present ourselves in a strong way toward our consumers. In the fourth quarter, we saw early signs that our approach to selling more customer-exclusive products is beginning to have a positive business impact. This is also attributed to our enhanced collaboration with our customers to build more relevant product differentiation. By sharing and scaling these programs across other markets and channels, we were able to start unlocking additional sales opportunities in 2023.
As part of our sharpened focus on Wholesale, we ramped up our interaction with our major customers across the markets. We hosted more customers at our various campuses around the world. For example, we held a partner camp at our Herzogenaurach campus in 2023, which brought together our top key partners from markets worldwide. This event served as a platform to showcase our strategic future brand direction, accentuating the strength and potential of our brand. We took our digital sell-in tools ‘CLICK’ and ‘Digital Showroom’ to the next level by enhancing the sell-in and order placement experience for our accounts and sales teams. We continued to focus on our digital capability to team up with our accounts and win online together. This allowed us to deliver an enhanced and consistent shopping experience in digital wholesale by integrating our product images and descriptions into customer systems to power their website and app experiences.
Own retail
Our own retail stores allow our consumers to directly interact with our brand, product, and teams, and to touch and try our products, feel inspired by our stories, and experience what we stand for as a brand. Through premium experiences and the human connection with our teams and communities, we aim to build brand loyalty and increase consumer lifetime value.
In 2023, the total number of stores decreased to 1,863 (2022: 1,990) as part of our portfolio strategy and as a result of the company’s decision to wind down its business in Russia. Despite the overall goal of reducing the number of stores in 2023, we continued to invest in creating a more profitable business. Consequently, Emerging Markets for example, grew their store base by taking over a number of franchise stores in Saudi Arabia with the goal of optimizing the fleet and increasing sales through improved operations.
With our fleet of halo stores (including flagship stores and brand centers) focusing on premium experiences, core stores (including concession corners) with a more commercial focus, and factory outlet stores for the value-seeking consumer, we provide an environment to satisfy a wide variety of our consumers’ needs when shopping for our product and connecting with the essence of our brand.
Halo stores remained a priority in 2023, as they are at the top of our concept store fleet. We continued to elevate our presence in strategic locations through additional flagship stores and brand centers. For example, we opened a brand flagship store in Seoul Myeongdong, the first in Korea. It was awarded with the Gold LEED certification, recognizing the effort to turn this store into a sustainable space. We also upsized one of the existing brand centers in Bangkok, doubling its size and making it the largest brand center in Asia-Pacific. A new brand center in Sydney marks the first halo store in Pacific. The space features works by several artists who have used their creativity to pay homage to Sydney’s famous landscapes, giving it a local touch. The store spans two floors and covers Sportswear and Performance categories as well as Stella McCartney products and is home to our iconic Originals range. In addition, we remodeled the brand center in Hong Kong in line with the ‘Home of Sport’ store design concept, adding new features such as artwork by local artists, a locally designed women’s zone, an adiClub members space and, at 26 meters, the longest footwear wall. Moreover, we undertook a remodeling of the brand center in Tel Aviv and opened the first Originals flagship store in Beijing.
Stores by concept type
E-commerce
Recognizing the changing dynamics of the marketplace, we redefined the role of e-commerce within the broader ecosystem as we leveraged our capabilities and experiences to improve profitability and focus on premiumization.
In 2023, we continued to expand ‘Digital’ across all of our channels and touchpoints in 67 countries. Our adiClub membership program remained a cornerstone of our membership interactions. Building on its successful launch in 2022, we expanded the redemption feature to 19 new countries, allowing members to use their accumulated points across all our digital and retail touchpoints for new capabilities. These included points for raffles, ‘Money-can’t-buy’ products, vouchers, partner offers, so-called ‘Golden Tickets,’ and donations. In 2023, we introduced ‘Points x Premium Subscription’ and launched our partnership with Les Mills, solidifying our dedication to empowering members through unique experiences. This positioned adiClub as one of the only membership programs where members can level up through physical activity, not just purchases.
The 2023 marathon season was a success. We trialed new ways of member engagement across all our touchpoints and activated major races on the adidas app, our sports app, adidas.com, and social media.
Tigist Assefa set a new women’s world record with a time of 2:11:53 hours wearing the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, a shoe that sold out within minutes in an exclusive hyper-drop online. Embracing inclusivity, we democratized these races by introducing immersive digital race experiences on our sports app, enabling members worldwide to partake in events like the Dubai Marathon, ‘Road2Records’ in Herzogenaurach, and the Berlin Marathon. More than 450,000 members participated in virtual races ranging from five to 21 kilometers, allowing them to celebrate their own victories alongside our athletes. Looking ahead to 2024, we will elevate these experiences and extend our digital race offerings to include all major events on the running calendar.
Our adidas ‘Confirmed’ app – our digital boutique and premium touchpoint for sneakerheads, streetwear, fashion, and style enthusiasts – continued to thrive through collaborations with high-fashion brands and pioneers such as Moncler, Bad Bunny, and Wales Bonner in addition to our own premium franchises. In 2023, we refreshed the visual appearance of the app, doubled down on our approach to community, and started incubating new business models, such as hosting an innovative first marketplace experience – the ‘adidas Consortium Cup,’ a sneaker design competition between our Consortium fashion influencer partners across the globe, which allows highly engaged communities to influence releases. The app continued to deliver coveted and premium products to adidas consumers, offering best-in-class experiences and further solidifying our status as a trendsetter in the global lifestyle world.