We opened our first shop in Putney in June 2011, our second store in Richmond in August 2012 and a transactional website (www.sporting-feet.com) in August 2014. We have an established business and proven concept that is now ready for expansion. We have a unique market position, a focussed proposition, a strong brand and an outstanding reputation with our customers, our key suppliers, sports clubs and sports healthcare professionals. We have a customer database of over 8,000 names. |
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We stock a wide range of high quality footwear for adults and kids. We cover key sports such as running, gym, tennis, netball, rugby, football, hockey and cricket. Running is our lead sport, so we also stock a wide range of accessories and clothing in this category. We use the latest digital foot scanning equipment to accurately measure customers’ foot-type, size and width. We also offer free gait analysis. We also stock an extensive range of sports performance insoles that can help prevent injury. We work with most of the world’s key specialist sports brands including asics, adidas, Brooks, Garmin, K-Swiss, Mizuno, New Balance, Polar, Ronhill and Saucony.
Our mission is ‘To help our customers find and buy the most suitable footwear for them and their chosen sports’. We accurately measure feet and foot type and we conduct a thorough gait analysis. These services are free of charge but ensure that we recommend the most appropriate and best fitting footwear. Buying footwear is very individual and personal process. For running in particular, it is vital to receive expert advice when buying footwear to avoid injury. We also cover a wide range of sports. Footwear for many of these sports, such as tennis and netball are not widely distributed. We are unique in covering so many sports under one roof and for catering for kids as well as adults.
We sell sports footwear to consumers. We buy these products directly from manufacturers or distributors and sell them on average at a 50% mark up. Margins do obviously vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and category. We currently hold stock with a value of approximately £140,000 at purchase price and £300,000 at retail price. Our stock turn rate is just under 4x. We aim to increase this rate and to reduce our stock holding. Fortunately our stock is mostly made up of new and fast selling models of footwear from our leading brands. Reducing the value of our Cost of Goods Sold online on the P&L and increasing online sales are both key to increasing profitability.
We are forecasting to make profits of £190K by 2018, based on a business with four retail outlets and a transactional website. We believe though that Sporting Feet has the opportunity to become a much bigger brand with much more significant growth potential. Indeed with further investment we believe that Sporting Feet could become a retail operation with as many as 30 outlets, Clearly we would need to attract additional investment to achieve these goals. Our objective would be to achieve a trade sale after 2018 to a larger operation or private equity company and would expect the value of the business to be in excess of £4M