Offering practical and eco-friendly services

Humanity is currently facing environmental challenges directly linked to the exploitation of our planet’s resources. In this volatile, uncertain context, we must be more proactive than ever in combating the destruction of our environment by working to further the economic, ecological and societal transition to new consumption models.

At Decathlon, we are taking stock of our responsibility in light of these challenges and exploring new operating methods. By incorporating the circular economy and functionality into our business model, we can harness the energies of teammates who are already leading the way with their voluntary initiatives. These include platforms that encourage people to reuse sporting equipment, workshops that enhance product reparability and durability, events that feature second-hand products, and donations.

These local initiatives, alongside our long-standing Workshops and Decathlon Occasions second-hand platform, highlight the range of options available to our sports users: incorporating reparability right from the design stage, encouraging people to learn to maintain their sporting equipment, offering second-life products that meet the needs of our sports users, and producing sporting equipment from recycled materials.

2018 ESSENTIALS

We stepped up collaboration between our decathlon brands and the workshops, applying our after-sales policy from the product design stage onward.

We launched the decathlon occasions platform for second-hand goods, promoting ways to reuse sporting equipment and organising local sporting events (trocathlon).

We continued our efforts to offer sporting equipment that is pre-owned or sourced from recycling streams alongside our new products.

“We have two main reasons for instituting the buyback programme: parents often purchase bicycles that are too big for their children in hopes of getting more use out of them. Buybacks are a great way to give a financial incentive to regularly change sizes, so that children can fully enjoy their bicycles. We were also looking for solutions that would enable us to increase our influence on the market for second-hand children’s bicycles, in which our B’twin bicycles have a significant share.

Our sales account for two-thirds of new bicycles, but only 5% of the used bicycle market, which makes up a third of the market as a whole.”

FABIEN DECROZE

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR FOR B’TWIN CHILDREN'S BICYCLES

SECOND LIFE EVENTS: REFURBISHING OUR SPORTING EQUIPMENT

Our Quechua teams launched the Second Life initiative in 2016, holding events in our stores or workshops for customers and equipment users where damaged products like jackets, tents and sleeping bags could be repaired and resold.

At the Mountain Store, the process of refurbishing products includes several different services, such as patching, changing press studs and sewing. The products are then placed on the shelves, with a Second Life corner in each department.