What does design mean at DECATHLON?

Women and men,
at the service of sportpeople

At the heart of DECATHLON, there is us: men and women, and above all, passionate sportsmen and women! We work every day on the design of sports products and services. We are involved at every stage of the design process with a single objective: to offer you the most appropriate and high-performance product.

Divided between our different brands (Kalenji, Quechua, Fouganza, Kipsta...) or between the transversal services (Innovation, Sustainable Development, Customer Service...), we work as a team to accomplish our mission: to make the pleasures and benefits of sports accessible to people, and in a more sustainable way !

The steps in the life of a DECATHLON product

Sports users, we're watching you
(it's honestly for a good cause)

We design products for sports users. So it seems obvious to go and meet them and get their views and listen to them. How do we observe them? How do we define and respond to their needs? We explain it all to you!

The first steps of the product concept

After the observation phase, comes the creation stage. We put our sports clothing or equipment through quite a few stages before arrival in our sales departments. At first, these are just concepts by the way. We refer to them as a “product concept”. whose guiding principle is a set of specifications for use. For this phase of creation, brainstorming and workshops are the order of the day before a prototype is produced.

The right product:
it's about making the right choices

Designing a product means making a lot of choices, always trying to make the best ones. We check its feasibility and make technical, sensory and aesthetic choices before validating it.

Technical formalities and industrial prototypes

The product concept is functional : it has the right materials, the right colours, the right graphics, etc. Our teams have taken decisions about the price and the manufacturing location. Next step: formalising the request. And providing the supplier with a technical file to start the industrial prototyping.

The last prototypes, the last tests!

Our team of designers has formalised the industrial prototype's request. The technical file is ready. Next step: meet our suppliers to discuss and go over the final details before launching the industrial prototypes and manufacturing.

Picture of a test phase in a laboratory for a pair of shoes

The product is tested and not just once

The test phase is an important stage in the design of a product. Tests are carried out in the laboratory and directly on the playing fields of our sportsmen and women.
This is essential in order to guarantee our B'TWIN bikes for life or to ensure the 10-year guarantee on our QUECHUA backpacks. Finally, it is often with you, the sportsmen and women, that we take part in "test missions" to evaluate our products and participate in their design.

Will it be selected or not?

We have the industrial prototypes, our engineers have tested them in the lab and in the field. We move on to the selection step, one for each sport and each season: colours, organization of departments, prices, etc. It takes between 6 months and a year before the launch of the collection in store to anticipate production and delivery time.

What's next ?

Designing our products to reduce their environmental impact

Our ecodesign approach integrates environmental considerations into product development, with the aim of reducing the impact throughout their life cycle. It serves as a playbook for our design team to develop performance-driven, sustainability-focused solutions.