"The strengths of PORTER" is a tool that allows us to anticipate market developments that could endanger the competitive advantages of our product or service, which will allow us to establish investment and innovation strategies. again, this is a global vision and not only on the padel.

The competition:

We can see that the intra-sector competition of the brands is tough. At the level of the 4 brands: Decathlon, Intersport, Go sport, Sport 2000, occupy 65% ​​of the market share of sporting goods. To distinguish themselves from the competition, the brands create their own brands in all types of sports article families: sports clothing and shoes, equipment for snow and water sports, individual and team sports equipment. . These brands use different channels specializing in the distribution of sports articles such as large and medium-sized multi-universe / multisport stores, brands specializing in a particular universe or sport (Veloland, official club stores), sportswear brands-brands ( adidas, nike), sports shoes and multi-brand sportswear brands (running, foot locker).

Finally, competition can be analyzed in other sports distribution channels such as specialized supermarkets (Leclerc), pure players specialized in one or more sporting worlds (Privatesportshop), pure general players (Amazon, C-Discount), ready-to-wear signs and shoe stores (Kiabi), department stores (Galeries Lafayette).

The bargaining power of customers 

The influence of customers on a market depends on the price, terms of sale, and services offered. This will influence the customer, his choice of sign. If we position ourselves as B2C, we observe that the latest trends of the brand are to offer more and more choices of products. In addition, the segmentation of Decathlon's own brands has been reworked, which can disrupt the consumer's experience.

New entrants

Currently, the world leaders in tennis product sales are Babolat, Wilson and Head. The barriers to entry are therefore very marked in terms of innovation and know-how in the production of tennis sporting goods. Babolat is the precursor of the connected racket allowing to collect, transmit, analyze and share the data of his game. These are real personal “data” which make it possible to dispense with a possible coach in order to progress.

In terms of innovation, Artengo stands out a little more on its anti-vibration rackets which limit tennis elbow thanks to its Softfeel technology which “attenuates” more vibrations compared to current rackets. In this technological field, competition is still quite strong.
Consumer loyalty for Babolat is important because its brand image is very strong because of having great champions playing with this brand. These are 300 players under contract, including 150 over 18 and 150 under 18. It is boys and girls of all nationalities who contribute to the visibility of the brand.

Artengo can only progress in terms of this visibility that it lacks. Contracts with very high level players are a weakness compared to those of Babolat. Nicolas Escudé is the pioneer of the Artengo brand and Steve Darcis (best ranking 38rd world) are high-level players who are in contract with it. So it's a big weakness for Artengo when comparing him to Babolat on contracts to represent the brand.

Substitute products

Regarding substitute products, the potential threat could come from the emergence of new racquet sports such as padel, or Beach tennis.

Today, 84% of licensees know the Beach tennis and 21% of them have already played or play regularly.

Relative to padel, 79% of license holders know this sport and 16% have already played or play regularly.

Currently, the interest in these two types of activities is not very high, they are respectively 3,6 and 3,9 / 10 depending on the union sport and cycle. However, the padel knows an undeniable potential, it would be more suitable for a complementary practice of tennis. 58% would use it for leisure or with friends and 39% would register for the club in addition to playing tennis.

The development of the markets for these sports should be watched because the practice of padel is more and more frequent, it affects all age categories and makes it an easily accessible sport for people practicing other sports. In addition the French federation of padel is affiliated with that of tennis and the future plans of the clubs are to build courts. It will be even more necessary to be vigilant on other brands which start to produce this type of racket like Rossignol or adidas.

These alternative products are another major threat to the tennis racket market. The emergence of these new disciplines could shift loyal customers to tennis in these other sports.

The bargaining power of suppliers

If we study the bargaining power of suppliers, Decathlon would be one of the brands least impacted by this negotiation for two reasons. On the one hand it is a retail brand, the bargaining power will be all the more important due to the amount purchased from brand manufacturers.

On the other hand, it has its own distribution chain thanks to its large number of passion brands which it manages the design, manufacture and distribution. The vertical integration allows Decathlon to obtain a much better control over the supplies, costs, qualities etc ... that is why the company focuses more on the upstream of the verticality that is to say on the design and innovation of new products. Decathlon aims to create all its own brands for each sport on the horizon of 2020, the company will no longer interact with brands and will differentiate completely from other stores that they will continue to negotiate.

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovers the padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since padel is part of his life. You often see him touring France going to cover the major events of padel French.

On the same subject