why the brand “appeals to all generations” – L’Express

Standing in front of the leotard and demi-pointe department, Céline discusses with her daughter the accessories needed for her next ballet class. In the crowded corridors of the Decathlon de la Madeleine store, in the heart of the 1st arrondissement of Paris, the choice is quickly made. The references are limited, but accessible: the majority of children’s dance tunics are available for less than 20 euros. “If we didn’t have that, we would have to go to the boutiques of Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and pay double the price,” Céline breathes. The mother also took advantage of her visit “to Decath” to slip rain boots into her basket in preparation for an upcoming green class. “Here, you can find everything, quickly, and inexpensively,” she smiles.

With its 325 points of sale spread throughout the country, the Decathlon group has become the reference for French people looking for sports equipment at low prices. On this Saturday afternoon, we come across a thirty-year-old looking for a “warm and inexpensive” ski jacket, a beginner sportswoman coming to look for running pants “more affordable than at Nike”, or a delighted young boy to find Viet Vo Dao accessories, a Vietnamese martial art. They all set their sights on products branded by Wedze, Kalenji and Outshock, Decathlon’s own collections. “The strength of the group is to have succeeded in creating a community around its distributor brands, rather than depending on major brands. The Decathlon name is associated with notions of trust, low prices and quality, which generates great loyalty on the part of consumers”, deciphers Frédéric Godart, author of Sociology of fashion (The Discovery, 2010).

It has been several decades since Decathlon entered the lives of the French. In 1975, Michel Leclercq, the founder of the group, traveled to the United States where he visited huge stores filled exclusively with sporting goods. The click is immediate. While the concept was still non-existent in Europe, in 1976 he opened his first point of sale in Englos, near Lille. Only the ten disciplines most practiced in France are then represented – Michel Leclercq will also derive the name Decathlon. Success is immediate. It must be said that the northern brand entered the market at the ideal time. “The 1970s were a decade when sporting activities really exploded: in France, there were more than 10 million members,” underlines Philippe Tétart, specialist in the history of sport. At the heart of this new craze, “Decathlon is a spur, among many others, which contributes to the escalation around the benefits of sport. The brand responds to needs, but also nourishes new ones,” he explains. .

At the same time, sporting activity is developing outside the clubs. Exit athletics tracks or football fields: sport is now practiced in the great outdoors. “This is what we call ‘Californication’: the demand tends more and more towards a non-institutional framework. Athletes turn their backs on the federations and display their desire to practice in non-competitive ways. The calendar becomes personal and is no longer done based on matches,” says sports historian Thierry Terret. “It’s the advent of windsurfing, road racing, the discovery of urban sport. This takes various forms, for which industrial environments are not completely ready,” continues the specialist. With low prices and an increasingly extensive offering over the years, Decathlon has established itself as the first choice when it comes to purchasing equipment.

Since then, this confidence in the brand has never wavered. To the point that the group has been regularly cited, for around ten years, in the top 3 favorite brands of the French. In 2022, Decathlon even reached first place in the ranking, ahead of Fnac and Picard, according to a study conducted by the consulting firm OC&C. “The excellent value for money of the products is what stands out first in customer reviews,” underlines Jean-Baptiste Brachet, partner at OC&C. This promise particularly attracts families who want to get their children involved in sports. “The question of sports equipment is often an additional cost to bear. Decathlon has largely helped to lift this burden,” recalls sociologist Patrick Mignon, specialist in the evolution of sporting practices. Yohann Diniz, world record holder for the 50 kilometer walk, can attest to this: “My parents came from a working class background, with little money. We went there because we could equip ourselves without spending too much. In the 1990s, finding spiked shoes for athletics was complicated. It was my first purchase in a Decathlon store. I then won the departmental and regional championships with them.”

But beyond sporting practice, the textile products offered by Decathlon arouse another interest. At the Madeleine store, Foued came to fill his wardrobe before the start of winter. “Here, I can get a complete outfit for 150 euros,” he says while trying on a Forclaz cap, the house trekking brand. The young man doesn’t hide it: in his Adidas sneakers and underneath his Lacoste jacket, it’s Artengo socks and a Quechua t-shirt that complete his look. “Decathlon has long standardized functional and inexpensive clothing. There is a dedramatization of its brands, in the sense that they do not reflect a form of prestige or status. And this is what has allowed, paradoxically, their make it cool”, explains Benoît Heilbrunn, professor of marketing at ESCP.

Like Lidl sneakers, Decathlon products have been diverted from their original purpose, to become fashion accessories in their own right. This is how in December 2022, London rapper Central Cee went to the prestigious British Fashion Awards ceremony in a Kalenji hat and Quechua jacket, causing a stock shortage a few hours later on the site. Same success among French rappers: in 2015, a blue Quechua down jacket for 40 euros found itself out of stock for several weeks after the rapper Jul appeared with the said coat in his music video Y-shaped – 76 million views on YouTube. In 2021, a mini-album by rapper Stavo, respectively bearing the titles of Kipsta, Quechua, Kalenji Or Artengo, also paid homage to Decathlon’s house brands. As for the famous Quechua folding camping chair, it has found a place in rap videos and at the bottom of neighborhood buildings, deprived of public benches. In 2019, the singer Hatik even chose to name his album and several of its titles Folding chair. “Decathlon has established itself as an anti-discriminatory brand, both economically and socially. It appeals to all generations and transcends all social classes,” summarizes Benoît Heilbrunn.

Over time, the group would have learned, according to the specialist, to communicate skilfully on different social facts through social networks, “without abusing them”. “Like Ikea or Picard, it adopts offbeat communication, with a lot of humor, as opposed to the very serious products and the cold aspect of its stores. And it works,” he believes. While the northern distributor has more than 766,000 subscribers on TikTok, Twitter or Instagram, Gildas Minveille, director of the Economic Observatory at the French Fashion Institute, confirms a “successful” presence of the brand on the networks: ” They are in phase with today’s world, which has been the fault of certain historic brands which have not been able to adapt. Decathlon’s real tour de force is to have managed to conquer a new generation, without losing its older clientele.”