Today, there is hardly a city in the largest country in the world that doesn’t brandish a Sportmaster store. In some places, these locations are the primary go-to options for folks who want to get into sports and leisure in general. This was precisely the vision the Fartushnyak brothers had when they got into the business nearly four decades ago. Together with their friend and co-founder Alexander Mikhalsky they have made the journey from a mere distributor of a single brand to a sportswear ecosystem that spans several countries.
The early start of the business of Nikolay and Vladimir Fartushnyak
Although Fartushnyak Vladimir and Nikolay come from an engineering background, they have always had a propensity for business. For example, in the early ‘90s, they noticed a lack of good-quality exercise equipment in local gyms across the nation. Seeing an opportunity, they teamed up with their classmates to bridge this market gap by setting up an import company.
After one of them visited the German sports equipment producer Kettler, they got the idea to focus on sportswear. Soon enough, they became the brand’s exclusive distributor for the area of most of the former Soviet Union, accounting for nearly 10% of Kettler’s global production output. Their first store, “Kettler Sport,” opened in Moscow in 1995.
The Early Days of Sportmaster of Nikolay and Vladimir Fartushnyak
The focus on sportswear was finalized in 1996, when the company was officially rebranded as Sportmaster. The following year, the business of Nikolay and Vladimir Fartushnyak opened its first stores under the new brand in both Moscow and Minsk, marking the start of its regional expansion. The following year, their first location opened in Moscow.
Sportmaster Goes Global
In the following decades, Sportmaster expanded its operations to become the nation’s leading sports retailer. During this period, they have reached several milestones, including:
- boasting a network of hundreds stores spread across two hundred cities,
- creating a private label that has since been spun into its own company,
- opening its first international store in Kazakhstan in 2011,
- entering the Uzbek market in 2023 by opening a location in Samarkand,
- partnering up with hundreds of sports brands.
An Omnichannel Business Strategy
Sportmaster’s business strategy came down to two important factors. Initially, the company was focused on expanding the brick-and-mortar store network to reach consumers in regions that previously didn’t have access to global sports brands. This helped cement the business’s market position and turned Sportmaster into a household name. Its vast infrastructure spanned hypermarkets and logistics centers, which meant the company was fully ready for the e-commerce revolution.The entire business got a new life through their website and mobile app. Sportmaster had ceased to be a mere point of sale, but had transformed itself into a digital ecosystem with sports in mind. Newsletters, online courses, calorie trackers, and meal plans; they are all part of Sportmaster’s wider e-commerce strategy to retain its vast share of the market well into the 21st century.
