Sport 2000 recovers

The sport shop association Sport 2000 is back in the black, it has emerged.The company – a cooperation of 272 businessmen running 242 stores – said today (Mon) its earnings in the 2009/2010 business year, which ended on 30 April, were 1.006 million Euros.Sport 2000, whose headquarters are in the Upper Austrian town of Ohlsdorf, suffered losses of 483,000 Euros in the previous business year.The company also said turnover rose from 355 to 368 million Euros.Meanwhile, its chief Gerhard Schwab revealed he will resign by the end of this year. Schwab, who took over in 1998, explained: “I want to start something new.”Sport 2000 is one of Austria’s biggest sport shop chains. Its main competitors are market leader Interport, Sports Experts and Hervis.Sport 2000 also does business in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.Market analysis agency RegioPlan announced recently the Austrian sports retail sector managed to increase its turnover by more than three per cent year on year in 2009.It said branches in the country had an overall annual turnover of 2.2 billion Euros, up by 3.5 per cent compared to their performance in 2008.RegioPlan explained that the trade was one of the branches which did well in “crisis year” 2009 while many other business sectors struggled due to the effects of the global crisis.