Foot Locker takes Runners Point off the market

The US retail group Foot Locker is closing all branches of the Runners Point chain of stores, which specializes in jogging shoes; in Switzerland, three branches are affected - in Winterthur, Baden and Lucerne.

As the company told German news agency dpa announced that the stores of Foot-Locker's subsidiary Sidestep (product range: apparel and footwear) will in future be managed from Foot-Locker's European headquarters in the Netherlands. According to Foot-Locker's annual report, there are 77 Sidestep stores in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The US retail group Foot Locker, which emerged from the Woolworth chain of stores, was founded in 1974 and operates more than 3,000 stores in the USA, Australia, Europe and Asia. Runners Point, a subsidiary of Karstadt AG founded in 1984, acquired Foot Locker in 2013 at 100%. As recently as the end of February, Foot Locker had given a positive outlook for rising sales and profits for the current full year, but this was revised as early as mid-March following the lockdown in the USA and many countries in Europe and Asia. (bw)