SPORTS DIRECT

Sports Direct

Sports Direct

Introduction

Sports Direct Int. is a British retailing group. The company was founded in the year 1982. The owner of the company is Mr. Mike Ashley, he was one of the finest squash coach. Sports Direct is one of the biggest sports retailing firm in United Kingdom. The group owns approx 470 stores in United Kingdom and a number of retailing chains. Although the company is now listed on London Stock Exchange but Ashley still own 64% of the total shares of Sports Direct.

Strategic Business Units of Sports Direct

The strategic business units of sports direct includes, SportsDirect.com (Sports World prior to 2008), Lillywhites, Field & Trek and Republic. There are more than 470 stores in United Kingdom.

BCG Matrix of Sports Direct

Stars

Republic

SportsDirect.com

Question Marks

Lillywhites

CyclesDirect

Cash Cows

Field & Treck

CyclesDirect.com

Dogs

Bike Clearance

Umbro

Original Shoe Company

The BCG Matrix is used in order to identify the operations of the company that what is suitable for the company to run and what products or brands should be disposed off, so that the company can safe itself from bearing huge loses.

In the case of Sports Direct, (Republic) and (SportsDirect.com) are considered as the stars. SportDrect.com is the merger of different brands line from sports direct. The brands include Streetwise Sports, Sports Soccer, Sports World and Gilesports. So the IT strategy used here is very efficient for the business expansion (Tallon and Kraemer, 2003, p. 2004). Question marks are the one which require greater investments and it is very uncertain that they will be generating profits or they will be costly for the business. Hence the uncertainty makes them called question marks.

Lillywhites and CyclesDirect require huge investments, but it is still uncertain that they will be generating profits accordingly. Field & Treck and CyclesDirect.com are considered as cash cows because they are the running brands of Sports Direct. So these two cash cows are mature in the market, and they are at the stage that they are running and generating profits. So it is better to dispose them off by selling them, or by merging those business units with other (Mooradian and Matzler et al.,pp.171-190, 2012). For Sports Direct, Bike Clearance, Umbro and Original Shoe Company were the businesses that became the Dogs for the business.

The company sold these groups back in 2007 and the decision was quiet adequate.

The sports direct is trying to capture larger market share, for this purpose they need to clearly state their functional ...