JD Sports CEO Regis Schultz on U.S. Growth, Gen Z, & Lifestyle Retail | World Retail Congress 2025

Hello, everyone.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Razinga.

And we are coming to you live from the Vusion Group booth at the World Retail Congress.

And I'm excited.

We're kicking off our coverage today with none other than the CEO of JD Sports, Regis Schultz.

Regis, welcome to omnitalk.

Thank you.

You just had a pretty phenomenal on stage performance.

How are you feeling afterward?

Very good, Very good.

Well, I'd love to start.

Start with a little bit of your background and what you oversee in your role at JD Sports, if you don't mind.

Oh, background.

I'm a retailer from day one.

I was born in a shop.

My mother had a shop.

So I've been in retail for too long.

But for a long time.

What kind of shop did she have?

She had an organic food shop.

So she was quite ahead.

Yeah, I'm very.

I'm not so.

So old.

I'm very young.

No, she was ahead of her time at that time.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

That's unbelievable.

And where did you grow up?

In France.

In France.

You will see that with my accent.

Yeah, no, not difficult.

Not difficult to pick up.

Well, and tell us a little bit about your role now at JD Sports.

What do you oversee?

Jd?

You know, I have the pleasure the owner to be the CEO of JD Sport.

She's a great business.

Really a fantastic story from, you know, business create in Manchester in 1981 and today number one in the world and doing more than 15 billion US dollar turnover, more than 1 billion US dollar profits.

Bigger than food, Tuka.

Bigger than Dick's.

So we are the number one uncontested.

Biggest and number one seller.

That's amazing.

Bigger than Dicks.

All right, so US expansion, it's been a big part of your strategy as you talked about.

What do you find are the differences between the US customers, say, compared to the customer in Europe or other places?

I think customers are the same.

Are the same.

Okay.

Are the same.

I think that, you know, there is always small difference.

But you know, sneaker is the shoes and they go into our top seller are the same across the world.

It's really interesting.

If you take the top five will be the same.

After that there is difference around the culture.

So in US you have a strong basketball culture, in Europe, a strong football culture.

So that will drive some of the difference.

So that will be a difference.

And after that, in terms of apparel, there is more difference because UK you have a.

Which is linked to football, a strong tracksuit culture.

That doesn't exist in us.

So you see that the sport, the culture of sport is passed is driving the difference that we can find.

But you know, at the end what the consumer wants is the same.

They want new products, they want exciting story, they want a product not only for the product but what's the magic around it.

What's the story and what's the story that we are telling with the product and we why we have been successful is that we are just all about lifestyle.

So we are not talking about sport, we are talking about talking about the street and how you bring something that was designed at the beginning for the stadium that is now in the street and that's what we make.

And that has been the major development in the last 15 years where the sport apparel has been and the sports shoes has been moving from the stadium to the street.

And we have been the first one to do that and we are the only pure player on doing that.

Because if you take Nike Adidas, they are about sport and they need to continue to be at sports.

We don't claim anything on sport, we claim to be a lifestyle player to offer fashion to our customer and we do only in one category which is everything that is coming from sport.

So I want to push you a little bit on that or ask you a follow up question on that.

So from an omnichannel perspective, when you think about because we're here at this conference, we were hearing a lot this morning about the need to get things quickly.

Do you see any differences in terms of that across the seas, us versus on Europe?

No.

Pretty similar.

As I say, what customer across the world they want new stuff, they want new new products, they want exciting story, they want innovation, that's what they want and that is across the globe.

And with TikTok, one of the most phenomenal success shoes has been, one that big is creating only on TikTok and TikTok is worldwide, is global and that go across the globe very quickly like that.

Regis, I was just going to ask you that actually you said that you don't see a difference in what consumers want.

Like the top five products are the same.

Is that true when you start thinking about getting into the hearts and minds of Gen Z when you start to try to approach that generation you mentioned via TikTok but are there differences in how you're going after that generation to really bring them into the JD family?

Yeah, because we are all about the other part of the success of JD has been really targeting and talking with this teenager customer.

And that is where you are multi brand by definition.

You just get rid of your mom deciding for you.

You don't want a brand dictating.

So you are multi brand by definition.

That's what we deliver for them.

You want to be able to cross, to take stuff from one one brand to another one.

You know, when you are lifestyle in the street, it's really rare that you have only one brand.

So you will have a little bit of Nike, a little bit of Adidas, because that's lifestyle.

That's what we do.

No D2C can do that.

And you know, and we see, you know, things which, you know, in the street you see, you know, for example, latest trend is around this compression thing that is very technical.

But they put that as a lifestyle because they want to show, because they go to the gym, they want to showcase their body.

And you know, this is a lifestyle product which is a very, very technical.

And you know what, the brand has not done so well.

And some of the other retailers, they continue to talk to the consumer about a technical product.

We don't, we talk no technical.

We just, you know, the way we merchandise our product is like Zara Capsule the same way.

So, and we change it very frequently.

We change across the story.

We build story together.

That's fashion.

So Regis, how do you, how are you working then with the brands to tell that story?

Because that's a very different mentality for them.

And when you're a multi brand player, I'm sure you have to have those conversations.

And that's why we are 50% of what we're offering is what we call SMU, which is specific product, because we come to the brand and to say we don't want a product, we want a story.

We want, we want something that is around style, which is around story.

And that's why we have been developing our own product with the brand.

So we benefit from the brand expertise, manufacturing, brand work, and we build story together.

And when it's the most powerful is when we do that together.

Because this partnership is incredible.

We know the customer better than the brand because we have them in our store.

They know the product better than we do.

And putting the two together, it's magic.

Yeah, you're taking that data that you have across from their cross brand preferences and kind of helping inform those products that you need to be creating.

That's really cool.

Have you been to the World Retail Congress before?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

What are you looking forward to this year?

What are you excited about?

I think it's meeting people, you know, it's always, you know, it's always great to.

To be able to meet in person.

That's, you know, that's what make the human different than talking through a screen.

100.

So the personal connections, that's what brings you here.

How many times have you been here?

Have you lost count?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Too many to count.

Too many, Too many.

I'm too old now.

Yeah.

Back in the day when we used to show off our bodies in the gym, like you mentioned before, before we all got old.

All right, so what are your priorities for 2025?

Like, what are you looking to accomplish here by year end?

And how are you Looking already into 2026?

What's on your mind?

Well, you know, it's very volatile out there, so, you know, priority can change every day.

So.

But I think that, no, I think for us, it is really around continuing our success and our organic development in US and in Europe because we.

We have on a.

We have a fantastic story.

You know, we start us in 2019.

We bought a business finish line, 1.5 billion turnover, making no profit, losing a little bit of money.

We are today a 6 billion business, making 10% profit.

So that is our story.

And we continue on that trend.

Same in Europe.

We start from nowhere.

In France, in fact, we start by buying a very small business, let's say 300 million business.

And we are now around 4, 5 billion in Europe.

That's what we do.

We develop the brand.

And that is my first priority.

Second priority is to build infrastructure to make this sustainable.

So I want to make sure I got those statistics right.

And for our audience back home too, particularly because you guys are still relatively new, six years, essentially, on the JD Sports label.

So you said from 2019 to 2025, you went from $1.5 billion in sales in the US to $6 billion.

Is that right?

That's right.

And what is fueling that growth, particularly like, where's that growth coming from?

It's coming from our proposition.

You know, new store, new stores, investment in the store proposition, you know, believing in our store, believing in our people, the right product for the right customer.

That's really around, you know, delivering a great experience for the consumer.

And how much has the store base changed over that period of time?

It's.

We add, so through acquisition, 1,000 stores.

So we double.

We double the store a little bit more than that.

Yeah.

Okay, got it, got it.

Okay, great.

Well, Ridges, we want to just say thank you so much for taking time today to stop by and talk to our our audience today.

Thanks to all of you who are following along.

Chris and I will be here for a little bit while a longer the weather is great and then also the rest of the week, so come stop by.

Thanks again to Fusion Group for their support of all of our coverage here from the World Retail Congress.

And until next time, be careful out there.