It was the sunny afternoon of November 11, 2016. We were getting prepared for the recruitment procedure for Decathlon at our hostel premises. I can tell you now, anyone who has not gone through the sports round of Decathlon recruitment procedure has missed an experience of lifetime! It started with a ‘beep test’, a real test of endurance, followed by two uniquely designed team sports round. As demanding as it gets, the sports round is a true test of character and I don’t know how, but I got through it to be selected for the PI round. And guess what, the Decathlon people were super-awesome to conduct the process in sports attire! You can only imagine to walk into an interview room in your sports tee and shorts and come out of it, bagging a summer internship offer! Well, that’s exactly what happened to me!
I joined Decathlon-Wagholi store at Pune on April 1, 2017 (No, they hadn’t played any April Fool prank on me, thankfully!). I could tell from the first sight that it was different from any other workplace! Employees were coming in sports attire, dropping by and shaking hands with each other, greeting them with a warm smile. I soon figured that it was part of the awesome work culture and fantastic employee bonding at Decathlon. I met my mentor, Simar and the store manager, Tushar soon who briefed me about the company and its values. Being a sports enthusiast myself, I was deeply convinced by Decathlon’s vision to make sports accessible to all and it didn’t take me long to blend into the sporting culture of this awesome place, making new friends, and trying out new sports whenever I could!
But make no mistake, Decathlon was not all about playing around and having fun. I was soon assigned to Inesis & FLX department- the in-house golf and cricket brand of the company. I was expected to manage the sales for these brands for the next two months, all while working on the assigned summer internship project. That means you have to work for those straight 9-hour long shifts in which you are not expected to sit for even once (except the lunch break of course!), manage the visual merchandising of your brands, dealing with even the ‘unfriendliest’ of customers in the friendliest way possible and so on! Trust me, it was not an easy job. But yes, it made me learn sales in and out in a hard way!
Coming to my summer internship project, I was expected to develop a market development strategy for Inesis, the golf brand of Decathlon. The deliverables included developing a competitive analysis of the brand, a user analysis for Pune golfers, awareness building program for Inesis and identifying distribution network opportunities in local golf clubs of Pune. I had to find out about every golf brand available in Indian market, their price range, quality and technical details (let me know if you are looking to buy a golf set, I am kind of an expert by now!), reaching out to golf clubs, meeting local golfers, conducting surveys and what not! The best part of the project was I even got to go out and try my hands out on the game on a couple of occasions!
The best thing I liked about Decathlon? I already mentioned their awesome work culture. The other thing is their amazing focus on customer service. ‘Outservice than outsmart’ –they truly live up to their motto. Next is the freedom at work you can have. You are absolutely, and I repeat, ABSOLUTELY free to do anything to improve your brand’s business. You can set your daily pilot strategy, manage your layout format, and set your own merchandising display, anything! You are truly the owner of your brand. You are free to make as many mistakes as you can, as long as you keep learning from them.
Was there any downside? Well, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. True ownership means you are accountable for every minute details of your layout, something as big as deciding your growth strategy to as trivial as managing cleaning work. No weekend holidays, rather being in sports retail, you will only be overloaded with work on Saturdays and Sundays. It can be very demanding at times, and you have to be really passionate to live up to it.
By the time I completed my project work and ended my tenure on May 29, 2017; I got a real hang of how sales work, how visual merchandising is taken care of in retail outlet, how a brand commercial policy should be developed and many more. Decathlon was truly a great learning experience. Add to that, I made some fantastic friends, tried my hands out on skateboarding, and played a round of golf at the prestigious local club. Overall, it was an experience of a lifetime and a very enriching one. Decathlon-Wagholi, you will be cherished forever!
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Comments
Kabir Jain
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https://blog.internshala.com/2017/09/internship-at-decathlon-sports-and-sales-the-best-combination-ever/ The two articles are quite siimilar in their content literally !
2 Mar 2018, 09.19 PM