Sports Experts has completed an approximately $8-million transformation of its flagship store at CF Carrefour Laval, reworking the two-level location to carry more inventory, improve customer navigation and support growing e-commerce fulfillment from the store.
The approximately 45,000-square-foot Sports Experts/Atmosphere location is operated by Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo, a third-generation family business with five Sports Experts stores in Quebec. Carrefour Laval is by far the most important location in the portfolio, accounting for roughly 40 per cent of the group’s sales.
“Carrefour Laval has always been the big part of our group,” Hugo Beaulieu, co-owner of Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo, told Retail Insider.
The store soft-opened on August 6, followed by its official grand opening on August 12. Early sales have exceeded the projections established before the renovation, and the group is already revisiting some of its purchasing, staffing and marketing assumptions for the location.
Rebuilding a Store That Wasn’t Outdated
The size of the investment is notable because the previous store was still relatively modern. Carrefour Laval underwent a major renovation in 2015 and became an important flagship for Sports Experts, introducing what was internally known as the “white” concept. The project brought Sports Experts and Atmosphere together within a cleaner environment, increased the emphasis on brand-based merchandising and incorporated technology that was considered advanced for sporting-goods retail at the time.
Retail strategist Carl Boutet, who toured the newly completed store with Beaulieu, said the previous design had aged well.
“The previous design wasn’t outdated,” Boutet told Retail Insider.
The problems were largely operational. Clothing, footwear and equipment were divided between the first and second levels, creating a customer journey that Beaulieu said could be confusing. Some customers left without realizing the retailer carried a particular product or brand because they had not reached the relevant part of the store.
Inventory requirements were also increasing, while ship-from-store placed additional pressure on back-of-house areas that had not been designed around the current volume of e-commerce activity. Beaulieu said the Sports Experts stores involved in fulfilling online orders effectively operate as a decentralized warehouse network.
An Expansion From Within
Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo initially looked for ways to obtain considerably more space. Beaulieu said his ideal configuration would have been approximately 70,000 square feet on one level, but the group could not identify a viable long-term option at Carrefour Laval.
That left the family with the existing premises and the challenge of getting considerably more out of them.
The project extended the mezzanine internally by approximately 2,000 square feet, increased back-of-house capacity and reorganized the sales floor. Salem Architecture, which handled architecture and design for the project, has described the strategy as an “expansion from within.” Construction required Sports Experts to close completely for about five months and operate temporarily from the former Toys “R” Us across the street.
Most apparel is now concentrated on the main level, while footwear has moved upstairs alongside categories connected to running and fitness. Bikes and skis remain downstairs for convenient access to service areas, while categories including sunglasses and licensed merchandise have been repositioned.
The layout is also more direct. Angled fixtures and irregular circulation paths have given way to long sightlines across the store, which Beaulieu compared to a series of “bowling alleys” that make departments easier to find.
There is a financial rationale behind some of those changes. Beaulieu said categories can generate dramatically different margins and sales productivity, making floor-space allocation an important operating decision. The bicycle department, for example, occupies less space in the new store, yet Beaulieu said bike sales were running approximately 20 per cent higher following the reopening.
Footwear Drives the New Flagship
The biggest change is upstairs, where Sports Experts has approximately 1,425 to 1,450 footwear models on display. The wall has capacity for roughly 1,600 models, while the footwear stockroom can hold approximately 60,000 pairs.
Boutet described the department as the “pièce de résistance” of the store, although he was equally interested in the amount of inventory sitting behind it.
For Beaulieu, displaying a large assortment only works if the retailer has sufficient inventory across sizes to make that assortment available to customers. At a high-volume store such as Carrefour Laval, that requires considerable stock behind the sales floor.
Boutet said the strategy runs against some of the assumptions that shaped stores during the growth of e-commerce. Retailers spent years pursuing the “endless aisle,” carrying limited inventory in stores while offering customers the option to order unavailable products or sizes online. He believes customers who have already travelled to a store increasingly expect to leave with the product.
“They want to have the inventory. They want to have the exact model that they’re looking for,” Boutet said. “I want to walk away with this now.”
Footwear has also produced the strongest early results. Beaulieu said sales in the category were recently running approximately 70 per cent above previous levels.
Technology Has to Earn Its Space
Three Aetrex 3D foot-scanning systems have been installed in the footwear department. The technology measures customers’ feet and generates footwear recommendations, helping associates work through the large assortment and giving customers more information when choosing running shoes. Boutet noted that the system is brand-agnostic, allowing recommendations to cross suppliers.
Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo’s approach to technology has changed considerably since its 2015 renovation. At the time, the store installed RFID-enabled screens in the footwear department that could tell customers whether particular sizes were available. Beaulieu said maintaining RFID tags became labour-intensive, while inventory discrepancies sometimes resulted in a screen showing merchandise that employees could not locate.
The screens also took up selling space. Beaulieu said removing 12 of them eventually created room to display another 144 footwear models.
Technology remains visible in the new store through digital displays, wayfinding tools and specialized systems such as Aetrex, but the group has become more selective about where it is used. Boutet said the digital elements are integrated without overwhelming the store.
Fitting Rooms Get an Upgrade
The fitting rooms include heated floors, individual digital screens and adjustable lighting that lets shoppers move between warmer and cooler colour temperatures. Beaulieu said someone buying swimwear during a Quebec winter, for example, can use warmer lighting to better approximate the environment where the product might be worn.
The screens can carry short product and brand messages. Beaulieu sees the fitting room as an important point late in the shopping journey, when the environment can affect a customer’s confidence in a purchase.
Back-of-House Becomes Part of the Retail Strategy
Some of the project’s biggest changes are largely invisible to customers. Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo substantially reconfigured storage and fulfillment areas to support greater inventory depth, easier replenishment and e-commerce fulfillment.
“The back of house for me is often more fascinating than the front of house,” Boutet said.
That infrastructure is particularly important in footwear. Displaying close to 1,500 models requires substantial stock behind the sales floor if customers are expected to find the right size, while online orders add another demand on the same inventory.
The company also upgraded employee areas, including a redesigned staff room. Boutet said he is seeing more retailers pay attention to employee spaces as they compete to attract and retain workers.
Early Results Outpace Forecasts
Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo soft-opened the rebuilt store on August 6, before launching its major reopening campaign. Beaulieu said that initial period provided particularly useful performance data because the store had not yet received significant advertising support.
During the soft opening, footwear sales were approximately 55 per cent above previous levels, clothing was up about 25 per cent and equipment was approximately 35 per cent higher, according to Beaulieu.
The official opening followed on August 12, supported by a marketing campaign in which the group invested approximately $250,000. Footwear has since emerged as the strongest category, with sales running about 70 per cent above previous levels when Beaulieu spoke with Retail Insider.
The numbers are still early, and the group does not yet know where sales will normalize once the reopening period is further behind it. The performance has been strong enough for management to revise some of its original assumptions.
“We did some predictions that are clearly wrong because we’re performing way better than we thought,” Beaulieu said.
Temporary Store Shows the Value of Mall Traffic
The five-month closure gave Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo an unusual opportunity to see what happened when Sports Experts was removed from CF Carrefour Laval.
During construction, the retailer moved into the former Toys “R” Us location roughly 100 metres across the street. The temporary store offered approximately 50,000 square feet on one level, but customer traffic fell approximately 70 per cent compared with the mall location. Sales declined by about 30 per cent, according to Beaulieu.
The gap between traffic and sales indicates that customers who deliberately sought out the temporary store were much more likely to make a purchase. It also provided a striking measure of the traffic Sports Experts gains from being inside Carrefour Laval.
CF Carrefour Laval spans approximately 1.2 million square feet and contains more than 260 stores. Cadillac Fairview has reported sales productivity of roughly $1,180 per square foot at the property, placing it among Quebec’s leading shopping destinations. New residential development is also underway adjacent to the mall, adding hundreds of rental units near the shopping centre.
Those economics help explain why Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo chose to reinvest heavily in its existing premises after exploring possibilities for a larger store.
A Third-Generation Investment
The Beaulieu family’s sporting-goods business dates to 1955, and Hugo Beaulieu’s grandfather, Gilles Beaulieu, was among the founders of Sports Experts in 1967. The current ownership group represents the third generation and operates five Sports Experts locations in Quebec.
The franchise structure is significant in the Carrefour Laval project. The approximately $8-million investment was made by the owner-operated group, putting decisions around inventory, staffing, technology and floor-space productivity directly in the hands of the family operating the stores.
Boutet said that hands-on approach was apparent during his tour with Beaulieu, particularly in his attention to conversion, sales per square foot and category performance. Those numbers are central to how the group evaluates the redesigned store and allocates space.
Physical Stores Move Back Up the Investment Agenda
Boutet sees Carrefour Laval as part of a wider period of reinvestment in physical retail. Retailers have spent years building e-commerce, digital marketing and omnichannel capabilities, while stores continue to account for the majority of transactions.
At Carrefour Laval, the $8-million investment has gone into deeper inventory, clearer navigation, improved fitting rooms, more efficient fulfillment infrastructure and technology used for specific purposes.
“This is a good story for the Beaulieu Group and what they’re doing, but it’s also indicative of broader trends that we’re seeing across retail,” Boutet said.
More Investment Could Follow
Carrefour Laval is unlikely to be Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo’s final major store investment. Most of its other locations have been modernized over the past several years, and Beaulieu identified Joliette as a potential future opportunity.
The group currently operates an approximately 25,000-square-foot Sports Experts in Joliette that Beaulieu said generates strong sales productivity from a broad regional customer base. Groupe Beaulieu-Angelo has already told its landlord it would be interested in approximately 40,000 square feet with direct exterior access if an appropriate opportunity becomes available.
For now, the immediate task is determining where sales at Carrefour Laval settle after the reopening surge. The flagship is already performing well enough that the group is revisiting the sales, inventory, staffing and marketing assumptions made before committing approximately $8 million to the project.
