One of Australia's leading sports apparel companies has been bought for $610million.
Super Retail Group, which is made up of four businesses including Supercheap Auto, Boating Camping and Fishing, Goldcross Cycles and Ray's Outdoors, has today announced it has purchased the Rebel Sport chain.
Market leader Rebel, which employs 3,000 people and started up in Sydney in 1985, sells sporting and leisure equipment, apparel and footwear.
The agreement was reached with Rebel's owner Archer Capital and chief executive of the Super Retail Group, Peter Birtles, said the acquisition is consistent with the group’s strategy of expanding into adjacent leisure retail businesses.
“The acquisition represents a fantastic opportunity for the group to leverage its retail and supply expertise in a highly complementary business, and to build Rebel’s position as the national leader in sporting goods retailing,” Birtles said.
“Rebel will strengthen the group’s leisure and apparel retail offering, while the group can provide the required expertise to accelerate Rebel’s growth and store roll-out profile to optimise Rebel’s operations.”
The acquisition includes 90 Rebel Sport stores, 36 Amart stores and two Performance Sports stores.
Birtles said there is 'significant potential' to grow Rebel from 128 stores to a total of 185 over the medium term, across both the Rebel and Amart banners.
The group intends to maintain Rebel as a separate division known as Sports Retailing, based in Sydney.
Over time, and after a thorough integration planning process, the group will seek to derive supply chain efficiencies through leveraging the expertise and capabilities of the combined businesses.