As the environmental emergency intensifies, many companies are turning to circularity to reduce their impact on the planet. Yet they face a major challenge: turning this model into a sustainable growth engine without sacrificing profitability. To achieve that, Decathlon is betting on one key driver: digital technology. From rentals to the transformation of its internal processes, and through to spare-parts services, this article explores how the brand is leveraging digital tools to reinvent its model and give its products several lives.
Imagine a retail giant generating a quarter of its revenue from circularity. Sounds utopian? Yet that’s precisely the ambitious goal Decathlon hopes to reach within a decade. From 3.5% today, the company aims for 25% of its revenue to come from circular models by 2035. A target already supported by strong momentum: according to its 2024 non-financial statement, revenue from circular models grew by 10.4% in one year, outpacing the sales growth of new products.
This ambition stems from a simple realization: manufacturing inevitably pollutes. And while Decathlon’s mission is to “Move people to the wonders of sports” - that is, to enable as many people as possible to enjoy the benefits of sport - the French company also takes responsibility for protecting its “playing fields.”
“At Decathlon, we’re aware that our activities have a significant impact on the environment, a reality that resonates even more strongly for a company driven by athletes,” explains Magali Joncquez, Decathlon’s Digital Product Director. “That’s why we’re committed to contributing to global carbon-neutrality goals, in line with the Paris Agreement, by reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions across the entire value chain by 90% by 2050, compared with 2021.”
To achieve these environmental targets, Decathlon has built its emissions-reduction strategy around four levers, one of which is circularity. It’s a transformation that profoundly reshapes the way products are designed, distributed, and used. The challenge? Integrating this model into logistics flows without turning it into a financial sinkhole. In that equation, digital technology stands out as one of the main catalysts.
Reinventing retail: digital at the heart of the circular shift
Shifting to circularity is no easy task, especially for a company like Decathlon, historically designed to manufacture new products, store them, and sell them to customers. But buying and usage habits are evolving: customers now want more flexibility (renting), more durability (repairing or recycling rather than throwing away), and more convenience. The logic must flip: from seller to buyer or renter, retrieving products, refurbishing them, categorizing them, assigning them a condition, repairing them, guaranteeing them… all of which requires collecting, processing, and using vast amounts of data. That’s where digital tools reveal their true power.
As Magali Joncquez sums it up: “Our role is to design solutions that don’t yet exist, to remove barriers to the circular use of products by solving the problems our customers face and, more broadly, to evolve the entire ecosystem. Our goal is to make the experience as seamless as possible for the customer, whether it’s trade-in, rental, or repair,” she explains before giving an example. “As both an athlete and a mom, I know equipment needs can be temporary: bulky gear you don’t use often, or a child who’s outgrown their bike. If we could easily rent what we need, when we need it, life would be so much simpler… and greener. That’s where digital really makes a difference, by making these services accessible in just a few clicks from your phone.”
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Rethinking the customer experience through digital
At Decathlon, digital technology is the engine that keeps the circular economy turning. A good example is the Bike Product Passport. Led by Yannis Oumsalem, Data & AI Manager at Thiga on assignment at Decathlon, teams worked on creating a bridge between physical products and Decathlon’s entire service ecosystem built around circularity.
Accessible via a QR code on the bike, the Bike Product Passport acts as a genuine touchpoint, bringing together all the information about a product while highlighting several key dimensions: traceability (technical specifications, maintenance history), e-commerce (personalized product and accessory recommendations), and even in-house apps such as Decathlon Coach for activity tracking.
Since February 2025, this has become reality: all new bikes manufactured for Europe now come with a QR code that allows customers to access their product passport. This feature will gradually roll out to other product categories and regions. It’s an effective way to create value around circularity by promoting related services, as Yannis Oumsalem explains: “For example, it makes it easier for customers to visit repair workshops. When a service is available in-store, the Bike Product Passport provides a ‘book an appointment’ button where users can choose the reason for their visit. On the workshop side, the technician can view the bike’s history and check compatible spare parts.”
Everything has to be thought through upstream. Circularity must be integrated everywhere, at every stage
Given that product repair is a major component of circularity, it’s no surprise that Decathlon has been offering this service in its workshops since 2000. To help customers be more autonomous and increase the number of repaired products without overloading workshops or extending lead times, the sports giant decided to expand its spare-parts offering. Decathlon Digital’s teams were therefore tasked with accelerating self-repair, meaning repairs done directly by customers themselves.
Elettra Doglio, Product Marketing Manager at Thiga, was brought in to support Decathlon teams during the market-research phase: defining market positioning, identifying competitors, and exploring customer alternatives. After conducting both quantitative and qualitative studies with a researcher, focusing on purchase journeys, price sensitivity, and business levers, Decathlon Digital designed a spare-parts compatibility tool for bikes.
“Customers can go to the website, enter their bike’s ID, and the tool automatically suggests compatible spare parts. It’s extremely useful, especially for something like inner tubes! Many customers struggle to identify the correct model and end up buying the wrong one,” explains Doglio, who also worked with her colleagues on the repair journey itself. “In addition to suggesting the right part, we added the product’s technical sheet and included video tutorials specific to each model. After all, repairing a mountain bike and fixing a city bike are two completely different things,” smiles the Go-To-Market expert, who also worked on the tool’s launch in Germany and Spain.
A global digital challenge
The new features Decathlon offers its customers are only the tip of the iceberg. Circularity extends far beyond the website or app - it affects the entire digital ecosystem: logistics, inventory management tools, and more.
“Everything has to be thought through upstream. Circularity must be integrated everywhere, at every stage. We still need to generate growth, and that’s always easier with what we already know how to do. Here, we’re learning to do it differently,” summarizes Magali Joncquez. That also means supporting internal teams through this shift. “To get digital teams on board and help every employee understand how circularity impacts their own products, we focus heavily on purpose, on explaining why we’re doing this and what it means. Overall, there’s a lot of enthusiasm,” says the Digital Product Director.
Given her Go-To-Market expertise, Elettra Doglio was called in for the launch of product traceability in workshops. Because, as she puts it, “launching an internal product is just like launching one for customers… even if your users are employees. They need to understand the solution’s value to adopt it. In our case, we had to convince teams to identify customers via a QR code, compatible with the new tool, instead of by phone number, which they’d been doing for years. We achieved that by working closely with the training teams.” If employees don’t understand why they should change, the alternatives are endless: an Excel sheet, a piece of paper… “It’s about helping people grasp the benefits of change at the company level. If the group’s priorities don’t align with those of local business units, it’s a lost cause,” concludes Doglio. Priorities among which circularity now takes its place.
Because while Decathlon’s core business remains selling new products, the company fully intends to make the circular economy a central pillar of its operations. Yes, circularity introduces new logistical, informational, and financial flows that must find their place among existing ones. Trade-offs have to be made, and not always in its favor - like the time, Elettra Doglio recalls, when the compatibility tool’s touchpoints disappeared from the site during the sales period, replaced by promotional banners.
Even so, circularity still has the potential to become a model where everyone wins: customers, the company, and the planet. Especially with digital there to help make it happen.
Retail is transforming, rethinking its value streams. Circularity, omnichannel, artificial intelligence… If you’re exploring how digital can enable these new models, our Retail experts can help you identify the right use cases, focus your priorities, and transform your operations. Feel free to reach out!
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