Why Tutto Sport's Discount Strategy Is Killing the Brand (And What To Do About It)

Let me be blunt: Tutto Sport is stuck. And if they don't wake up soon, they're going to discount themselves into oblivion.

I've been watching this trainwreck unfold in the Tunisian sportswear market, and it's a masterclass in how NOT to position a retail brand. While competitors like Peak Sport and Hummel are playing the discount game successfully, Tutto Sport is fumbling the ball badly. Here's why.

The Discount Paradox: Why "Cheap" Doesn't Always Work

Loss aversion is a powerful psychological trigger. Buy-one-get-one offers and 60% discounts can move product like magic—but only if you have the margin structure and brand positioning to support it. Peak Sport can afford crazy discounts because they've built their business model around it. They have the gross margin to play that game.

Tutto Sport doesn't.

I recently saw a video they posted on 23 July 2025 showcasing shoes under 200 dinars. It was, frankly, creepy. The products looked like leftovers, old stock nobody wanted. And here's the killer: when you sell Nike at 190 dinars, consumers don't think "what a bargain!" They think "this must be fake."

This is what behavioral economists call the "too good to be true" heuristic. You're not attracting customers—you're repelling them.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: there's virtually no difference between a 30% discount and no discount at all in terms of psychological impact. But when you hit that 40-60% threshold? That's when the activation goes crazy. That's when loss aversion really kicks in.

Tutto Sport is stuck in the worst possible middle ground—discounting enough to erode margins and brand value, but not enough to trigger the psychological mechanisms that make discounting work.

The Premium Play: The Only Way Out

My recommendation? Stop the discounting entirely. Go the other way. Enter the land of premium value.

I'm not against discounts in a premium model—but they must be justified. End of season sales, specific clearance events, yes. Random "everything must go" pricing that screams desperation? Absolutely not.

What Tutto Sport needs is a retail design and experience so compelling that customers never question the trustworthiness or the price. They need to engineer every single customer touchpoint to create a perception of premium value.

This is the strategy. Not cheaper shoes. Better experiences.

The Competitive Landscape: A Numbers Game

Tutto Sport sits in the middle. Not dominating. Not niche. Just... there.

They can't win on product alone—they're selling the same brands available elsewhere. So where can they win?

Six critical areas:

1. The model

2. The story

3. Customer experience

4. The content

5. Trust

6. Familiarity

Let me break these down.

 Customer Experience: The Forgotten Differentiator

I used to sell running shoes at Peak Sports, so I know how this industry works. And here's what I know: customer experience in Tunisian retail is appalling.

Visit any sports store and you'll notice something immediately—customer experience is not primordial. It's an afterthought. This represents a massive opportunity.

Tutto Sport is selling brands available elsewhere. The product won't differentiate them. A brilliant customer experience absolutely can.

Knowledge as Competitive Advantage

Customer experience in this category begins with knowledgeable staff. They should be perceived as experts. Even their clothing should signal expertise.

Create an internal certification program for sales staff. Make it visible—badges, certificates on the wall. Share staff expertise on social media: "Meet our shoe fitting expert."

Staff need three types of knowledge:

1. Technical knowledge: Foam technologies, shoe stacks, construction methods

2. Sales knowledge: Needs discovery, customer archetypes, mirroring, objection handling

3. Hospitality knowledge: How to create memorable experiences

 Touchpoint Mastery: Learning from the Best

I'm going to reference Will Guidara's book "Unreasonable Hospitality" here because it's brilliant and directly applicable.

Guidara's advice: Go granular on customer touchpoints. Identify every single point of interaction between brand and customer. Write them down. This is called touchpoint interrogation.

Examples of touchpoints:

- When a customer enters the store

- When they touch a shoe

- When they pay

- When their kids are crying and distracting them

- When they return home and open the shoe box

Each touchpoint is an opportunity to engineer a great moment.

Touchpoint A: The distracted father

A father choosing running shoes while his kids cry and distract him. Solution? Give the children a coloring book or toys. Let dad focus on his purchase.

Touchpoint B: The unboxing at home

Include a personalized thank-you note from the salesperson who helped them. Add a QR code linking to styling tips for their specific shoe.

Touchpoint C: The embarrassed customer**

What exact words do you use to put them at ease? Script this. Practice it.

Touchpoint D: The entrance

How quickly are customers acknowledged? What exact words does staff say? What tone and body language do they use? Eye contact? Smile? Don't leave this to chance.

Touchpoint E: The payment moment

Tell the customer it's a good choice. Explain the return policy clearly. Decrease anxiety. Make them feel good.

Touchpoint F: The return experience

This is HUGE. Make returns ridiculously easy and pleasant. Train staff to treat returns as retention opportunities, not losses. Document and share positive return stories—this builds trust.

 The Right Tools

Get the damn foot measurement device. This is critical for creating the feeling of care that matches premium positioning.

 Silent Irritants: The Details That Destroy

A. Give customers space

Nothing is more appalling than stalking customers. Don't stand near them. Give them space, but always be ready when they need something.

B. Staff should never appear idle

When vendors seem to be doing nothing and a customer passes by, the customer feels stared at. It's disturbing. Staff should always have something to do—organizing stock, cleaning displays, checking inventory.

C. Opening the laces

This is a critical touchpoint. Open the shoes so the customer can slide their foot in without touching anything.

D. The sock situation

Offering nasty socks to customers is a terrible silent irritant. Invest in quality trial socks.

 Luxury Experience Elements

A. The shoe retrieval

Staff should open shoe boxes with care and professionalism. Make it ceremonial.

B. The smell of the store

Olfactory sensations are critical for premium experiences. The store should smell good. Invest in this.

C. Luxury language

Train vendors to speak differently. No slang, no rushing, no dismissiveness.

D. The bag

Create a luxurious bag that has value and can be repurposed. Free marketing exposure and increased customer satisfaction.

 Model Descriptions

Buying premium is buying value. Customers need to understand the value. Every displayed shoe needs a description: category, foam technology, color adaptability, durability, weight.

Staff Compensation: Stop Being Stupid

It's idiotic that shoe stores pay staff around 800 dinars. Imagine paying them 1,100, selecting the best candidates, and training them properly.

How much do you think that extra 300 dinars will return in cross-sales, upsales, loyalty, and brand image? The ROI is blindingly obvious.

 The Trust Gap: Why Segment 3 Is Broken

The Tunisian market has three distinct segments:

Segment 1: Fake Western brands, bad local brands

Segment 2: Peak, Hummel, Decathlon, Springfield (mostly brands selling directly)

Segment 3: Courir, Le Sportif, The Fridge, City Sport, Tutto Sport (resellers)

Segment 3 has a trust problem. Tunisia is flooded with counterfeits. Whoever signals trust best wins.

Tutto Sport needs to demonstrate product authenticity in an unquestionable way. And here's the thing—reducing price doesn't signal trust. It does the opposite.

I'm against showing certificates of authenticity. They're easily faked and everyone knows it. They actually increase suspicion.

Testimonials are the best trust signal.

Show customer stories of shoes lasting through marathons, daily use. Before and after photos—one year later. Customers talking about quality. "After one year" posts—share customer "shoe anniversaries."

This is social proof that actually works.

The Identity Problem: Tutto Sport Isn't a Brand

Tutto Sport is not a brand. It's a reseller with a logo.

It has no identity, and you can detect this easily because everything they do is incoherent and unstructured.

Every brand needs to define:

- What it wants to be known FOR (maximum 2 associations)

- What it wants to be known AGAINST (maximum 2)

Pick a brand archetype that resonates with your target audience. Peak Sport positions itself as the Wise Man archetype (talking about foams and technology and conscious choice-making) and the Rebel archetype (against Western brand tyranny).

For Tutto Sport, I created a rebranding concept. The name has Italian connotations. The category is primarily sport shoes and lifestyle. This combination led me to play with themes: Italia, Mediterranean, streetwear, sport.

Through multiple iterations, I focused on "la belle époque" of Italian tennis and football, combining it with today's modernity in the vibe of Italian architecture and nature. This creates a coherent identity rooted in heritage and style.

Here is my tutto sport brand vibe and identity in this link.

Content Strategy: Where Tutto Sport Is Failing Spectacularly

Look at Tutto Sport's content and you'll immediately understand: this brand has no personality.

There's no specific tone of voice, no clear positioning, or worse—they have positioning but no coherence in execution.

Every video feels completely new, different, from another brand. There's no continuity in video formats. It feels chaotic.

Brands need 80% sameness and 20% novelty in their content.

The content is also profoundly uncreative. No good hooks. No good scripting. But mostly, no brand vibe at all.

Critical Rule: Never Shoot Empty Stores

FOMO and social proof are the most important nudging tools you have. Never shoot store videos when it's empty. Whenever you shoot videos, the store needs to be full of engaged people. An empty store is a creepy store.

 The Top-of-Funnel Problem

I scraped their content on Facebook and Instagram via Meta Ads Library. There's virtually no top-of-funnel content.

Two problems with this:

1. 95% of your potential customers are not in-market right now

2. You need top-of-funnel to attract people and to push price sensitivity down by building a story

Top-of-Funnel Content Ideas

- In-store pranks where you prank customers or employees, or get celebrities to act as salespeople

- Mom and dad reactions (to kids' style choices, sport achievements)

- Style tutorial videos: "What shoes go with what clothes" (collaborate with influencers)

- Collaboration with fitness creators discussing best shoes for fitness, running, or walking

- Video series talking about the stories of certain shoes—their origin and design, using local creators

- Collaboration with lifestyle creators showing shoes in different contexts

 The Micro-Influencer Seeding Strategy

Here's the seeding strategy:

DM creators in a variety of niches. Send them products for free and request videos. Give them brand guidelines and formats you think could work.

Seed 30 to 100 people. Create a WhatsApp group.

Orient them so you get:

- Creators who do top-of-funnel content

- Creators who do middle-of-funnel content

- Creators who do bottom-of-funnel content

Your audience gets nurtured by different types of creators at different stages. This is powerful.

Build incentive structures that push them to post videos frequently.

Then find the outliers—the best performers, the most enthusiastic, the best creators. Offer them 6-month retainer contracts.

Three steps:

1. Seeding

2. Finding outliers

3. Signing contracts

 Familiarity: The Mere Exposure Effect

Let me introduce a behavioral principle: the mere exposure effect.

Most of marketing is based on this principle: the more people are exposed to something, the more they become familiar with it and like it.

This principle makes brands top-of-mind and more trusted in buying situations.

Tutto Sport needs to increase exposure dramatically. The micro-influencer content strategy helps enormously with this.

The Path Forward

Tutto Sport is at a crossroads. They can continue the race to the bottom with ineffective discounting, or they can take the harder, more rewarding path: building a premium brand through exceptional experiences, coherent identity, and strategic content.

The choice is theirs. But the market won't wait forever.

The brands that understand this will dominate Segment 3. The ones that don't will become footnotes.

Which will Tutto Sport be?