Hervis Brand Guidelines: SPAR’s 1970 Sports Chain, Sold to Snipes’ Founder in 2026

SPAR, a fashion merchant’s shops and 1970.

Hervis is an Austrian sports retailer that grew up inside a grocery group. In 1970 the Austrian retailer SPAR took over the shops of the German fashion merchant Hermann Visser and built a sports-specialist store concept from them, Trending Topics reported in January 2026, drawing on SPAR’s own account of the sale. FashionUnited gave the same year, writing that the SPAR group began building Hervis in Austria in 1970 and later took the chain into several other countries.

For more than five decades Hervis stayed part of SPAR Österreich, the Salzburg retail group behind the SPAR supermarkets, Trending Topics noted. Its head office is in Wals-Siezenheim, in the Flachgau district just outside the city of Salzburg, Salzburg24 reported in June 2026. In January 2026 the chain had 16 locations in the state of Salzburg alone, the same paper said.

Hervis did not stay an Austrian-only business. Trending Topics wrote that, besides Austria, the chain was active for a long time in six other countries. By 2024 the network reached five countries with 227 locations, according to Vienna Online, which drew on figures from the Austrian company register. At the end of 2025 it ran 91 stores in Austria and 43 more in Slovenia, Croatia and Bavaria, Trending Topics reported; Hungary and Romania, the two markets Hervis described in late 2025 as having drifted towards fashion and away from its sports core, were being sold separately at the time.

The chain does not own its buildings. When the business changed hands in January 2026, a spokesperson for the new owners told the Austrian press agency, as quoted by Salzburg24, that Hervis owns no property of its own and that its locations are all rented.

Ski hire, own labels and a sports-led range.

Hervis sells sports equipment, footwear and clothing from other brands alongside ranges of its own. Its own labels include Kilimanjaro and Benger, which the company’s chief executive, Markus Hupach, said in October 2026 would stay important to the business, trend reported. In the same presentation he named the sports the chain would concentrate on: cycling, skiing, running and trail running, outdoor, fitness and training, team sports, tennis and padel, and lifestyle wear.

Winter shapes part of the offer. Hervis runs a ski-rental service at 15 locations in the winter season, trend reported in October 2026. The chain also sells online and through an app; in October 2026 the online share of its sales was still in the low single digits, according to the same report, and a new web shop and a new app were launched to grow it.

The range has been narrowed more than once. In November 2025, explaining the planned exit from Hungary and Romania, the then managing director said the fashion-led markets there had moved away from the core business and that Hervis would sharpen its profile in Austria, Slovenia and Croatia, Vienna Online reported. After the January 2026 sale the new owners said they would put sports equipment, gear and online selling at the centre and cut back on entry-price goods and fashion items, while keeping the Hervis name, according to Salzburg24. In Austria Hervis trades alongside the buying groups of independent dealers such as Intersport and Sport 2000, Salzburg24 noted in January 2026.

How European sporting-goods chains present themselves.

European sporting-goods chains present themselves most visibly through the shop sign. A name, a logo and a set of colours have to work on a high-street fascia, a shopping-centre unit, a large out-of-town store and a website at once, and the companies show these marks on their own sites and in their store photographs. The colours and type in this guide are our own interpretation, not official specifications.

Store formats vary widely. SportScheck, the Munich chain, runs city-centre stores and an online shop, and in 2024 it opened a 2,000-square-metre Berlin store under a concept it calls “Future Retail,” FashionUnited reported. Sport 2000 separates a general multi-category shop from specialist running and team-sport formats that carry names of their own.

Ownership takes several forms, and it is worth stating plainly. Buying groups such as Sport 2000 and Intersport link independent shops that keep their own owners while sharing a name, buying terms and marketing; Germany’s competition authority named both groups as competitors when it reviewed SportScheck’s sale in 2020. Other chains belong to larger retail groups: SportScheck was owned by the Otto Group from 1991 and by Signa Retail from 2020, and since 2024 it has been part of Italy’s Cisalfa Sport. Own ranges sit beside outside brands, as with Witeblaze, the label Sport 2000 launched in 2023.

Corporate pages tell the founding story in each company’s own words, from Otto Scheck’s Munich clothing business of 1946 to the 36 French retailers who formed Sport 2000 in 1966. This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain — founders, owners, insolvencies and sales, with dates — and marks what rests only on the company’s own account.

A sale, a smaller network and a new logo.

SPAR’s ownership ended in two steps. On 24 November 2025 Hervis agreed to sell its Hungarian business, with 29 stores, and its Romanian business, with 49, to the British retailer Frasers Group, subject to competition approval in both countries, Vienna Online reported; by late January 2026 FashionUnited described the two subsidiaries as sold to Frasers. Then, on 23 January 2026, SPAR Österreichische Warenhandels-AG signed and completed the sale of Hervis GesmbH to Sven Voth, the founder of the sneaker chain Snipes, and Udo Schloemer, the founder of Factory Berlin, FashionUnited and Trending Topics reported. The deal covered all staff and all 134 locations in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Bavaria. SPAR said it wanted to concentrate on food retail.

The new owners moved quickly. In April 2026 they sold the whole foreign business — 21 stores in Slovenia, 18 in Croatia and four in Germany — to an undisclosed investor that took over operations at once, Salzburg24 reported; the same paper named the owners’ vehicle as Quantum Investment Holding of Vienna, held in equal parts by Voth and Schloemer. In June 2026 Hervis said it would close 17 of its 93 Austrian stores during the year, with about 100 jobs affected and a social plan agreed with the union, Salzburg24 reported. As of November 2026 the company’s own website spoke of 80 branches across Austria.

The identity changed too. On an evening in mid-October 2026 Hervis presented a new logo in Vienna, together with a strategy called “HERVIS 4.0” and the brand line “WE : SPORTS,” trend and Vienna Online reported; at the same event the chief executive announced more than 20 further store closures and said the chain wanted to reach a younger audience, with more premium brands and more advice in store.

For a design guide, Hervis shows how a retail name can be kept while almost everything around it — owner, map, range and logo — is rebuilt. Compare Intersport, the sports-retail group of independent dealers, and Snipes, the chain its new owner founded. For this guide we use a shop-sign red, deep brick, black and a snow-white with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Hervis’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.