Innovasport Brand Guidelines: A 1999 Monterrey Sports Chain, Innvictus and Marathon Sports

A sports shop in a Monterrey neighbourhood.

Innovasport opened in April 1999 in the Contry neighbourhood of Monterrey, the capital of the northern state of Nuevo León. English Wikipedia names its founders as Francisco Martín Bringas and María Concepción Villar Manrique, and lists the group’s owners as Organización Marbrin together with the two founders. The Ecuadorian magazine Vistazo gave the same founding year and city in May 2025.

The company comes from a retail family. English Wikipedia says Francisco Martín Borque, a Spanish immigrant to Mexico, co-founded the Soriana chain of hypermarkets, based in Torreón, with his brother Armando. Vistazo, citing an analysis by the Ecuadorian brokerage Fiduvalor, described Innovasport in 2025 as part of the group run by the brothers Francisco and Juan Carlos Martín, under the chairmanship of their father, Francisco Martín Bringas, who also chairs Organización Soriana. The same report said that Innovasport and Soriana share family ties but operate independently, and that only Soriana is listed on the stock exchange.

From the start the chain sold sportswear, footwear and equipment. Vistazo described its business as retail of sports clothing and gear since its creation, with two main banners: Innovasport itself, focused on sporting goods, and a more casual banner focused on what the trade calls athletic specialty.

In 2011, English Wikipedia says, the group opened a store of 2,870 square metres (about 30,900 square feet). Vistazo also reported that the company had built up an online sales channel alongside its stores.

Innvictus, Over Time and the formats around them.

The group’s second big banner is Innvictus. English Wikipedia says it was launched in April 2015 with its first store in the Galerías Monterrey shopping mall, in the same city as the parent chain. Its target customers are sneaker collectors, and its stores focus on athletic shoes, accessories and urban casual wear, with exclusive footwear from brands such as Jordan, Nike, Adidas and Puma, and events such as sneaker trading days, according to the same source. Spanish Wikipedia gives the same account, and both versions note that sneakers grew from plain sports shoes into a fashion and cultural category in Mexico in the decades up to the 2020s, a shift Innvictus was built around.

English Wikipedia counted 200 stores across Mexico as of November 2023: 114 under the Innovasport name, 75 under Innvictus and 13 under a third banner, Over Time. Later counts differ by source and date. Vistazo, citing Fiduvalor, put the network at more than 250 stores in Mexico in May 2025, plus an online shop, and named further formats including Innovasport Kids, Rookie Kids and Culto Fútbol. El Universo of Guayaquil gave a figure of 250 Mexican branches in April 2025, and El CEO wrote of about 200 stores in September 2026. Vistazo also reported more than 4,000 staff in 2025.

Licensed sports merchandise is part of the mix. A few days before the NBA’s regular-season game in Mexico City on 9 November 2023, the National Basketball Association announced a multi-year partnership with Innovasport, English Wikipedia says. Under it, Innovasport was to run NBA stores in Mexico and the league’s Spanish-language online shop for the country, nbatienda.com, with jerseys, caps, footwear and basketballs from licensees including Nike, Adidas, New Era and Wilson.

Sports retail in Mexico.

Sporting-goods chains across the Americas, Asia and Oceania tend to present themselves through a few constant elements: a short name on the shop sign, a single strong colour carried from the storefront to the advertising, and a logo set in heavy or slanted capitals. In the United States, Big 5 Sporting Goods uses white capitals on a blue field and Dunham’s Sports a slanted red wordmark, as their logo files on Wikimedia Commons show. The guides in this group look at chains in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and describe each sign, logo and colour scheme as the company itself publishes it.

Store formats range from small neighbourhood shops to large units in regional malls. Big 5’s stores averaged about 10,000 square feet in 1997, the Los Angeles Times reported, while Dunham’s has taken mall and plaza units, including former department-store spaces, according to SGB Media. Shop counts in these guides are always given with the date and the source that reported them.

Ownership takes several forms. Some chains have stayed in founding families or passed to private owners; some have been listed on a stock exchange and later taken private, as Big 5 was in October 2025; others sit inside larger retail or department-store groups. Each guide states the owner as a dated source gives it, and says plainly when a business has been sold, merged or closed.

Many chains also sell ranges under their own names alongside branded goods, and publish corporate pages about their founders and owners. Each guide separates what a company says about itself from what independent, dated sources record, and treats the palette shown as an unofficial interpretation rather than an official brand colour.

Marathon Sports and a wider map.

In April 2025 Innovasport said it was buying Marathon Sports, an Ecuadorian chain of sportswear stores. El Universo reported on 16 April 2025 that the company’s chief executive, Francisco Martín, had confirmed the deal to the Mexican newspaper El Financiero, saying that with the Ecuadorian chain, which also trades in Chile, Peru and Bolivia, the group would count 600 stores across its formats. The terms were not disclosed. El Universo added that Marathon Sports belongs to the Ecuadorian company Superdeporte S.A., and that Ecuador’s competition regulator, the Superintendencia de Competencia Económica, said at that point that the deal had not been notified to it. The purchase was announced in April 2025; its completion is not recorded in the sources used for this guide.

Vistazo described Marathon Sports in May 2025 as a sportswear chain founded in Ecuador in 1981, and said the move was Innovasport’s first step into Latin American markets beyond Mexico. The magazine noted that neither company had disclosed what share of the business was changing hands. Vistazo named the Ecuadorian chain’s founder as Rodrigo Ribadeneira, and El Universo described Marathon Sports as one of the main sponsors of Ecuador’s national football team, for which it makes the playing kit. Fiduvalor, quoted by Vistazo, said the purchase would give Innovasport an established brand with local knowledge, production facilities and a base of regular customers in four countries of the region.

At home the chain sits in a crowded sports market. El CEO named Innovasport and Martí, the Mexico City chain whose roots go back to 1936, as the two established names in the category when it reported in September 2026 on a franchise agreement between the British retailer JD Sports and Grupo Axo covering Mexico.

For a design guide, Innovasport shows how one retail group can run several shop banners side by side: a general sports chain, a sneaker-led format with its own name, a children’s line and a football shop, each aimed at a different customer. Compare Martí, the other long-running Mexican sports chain, and Centauro, a Brazilian chain that grew from a single shop. For this guide we use an ink blue, a cool grey and a track orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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