Inside Decathlon’s sprawling warehouse in Rouvignies, northern France, hundreds of small blue robots glide across the floor in coordinated patterns that look almost choreographed. They don’t take breaks. They don’t call in sick. And they’ve helped the world’s largest sporting goods retailer boost warehouse productivity by 4x while simultaneously cutting the physical footprint of its storage operations in half.
That’s not marketing copy. Those are the numbers Decathlon is reporting after deploying Exotec’s Skypod robotic systems across its European distribution network — a rollout that now encompasses roughly 300 robots operating in facilities across France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.
The partnership, which has been scaling since its initial pilot phase, represents one of the most aggressive warehouse automation bets by a major European retailer. It also signals a broader acceleration in robotic adoption that’s reshaping how goods move from shelf to shipping dock across the continent.
The Skypod System: What Actually Happens on the Warehouse Floor
Exotec, a French robotics company founded in 2015 by former Amazon engineers Romain Moulin and Renaud Heitz, builds what it calls the Skypod system. The robots are compact autonomous units that can travel along the ground and then climb vertical racking structures up to 12 meters high. Think of them as warehouse workers that operate in three dimensions rather than two.
Each robot retrieves bins from high-density storage racks and delivers them to human operators at ergonomic picking stations. The system is a goods-to-person model — instead of workers walking miles through warehouse aisles hunting for items, the items come to them. According to The Next Web, this approach has allowed Decathlon to process up to five times more orders per hour at certain facilities compared to traditional manual operations.
The density gains are equally striking. Because the Skypod robots can climb vertically and access bins stacked much higher than a human could comfortably reach, Decathlon has been able to store the same volume of inventory in roughly half the warehouse space. In commercial real estate markets where industrial space costs continue to climb — particularly in Western Europe — that’s a direct hit to the balance sheet in the best possible way.
Decathlon’s deployment isn’t a tentative experiment. The company has committed to Exotec across multiple countries and multiple facilities, making it one of the robotics firm’s flagship accounts. The scale of the rollout — approximately 300 robots and growing — puts it among the largest goods-to-person automation installations in European retail.
But here’s what makes the Decathlon case particularly instructive for logistics executives watching from the sidelines: the system was designed to be modular. Decathlon didn’t have to rip out existing infrastructure and start from scratch. Exotec’s pitch has always centered on the ability to deploy incrementally — start with a few dozen robots, prove the ROI, then scale. That’s exactly the pattern Decathlon followed.
The modularity argument matters because it lowers the barrier to entry. Traditional automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) often require massive upfront capital expenditure and lengthy installation periods. A warehouse might go offline for months during a retrofit. Exotec’s system, by contrast, can be installed in phases while operations continue. For a retailer like Decathlon, which operates more than 1,700 stores in 70 countries and can’t afford distribution disruptions, that flexibility was a deciding factor.
Exotec’s Expanding Footprint and the European Automation Race
Exotec has been on a tear. The company reached unicorn status in 2022 after raising $335 million in a Series D round, achieving a valuation of $2 billion. Its client roster extends well beyond Decathlon to include Uniqlo, Carrefour, and Gap. The company opened a manufacturing facility in Atlanta in 2022 to serve the North American market, and it has been expanding its presence in Japan and across Asia-Pacific.
The timing isn’t accidental. European warehouses face a convergence of pressures that make automation not just attractive but increasingly necessary. Labor shortages in logistics have become structural, not cyclical. An aging workforce, combined with the physically demanding nature of warehouse work and relatively low wages, has made recruitment a persistent headache for distribution center operators. E-commerce volumes, meanwhile, continue their upward march — demanding faster throughput, greater accuracy, and the ability to handle a wider variety of SKUs.
Decathlon itself has been expanding its online operations aggressively. The company reported revenues of €15.6 billion in 2023, with digital sales representing a growing share. Serving online customers from the same distribution infrastructure that feeds brick-and-mortar stores creates complexity that manual operations struggle to absorb efficiently.
And the competitive pressure is real. Amazon’s warehouse automation capabilities — powered by its acquisition of Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics) over a decade ago — have set a standard that traditional retailers feel compelled to match. Decathlon’s investment in Exotec can be read, in part, as a response to that competitive dynamic. If you can’t match Amazon’s delivery speed and reliability, you lose customers. Period.
The European warehouse robotics market is projected to grow significantly over the next several years, driven by these structural forces. Companies like AutoStore, Geek+, and GreyOrange are all competing for market share alongside Exotec. But Exotec’s ability to handle both high-density storage and high-throughput retrieval in a single system — with robots that move horizontally and vertically — has given it a differentiated position.
There’s a workforce dimension to this story that deserves honest examination. Automation in warehousing inevitably raises questions about job displacement. Exotec and its clients, including Decathlon, tend to frame the technology as augmenting human workers rather than replacing them. The goods-to-person model eliminates the most physically taxing aspects of warehouse work — the walking, the bending, the reaching — and redeploys workers to picking stations where they handle items at a comfortable height and pace.
Whether that framing holds up at scale is an open question. A system that quadruples productivity per worker, by definition, means fewer workers are needed to process the same volume. Some of those displaced roles may be absorbed by growth in order volumes. Others may not. Decathlon has not publicly disclosed headcount changes at its automated facilities, and the company’s communications emphasize improved working conditions rather than workforce reduction.
What’s less debatable is the ergonomic improvement. Traditional warehouse picking is brutal on the body. Workers in manual facilities routinely walk 10 to 15 miles per shift and perform repetitive bending and lifting motions that lead to high injury rates. The goods-to-person model largely eliminates that physical toll. For companies struggling to recruit and retain warehouse staff, that’s a tangible benefit — healthier workers who stay longer and file fewer injury claims.
So where does this go from here? Decathlon’s deployment is still expanding. The company has indicated plans to bring Exotec systems to additional markets as it continues to grow its omnichannel capabilities. The economics are compelling enough that the question for most large retailers is no longer whether to automate but how fast and with which technology partner.
For Exotec, the Decathlon relationship serves as a proof point that resonates with prospective clients across industries. A deployment of 300+ robots across four countries, delivering measurable productivity and space efficiency gains, is the kind of reference case that closes deals.
The broader implications for European logistics are significant. As more retailers and third-party logistics providers adopt robotic systems, the competitive baseline shifts. Warehouses that don’t automate will find themselves at a growing disadvantage — slower, more expensive, less accurate, and harder to staff. That’s not a prediction. It’s already happening.
Decathlon, for its part, appears to have made its bet early enough to capture real competitive advantage. Whether that advantage proves durable depends on execution — and on whether the next generation of warehouse robotics delivers even greater gains. Given the pace of development in the field, that seems less like a question of if than when.
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