#26 - Foot Locker Sold, Temu vs Shein War, and the EUDR Delayed Again

🏈 Dick’s Sporting Goods-Foot Locker: When Procurement Is Worth $125M in Synergies

On September 8, 2025, one of the year’s most strategic acquisitions in retail closed: Dick’s Sporting Goods completed its acquisition of Foot Locker for $2.4 billion, creating a global giant with over 3,200 stores in 20 countries.

But the real story is in Procurement: the deal is expected to generate between $100 and $125 million in synergies over the medium term, mainly through efficiencies in Procurement and direct sourcing. Ed Stack, Executive Chairman of Dick’s, didn’t mince words: “We are very excited about the future of Foot Locker. The world-class team we’ve put together is committed to restoring Foot Locker to its rightful place in our industry.”

Crunching the numbers: Dick’s closed fiscal 2024 with $13.44 billion in revenue, while Foot Locker generated $7.99 billion. But the acquisition isn’t just about size - it’s about strategic complementarity. Dick’s customer tends to be affluent, suburban and older, while Foot Locker’s customer is urban, younger and lower-middle class.

What’s the key to Procurement success? Integrating the two supply chains will unlock unprecedented combined buying power with global brand partners. Nike, Adidas, New Balance and the other giants of sneaker culture will now find themselves negotiating with a single colossus that controls a significant share of the global sports retail market.

The deal is expected to be accretive to earnings as early as the first full fiscal year after closing, excluding one-time costs to achieve the synergies.

🔗 Sources: PR Newswire

⚔️ Temu vs Shein War: When Procurement Turns Into a “Mafia-Style” Battle

If you thought competition in Procurement was just about better prices, Temu just proved you wrong. The Chinese platform has accused rival Shein of using “mafia-style tactics” to monopolize the entire fast-fashion supply chain. And this isn’t a metaphor - it’s an actual war.

The accusations read like a thriller: Temu claims that Shein “physically holds” suppliers who dare to work with both platforms, seizing Temu account passwords and credentials, and forcing suppliers to sign documents against their will under threat of “contract termination and extensive penalties.”

The word “suppliers” appears 350 times in the lawsuit, where Temu describes an “elaborate scheme to slow Temu’s growth in the United States” through aggressive control of the supply chain.

The real evil genius: Shein allegedly uses anticompetitive exclusive agreements to “seize suppliers’ IP rights without due consideration and often without the suppliers’ knowledge,” preventing them from selling similar products on other platforms.

Temu debunks the Shein myth: while Shein boasts of “proprietary technologies and innovative design,” Temu claims their business model is actually “copying trendy designs, using thousands of captive suppliers to produce copies, and reselling them under the Shein label.”

The supply chain as a war zone: we’re no longer talking about strategic partnerships or win-win negotiations. We’re talking about territorial control through intimidation, misappropriation of confidential business information, and physical detention of suppliers.

🔗 Sources: Supply Chain Dive

🌳 EUDR: Second Delay Over IT Problems (and the Market Descends Into Chaos)

On September 23, 2025, EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall wrote to the European Parliament announcing that the Commission is considering a further one-year delay to the EUDR (Deforestation Regulation). It’s the second consecutive postponement.

What is the EUDR: As of December 30, 2025 (the current date), anyone importing coffee, cocoa, soy, palm oil, wood, rubber and beef into the EU must trace every batch back to the GPS plot of origin, prove it doesn’t come from land deforested after December 31, 2020, and upload all documentation into an EU IT system. Penalties of up to 5% of global turnover.

The timeline of delays:

Original timeline (November 2021):

• Large companies: December 30, 2024
• SMEs: June 30, 2025

First delay (December 2024):

• Large companies: December 30, 2025
• SMEs: June 30, 2026
• Rationale: “Uneven preparedness among EU stakeholders and global partners”

Second proposed delay (September 2025):

• An additional one-year extension for everyone
• Rationale: “The Commission’s IT system can’t handle the expected data load”

The technical problem, as explained by Roswall: The system has to handle every EUDR transaction “upstream and downstream, inside and outside the EU.” The new projections led to a “substantial upward revision of the expected load.” Without fixes, the system “will very likely slow to unacceptable levels or suffer repeated, prolonged outages,” impacting “trade flows in the areas covered by the legislation.”

Next steps: The delay needs approval from the European Parliament and member states. Roswall announced that talks with both will follow.

For procurement managers importing EUDR products:

The second consecutive delay to a law proposed back in 2021 creates three practical problems:

Problem 1 - Investment uncertainty: Companies that have already spent on traceability systems don’t know when they’ll actually use them. Those that haven’t spent yet are tempted to keep putting it off.

Problem 2 - Unstable market pricing: EUDR premiums vary based on implementation expectations. With a possible third delay looming, nobody knows what price to negotiate.

Problem 3 - Loss of regulatory credibility: As Fastmarkets notes, it will be “hard for the EU to delay again without losing credibility.” But if it does lose credibility, the risk is that when the law finally does take effect, enforcement will be stricter to compensate.

The question is no longer “if” the EUDR will take effect, but “when” and “with what level of enforcement.” Those who don’t prepare risk a lot. Those who prepare too early tie up capital. Procurement is caught in the middle, with no certainty.

🔗 Sources: ESG Today, FastMarkets