Adidas, Europe’s biggest sports goods maker, will open 2,500 stores and expand its sales network to 1,400 Chinese cities, in an effort to regain market share lost to foreign and domestic competitors in one of the world’s most rapidly growing retail markets.

The German company is one of many consumer goods multinationals that have recently decided to shift their focus from near saturated “first tier” cities like Shanghai and Beijing to target smaller cities and less affluent consumers, where they believe growth potential is higher for foreign brands.

Adidas plans to reach far into the Chinese interior to open the new stores. Initially this will be in municipalities with as few as 500,000 people and then, by 2015, in cities with a population of just over 50,000, company officials said in Shanghai on Tuesday.