For years, Erica Berchtold has tried to save amateur female athletes from the discomfort of playing sport with equipment designed for men or boys.  

But a letter she received from a Victorian primary school student last year showed how much work there was to do.  

"Her whole class was writing letters to people, and she chose me to write to saying: Erica, my friends and I play basketball and we can't get access to any girl's basketball shoes. Can you help us?" 

"And I was appalled," Ms Berchtold, managing director of Rebel Sport and Amart Sports, said. "I didn't even realise that was such a problem for these young girls."

For Ms Berchtold it was a stark example of the dearth of specialised sports equipment available to women and girls who play sport in Australia, who are often left using football boots and cricket gear designed for their male counterparts. 

But the roaring success of the inaugural women's AFL season and women's Big Bash League cricket has helped convince the companies that make boots and bats that there is an untapped market worth catering to.  

"Women have always been playing these sports, it's just now they're starting to get more into the head space of the general public and the media," Ms Berchtold said. 

"The spotlight on these female sports helps show them that there is a market and an appetite out there."

Since receiving the letter, Rebel has worked with American sportswear giant Under Armour to bring to Australia a range of girl's basketball shoes, which will hit stores later this year. 

Over the past few years, Ms Berchtold has pushed suppliers to develop more women's and girls' football and soccer boots, which accommodate narrower feet and higher arches.

And in 2018, all Kookaburra and Gary Nicholls cricket bats sold in stores will be "gender neutral". Rebel will also launch a bat designed specifically for women, which will have the same sized blade as a men's bat but will be lighter, slimmer and have shorter handles. 

"You can't just take a boy's [child-sized] product and make it slightly larger for a woman, you've actually got to take into consideration what a woman needs from that product," Ms Berchtold said. 

"It drives me crazy that people think they can just 'pink-it and shrink-it' to make it a women's range." 

Ms Berchtold said the next frontier in women's sports gear was supporter wear: Matildas fans currently can buy only the Australian men's soccer team's jersey.

Rebel and Amart's owner, The Super Retail Group, defied the gloomy retail market on Friday to lift revenue 6.6 per cent to $1.29 billion in the first half of the financial year. Net profit after tax jumped 66 per cent to $74.4 million.

The sports stores were the strongest performing of the groups' outlets, which include Supercheap Auto, Rays Outdoors and BCF, posting 6 per cent like-for-like sales growth. 

Ms Berchtold said the stores had strong trade in footwear and apparel, helped by the enduring "athleisure" trend - where sports leggings and sneakers are worn as everyday clothing - transforming Rebel into a fashion retail player.

Super Retail's results were for the 26 weeks to December 31, compared with December 26 the year before, which accounted for about 2 per cent of the sales bump.

Super Retail's shares closed up 5.2 per cent at $10.24. It will pay a 12¢ interim dividend on April 12.