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Retail & Sports Systems highlights mobile focus

Retail & Sports Systems has underlined its mobile focus as it seeks to satisfy new-age merchandise supply requirements of sports clubs.

The company, which offers clients an omni-channel retail solution, with tills in the shops linked to a head office stock control system that also drives a fully-responsive online store, has expanded to link up with around 30 sports clubs after starting out in 2010 with Sheffield United.

Speaking to TheStadiumBusiness.com, Retail & Sports Systems director Paul Johnson stressed the importance of adapting for a mobile-first customer base.

“We now design all our sites, starting from the phone and building out,” he said. “It all starts with the mobile journey.

“We have expanded from football into cricket with Lancashire and we’ve just linked up with England Hockey too and a few rugby league clubs are interested.”

The company has never lost a client and ties in clubs to five-year partnerships in which the monthly fee remains unchanged for the duration of the contract.

Director Richard Waltham said that such an approach, which is also applied with the company’s other partners on the supply and services side, gives clubs much-needed financial certainty.

“We tackle warehousing problems, and it’s a seamless process all the way through, but our experience has introduced a number of efficiencies as well, so we can cope with fluctuations,” he said.

“For example, West Ham started with 50,000 orders per year before they signed up with us just over two years ago, and now they are up to 100,000.

“We’re looking at people who want to be in control of their brand. It doesn’t matter whether you have two tills in a shop and a website or 45 tills and a website – it’s the same product, but just on a different scale.”

Paul added: “The beauty is that the clubs retain control in-house. We simply give them the tools to do it themselves.”

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