Challenges faced by sports retailers and its solutions

1. i-Verve Inc Challenges faced by sports retailers and Its solutions How ecommerce helps sports Industries to Increase their sales By : i-Verve 11/2/2017

2. Sports and sportsmen have always been the cynosure of every eye. Athletes like Lebron James, Christiano Ronaldo and Floyd Mayweather makes millions of dollars on a single match, and many times of it through a single brand endorsement. Not just the players, the brands associated with the sporting industry are also one of the most popular brands. Nike, which is primarily a sports brand, consistently ranks among the top 25 most valuable brand every year. The sports industry is huge and is growing tremendously. In the year 2015, a report from US Department of Commerce stated that the sales of sports goods were nearly $65 billion. And from this, $11.68 billion worth of sports goods were brought online. The numbers put forth by Decathlon, the largest sports goods retailer is even more interesting. In the same year (i.e 2015), while the rise in the customers of Decathlon in its stores was 4.5%, the same was recorded 21.5% on its ecommerce website. It is clear that the sports industry has evolved with the same pace as other businesses on ecommerce. There is no denying the fact that the sporting industry is unique in its own ways. The factors like rising competition, cost sensitive customers, the ever-evolving models of sports equipment and seasonality of sports are just a few of many problems that a sports store has to face. Benefits of shifting to ecommerce

3. Getting stuck with old inventory is a nightmare for any retailer. When this happens, a retailer has no other option than to sell them below purchase price. One way to counter these problems is, leveraging the ecommerce marketing and promotion capabilities. Following are the reasons how this can do the trick: Ecommerce platform provides customers the facility of buying products from the comfort of their couch. It brings your store right on their PC/mobile screens. Development of an ecommerce website will help your customers know the technical details of your products. They can know what all products are available with you and if you have the newly launched product or not. You can integrate the social media with your ecommerce website which will help you increase your reach and get reviews. It makes cross-selling or up-selling easier with the integration of such additional features to your platform. This feature will not only improve customer experience but will multiply your profit. Promotion through coupon codes becomes very easy on an ecommerce store. It just takes a few clicks to add these to the products and there you go! There is no need for manual intervention once it is done. Fighting the Competition The competition for the sports industry has been rising exponentially. Online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay are currently taking home a larger pie of the total market share with each passing sporting season. Managing and forecasting the inventory is imperative for gaining profits in the sports industry. Building an ecommerce sports website will enable you to integrate ERP/POS/inventory management system with your website and help you avoid any human error in such processes.

4. Decreasing Margins For a brick-and-mortar based store, the profit is reduced due to rising labor costs, rising warehouse costs and losses due to bad handling of the goods. When you have an ecommerce store, you can use the direct-to-consumer method. This will cut down all these costs and help you get your full profit from the deal. In addition to it, you can further sell your products on platforms like Amazon and eBay where you won’t have to incur losses just because you need more space in your warehouse. Also, transactional costs are reduced on ecommerce platforms which also will increase your profit margin. These are some of the main reasons why more and more sports store owners are moving towards ecommerce. Sports goods distributors and retailers are more benefitted by taking their store online since this can catapult their store’s sales. Internet gives them a broader market and if they have a good ecommerce platform like Magento, this will ease them in managing their business as well. About Us i-Verve is one of the top ecommerce development solution provider . The company has established its name by provding best eCommerce development services with tremendous technology support and have delivered more that 1000’s of ecommerce stores for their clients and helped them to increase their ecommerce business globally. Contact:- Email: - hello@i-verve.com Phone: - +1-404-643-6023 Website: http://i-verve.com This Post was originally published at: http://i-verve.com/blog/sporting-goods-industry- challenges-with-ecommerce/