The 5 Stakes Experienced by the Sports Industry in 2019

January 18th, 2019

From January 14th to 16th, the Quebec Sport Industry Sales Rep Association (ARISQ) presented its long-awaited event: The AX Fall / Winter 2019-2020. ARISQ supports representatives of retail sporting goods in Quebec. Created in 1991, this association organizes events that offer the representatives the possibility to meet their customers in a professional context promoting business relationships. Each year, more than 600 brands try to attract numerous retailers who come to discover the new trends in the sports industry.

1. Evolving Behavior of Sports Industry Consumers

First, with the ever-changing retail business, these different sports companies face a massive challenge. They must respond to new consumer behaviours and be innovative since most sportspeople still want to go beyond their limits.

Indeed, buyers and consumers want products that are available whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want it. The different companies in the sports industry have to satisfy that desire if they want to keep their customers’ commitment. When a customer does not have the desired attribute of a product, the company must propose a quick and effective solution to keep the sales opportunity. This is what most of the AX exhibitors were trying to offer when retailers were showing up at their booth.

2. Electronic Commerce (eCommerce)

Undoubtedly, the place that the technologies are taking in today’s business processes continues to grow since the potential benefits are infinite. E-Commerce is a very representative example. The value of online sporting goods sales in 2016 in the United States was $13.4 billion. Indeed, nearly 90% of people between 20-40 years old shop online.

Nowadays, consumers appreciate being able to stay at home to shop. With the quick evolution of this market, the companies that have not yet joined are falling behind their competitors. One of the reasons for this delay is often the lack of knowledge in this domain and the online inventory management that seems to be arduous.

However, different platforms allow the synchronization of online and in-store data.

3. Customer Data Gathering

In addition, these companies need to know their customers from different angles. On the one hand, they must know their preferences, their tastes as well as their purchasing behaviours to offer them a solution they can not refuse. On the other hand, they must anticipate the needs of their customers to maintain the advantage over their multiple competitors.

“80% of consumers say they would be more likely to do business with a company offering personalized approaches.”

Epsilon

To achieve this, gathering customer data is a wise solution. In 2019, data management and analysis are very accessible and increasingly used in business. These demographics, sociographic or even firmographics types of data must be collected and stored in large quantities to generate a large database. This database will have to be analyzed, managed, and transformed to become a real sales machine. This tool helps to better understand the customer base, improve customer service, support long-term relationships with customers and, above all, increase sales across multiple channels.

4. Processes Optimization

Truly, automation and optimization of business processes are of increasing concern to managers as today’s technology has proven itself. The savings associated with these concepts are quickly quantifiable and that awakes the curiosity of managers.

By the same token, within a company, technology has a very influential role in several operations. In particular, the addition of technology in communications is inevitable since people want to be able to communicate from anywhere and at any time.

The sports industry requires a lot of travel such as meetings or business events and the mobility of the systems becomes a necessity. These technologies also make it possible to considerably reduce the various business costs.

5. Variation in Revenue Streams

In addition, retail businesses understand that it is essential to expand their range of revenue streams. In this regard, direct sales of products are not always enough to meet sales objectives. For example, renting, repairing, or storing equipment are other revenue streams that can significantly increase a company’s revenue. As a result, there are many benefits from this variety of income streams. First, this decision makes it possible to go for other segments and thus, increase its clientele. Then, it encourages cross-selling to meet a common key performance indicator of the majority of companies specializing in sports: increase the average basket size. Lastly, the company is indirectly more solid since it does not depend solely on the performance of a single type of income. However, the management of these different streams of income is often complex, and using certain management software is unavoidable.

Point-of-sale Software Adapted to These Issues

Finally, adapting to all these new trends and developments in retail is not possible without a specialized management tool. There are huge amounts of management software, but the difference in skill level and versatility is just as huge.

In light of the above, the Alice POS software offers everything you need to fulfill your store management requirements with one goal in mind: increasing your sales. Management of inventory, contacts, types of incomes, internal communications, or even online commerce, this software knows how to mould perfectly to the different constraints of all. All in all, this new-generation, cloud-based retail point-of-sale is revolutionizing the retail industry by offering a state-of-the-art technology solution that is fully adapted to the sports industry.