Vend becomes the official POS and retail management system to be endorsed by the AFL
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Omnichannel
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AU
Australia
The Australian Football League (AFL) is the country's only fully professional men's competition for Australian football. There are currently 18 clubs in the league, each consisting of tens of thousands of members.
Retail is a significant component of the AFL's strategy, as all of its teams sell various merchandise to fans and their members. All of the AFL teams sell through physical shops, “game day” stores, and ecommerce. Thanks to Vend, most of them now have a seamless integration between all their sales channels.
afl.com.au/At a Glance
With Vend, multiple AFL teams gained inventory visibility and enjoyed the ability to engage and sell to customers on physical and digital channels — all while keeping everything in sync.
Key highlights:
The Challenge
The changing habits of consumers (partially brought about by COVID-19) prodded AFL teams to evolve and keep up with their customers.
As the lines between physical and digital retail continue to blur, the need to go omnichannel is becoming table stakes for retailers, and AFL clubs are no exception.
This was a challenge for the league because before adopting Vend, only one out of the 18 clubs had an ecommerce store connected to their point of sale system
Due to the lack of POS and ecommerce integration, clubs often ran into issues like inventory discrepancies and double-handing.
What’s more, the teams had limited visibility into their data. They lacked a robust reporting system and didn’t have an easy way to analyze sales and inventory, nor could they attribute sales to their members.
“With the Vend’s stock analysis, we have the ability to split the outlet data and tell a better story, from a reporting standpoint. We can get some true metrics on what’s selling on the ground and what’s not.”
Anthony Croker, Licensing and Merchandising Manager, Brisbane Lions
The Solution
The AFL encouraged its clubs to modernize their retail operations with the help of Vend.
The majority of the AFL clubs — including the Brisbane Lions, Gold Coast Suns, Melbourne FC, and Richmond Tigers — switched to Vend.
Teams had dedicated migration partners who helped them get up and running. “We had a really consistent experience as we worked through the setup and training side of things,” says Ben Kerswill, General Manager, Consumer Business.
“Our migration partner built a great relationship and we felt like we could ask him basic questions, without feeling like we were asking dumb questions. We weren’t expecting that level of customer support.”
He adds that their experience was "a heap of difference" compared to their previous retail solution, which didn't offer the same level of service.
Vend’s easy-to-use platform, coupled with our strong customer support, enable teams like the Brisbane Lions to get up and running quickly, so they can serve fans and customers on game days and beyond.
“Our migration partner built a great relationship and we felt like we could ask him basic questions, without feeling like we were asking dumb questions. We weren’t expecting that level of customer support.”
Ben Kerswill, General Manager, Consumer Business
Australian Football League brings their solution together with the best in retail
The Results
Vend enabled AFL teams to go omnichannel — giving them the ability to seamlessly sell across brick-and-mortar, ecommerce, and pop-up stores.
Thanks to Vend, 16 out of all 18 AFL clubs can now sell across physical and digital channels without double-handling processes. Vend also makes it easy for teams to add and remove registers and outlets, so clubs can quickly scale their operations based on demand. Setting up additional registers during busy game days, for example, is a breeze.
With Vend, teams can sync their sales, inventory, and customer data across multiple channels. This streamlines their operations and reduces headaches like double-selling and human error.
And since everything can be managed from one platform, AFL teams that are using Vend have full visibility into their retail data. Because of this, they can make smarter decisions around inventory management, sales, and more.
“With Vend’s stock analysis, we have the ability to split the outlet data and tell a better story, from a reporting standpoint,” says Anthony. “We can get some true metrics on what’s selling on the ground and what’s not. We can also segment that based on each individual game and location rather than having a mishmash of products, pricing, and locations.”
“That’s one thing I’m looking forward to doing with Vend, because we’ll then be able to maximize customer spend and ensure that we’re selling the right things at the right locations,” he adds.
“We can get some true metrics on what’s selling on the ground and what’s not. We can also segment that based on each individual game and location rather than having a mishmash of products, pricing, and locations.”
Anthony Croker, Licensing and Merchandising Manager, Brisbane Lions
