industry Paul Sherratt


Sports eCommerce


Paul Sherratt of Solutions for Sport continues his series on business development for the sports trade.


I


have begun to lose track of the number times in recent years that I have been asked about the


impact that eCommerce has, and will continue to have, within the sporting goods industry. Without doubt it has been the biggest single factor that has transformed our trade in the past decade and looks set to have a wider impact in the foreseeable future.


I was lucky enough to be involved at


the very inception of eCommerce in sport launching sweatband.com – the UK's first multi-sport website at the end of the 1990's – and looking back, even then I believed that the future lay in this very medium. Back then it was easy. Simply show a product image, a single line description and a price and (if you were lucky) the sales would roll in. Now a


successful eCommerce business requires a complex web of sales and marketing skills with multiple consumer touch points, search engine strategies and product, price and promotional focus. But what the smaller businesses in our trade? Can they still have a successful eCommerce element without the burden of heavy costs? The answer is categorically yes.


28 | SGB-SPORTS.COM


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