INTERSPORT’s mission is to always be at the heart of sport activities and to make it simple for people and communities to enjoy sports, health and wellbeing. This is why the company always strives to be closer to its customers and bring its sport products faster, easier, wherever needed.
Back in 2020, INTERSPORT scaled up its e-commerce operations and started to use the Postis Platform to optimize its deliveries for online orders. The improved processes took into account the use of the 34 physical stores across Romania as local fulfillment centers, reducing the delivery time from an average of 5 working days to next day or even same day. Many other improvements such as integrated omni-channel shopping journeys, enhanced customer communication and full predictability and control were implemented.
Earlier this year, INTERSPORT upped the game once more and started to improve its deliveries across the South and Eastern Europe with the support of Postis Platform. Optimized local and international transport costs, reduced delivery time, diversified delivery options, improved communication, full transparency and more benefits are available for INTERSPORT's customers from Greece, Cyprus, and Bulgaria.
Now, INTERSPORT takes another step forward and enables deliveries in lockers across the SEE.
Customers are now more and more demanding in terms of deliveries. They want transparency, flexibility and options fit to their own lifestyle and calendar.
They want predictability, they need to control the moment and place where they will get their products. If the delivery option they want is not available, customers often consider opting out of that purchase.
But with larger numbers of door-to-door deliveries coming from e-commerce and an ever increasing transportation cost in the last-mile, carriers and retailers together need to improve efficiencies, without affecting the overall customer experience. It’s a tricky problem, and locker deliveries are part of the solution.
Looking from the efficiency perspective, locker routes can serve up to 800 parcels as compared to approximately 200 for a dense door-to-door urban courier route. Locker deliveries allow for shipments consolidation, with improved delivery efficiency. The usage of resources such as cars and manpower is reduced. Ineffective processes such as unsuccessful deliveries due to an absent recipient are eliminated. Both the delivery costs and the average delivery time are significantly decreased.
In an urban landscape, the life gets faster every day and time is more valuable than ever. This is why predictability in delivery is increasingly important. Out-of-home deliveries provide what customers need: almost 100% first time delivery, proximity to customers with the possibility to pick up the package “on the way” when shopping or coming back from work, convenient 24/7 availability, contactless, with long periods of storage, up to 5 days.
Once implemented, retailers have at hand fast and relatively cheap means of increasing their delivery capacities. They can enable cheap and easy returns programs. They can further strengthen their involvement into a better world with ecologically superior delivery processes, less traffic congestion and reduced carbon emissions.
Currently, INTERSPORT's customers can opt for deliveries in one of the 3000+ lockers in Romania, 600+ in Greece or one of the 400+ lockers soon to be activated in Bulgaria. Additional locker networks will be gradually added, to further improve availability and proximity.
Delivery options are presented to customers straight into their shopping cart, where they can choose the place - at their given address or in a locker or in-store. The lockers available in proximity are displayed in the embedded Postis eShop Delivery Widget either on a map or in a list and, once selected, the order will be directed there from the closest physical store or warehouse where the product is available.
“It was critical for us to have a strong, positive omni-channel presence. In that respect, we developed a strategy specially designed for the digital environment. We brought the simple and personal click-to-door experiences to the heart of our operations. At the same time as we further build our product portfolio and consolidate the partnerships with global, strategic players, we get even closer to our customers, just where they are.”
Marian Florescu
Supply Chain Manager, INTERSPORT România
By expanding its delivery pool of options with lockers, INTERSPORT gains both in efficiency and experience and strengthens its relationship with customers.
The shoppers have better overall CX, they have choices according to their own lifestyle, they benefit from convenience, flexibility, 24/7 availability, hassle-free with no queues to wait for pick-up, physical proximity with easy access and parking.
On top, last-mile deliveries grow further as a valuable contributor to achieving the company’s business objectives:
If you are interested to learn more about delivery diversification and effective deliveries everywhere in Europe for your business, get in touch with us and we’ll help.
