Intersport is the sports apparel retail leader, with more than 5,400 stores in 42 countries. In Romania, the company was the first to open a large store specialized in sports products and currently operates 34 stores in all large cities.
The company’s mission is to always be at the heart of sport activities and sports communities, regardless they have a physical manifestation or they are online.
In the last years, the attitude of Romanians towards sports has changed, as people became increasingly aware of their importance for health and wellbeing. In order to be able to reach more and more customers, the company increased its online activities to deliver sports apparel anywhere in the country.
From an operational perspective, online orders are processed and delivered, parcel by parcel, from a regional warehouse located in Greece, that serves the entire Balkans region. Despite its logistics efficiency, this model requires long delivery times, up to 5 working days. In an increasingly competitive market, this can lead to lowering customer satisfaction, increasing refusal and returns rates, or even customer churn.
In order to mitigate this issue, Intersport chose Postis Platform to manage and optimize its fulfillment, distribution and delivery processes.
The first major change accelerated by Postis technologies was to add the physical stores as fulfillment centers for online orders. In this way, products that are available in local stores can be packed and delivered from the closest location, decreasing delivery times from an average of 5 working days to next day or even same day.
Postis Platform also manages and simplifies stock transfers between stores. When customers present in a physical store buy certain products which are not available in that specific location, the closest stock availability is identified and the product is ordered, with the possibility to be delivered to the chosen store or at customer’s home. The store clerk uses the Platform’s built-in ordering, tracking and notification tools, so that all the parties are informed on order status along the entire journey: requesting store, delivering store, courier and customer. The system allows to define each store as a cost and revenue center, so that stocks and financial flows are managed independently without error.
We chose Postis because they have the most complex solution for distribution and delivery management and optimization. For us, it was important to improve the cost efficiency and process management, but it was crucial that the new technologies would allow us to simplify the customer journey, build new experiences for our customers and set a solid ground for future development. The Postis Platform allows us to do all these, with full control and agile deployment.
Eduard Sîrbu, Logistic & Administration Manager, Intersport
The Postis Platform provides an end-to-end control tower for all processes used for fast, cost efficient and high quality deliveries, providing full visibility, predictability and real-time management.
Furthermore, the integrated processes allow for new, improved delivery experiences, including online orders with instore pickup, instore purchase with home delivery from warehouse or another store, or drop-box delivery.
Intersport has an extremely complex retail operation across Europe and we are happy that we had the opportunity to assist the company to improve their supply-chain operations. Having Intersport Romania as a member of Postis Community allows us to develop new tools and optimization scenarios and further prove our Platform’s resilience in international, cross-border retail environments. We are glad that, together, we develop new industry standards, in the benefit of the entire retail and e-commerce community and most of all, in the benefit of the customers.
Claudiu Dragomir, Business Growth Director, Postis
Postis Platform currently delivers its optimizations for Intersport in Romania. The service will soon be extended to different territories where the company operates.
To find out more about Intersport, please visit their site.
