One Club, One Platform: Fremantle’s Path to Smarter Retail
The Fremantle Football Club have been flying the flag for WA football since 1995, building a proud identity rooted in grit, passion and an unwavering connection to their community. As one of the AFL’s youngest clubs, they’ve carved out an impressive and loyal following across the state and beyond. It’s clear that a club of this scale needs technology that can support it—not hold it back. That’s when they turned to Lightspeed.
Business type:
Sports club
Customer since:
2020
Location:
Fremantle, WA
Fremantle Football Club + Lightspeed
Founded in 1995, the Fremantle Football Club have cemented themselves as a cornerstone of WA football. With a growing fanbase, an expanding retail operation and a strong presence in the community, the club needed more than just a traditional merchandise setup—they needed a system that could keep pace.
At the time, their tools weren’t built for the way modern retail operates. Outdated EFTPOS machines, manual double-handling and static terminals made it difficult to operate at speed—especially during big campaigns or mobile activations. Real-time selling was out of reach, and it was clear something needed to change.
Lightspeed answered their call.
We sat down with Craig Evans, Team Store Manager for the Fremantle Football Club to talk about their Lightspeed experience.
At a glance
Lightspeed provides the Fremantle Football Club with an intuitive retail platform, integrated payments, and seamless compatibility with their ecommerce and fulfilment tools. With Lightspeed, Fremantle was able to:
- Provide real-time data to multiple departments within the organisation
- Transact faster and more accurately with integrated payments and product visuals
- Streamline stocktakes and product management using mobile tools and smart shortcuts
Up and running
Switching providers can often mean delays, downtime or a complicated onboarding process, none of which helps things get off on the right foot. But for the Dockers, moving to Lightspeed was as smooth as it gets.
“That was a seamless exercise. We got a call from tech support after our hardware arrived, and within half an hour we were up and running with the payment gateway.”
Once live, the benefits were immediate—faster transactions, fewer errors and a smoother experience for staff and fans alike.
“It's a great product. It's incredibly quick to transact, which is what we're all about, right? We're about speed and transacting.”
Reducing friction
When every second counts—especially on busy days—staff can’t afford to wrestle with clunky systems or confusing interfaces. They need a POS that’s intuitive, responsive and reduces room for error.
“The fact that every product we have comes with a picture, if you can't scan it, you can certainly just type in a keyword and the product comes up.”
And with Lightspeed’s integrated payments in place, the transaction process is fast, clean and accurate—removing the risk of manual mistakes.
“There's a little icon that says Lightspeed Payments, and you just click on that, so the opportunity for error is a lot less than what it used to be—it's just a really simple, fast process. I would say probably 95% of our products are all scanned, so there's really no reason for error or mistake when they're transacting. It’s quite straightforward.”
Visibility beyond the shop floor
Before Lightspeed, other departments within the Fremantle business had to rely on the retail team to pull reports and surface insights before they could get their hands on some valuable data. Now, everyone who needs access can get it—instantly.
“So we have multiple departments that we've set up user access to the products so that they can look at data. Our accounts team—there's three people in accounts that have it—and then we look at our data and analysis team—there's three people in there.”
With real-time visibility into sales, inventory and performance, teams across the club can use this data to make faster, smarter decisions.
“It's just a whole window of opportunity for these guys to get data in real-time and report on everything that we do, whereas prior to that we never had that experience.”
Flexibility
From scanning speed to store setup, every aspect of Fremantle’s workflow needs to move fast. Lightspeed helped remove bottlenecks and gave them the flexibility to adapt on the fly.
“The reduced wait time now to transact—it’s a lot quicker than previously. The items scan really fast and in a timely manner. And just the multi-store capabilities. There was a period last year where we had a temporary pop-up store, so we set up a separate location for that. To have that flexibility, it’s great.”
Even smaller tasks—like editing a SKU or barcode—are now quick and painless, giving staff more control and saving time across the board.
“And even little things where you can go in and edit products. So, if we want to put a barcode into a product, or a SKU code, it’s just a case of going in and editing. These are things we could have never done before, so it’s just a whole new world and opportunity. It’s good for us.”
Days to hours
Manual stocktakes are time-consuming, inefficient and often required full-day shutdowns to complete. This was no different at Fremantle. Thankfully, with Lightspeed that process has been completely transformed leading to more accurate, vastly quicker stocktakes.
“You can use your mobile phone to do a stocktake. We have a couple of iPads and the guys will use their mobile phones as a scanner, and you're just going around in real time and scanning.”
The impact on time and efficiency has been immediate—and significant.
“So that whole stocktake process for us now, which would normally have taken 2 days, we do within 7 or 8 hours.”
A final word from Craig
“I would say use Lightspeed because it's a global, recognised brand that has really good customer care and service.”
Craig Evans, Retail Store Manager, the Fremantle Football Club
