Success Beyond the Field: Strengthening an Icon of the Game

St Kilda Football Club has been an institution within the Australian sporting landscape for over 150 years and counting—making them one of the oldest sporting clubs in the world. They need no introduction.

But their ecommerce system wasn’t tailored to the needs of an operation of their size. A change was needed if they were going to transform their retail business into the rapidly evolving world of elevated retail, POS, delivery and ecommerce management.

In Lightspeed they found their match.

We sat down with Stefan Valerio, Retail & Licensing Manager for St Kilda Football Club to talk about their Lightspeed experience.

“Lightspeed was a standout option.”

When Stefan stepped into his role as Retail & Licensing Manager for St Kilda, he knew that certain things needed to change, namely, their POS and ecommerce system.

“Our previous system was a legacy software that ticked a few boxes but wasn’t bespoke to retail and our nuanced needs in terms of the back end.”

He had a set of qualities needed for the right system to emerge victorious and show that it could handle not only the current demands, but also show room to be able to accommodate future growth.

“We were looking for one of the best-in-class retail point of sale systems that can deal with proper retail inventory and SKUs, that was user friendly and that was pretty comprehensive in terms of reporting. We did a fair evaluation, and Lightspeed was a standout option.”

“It's quite intuitive in terms of retail setup.”

Adopting a whole new system for your retail operation is one thing, but when that operation exists on the scale of St Kilda’s, it becomes a much bigger undertaking. You need to have absolute confidence that when it’s time to go live, you won’t be left wanting.

“I think the good thing from our perspective with working with Lightspeed was it was a really easy onboarding process. It was really clear, stage by stage. We were able to test. We were able to find any nuances along the way, and by the time we were ready to go live, we had a lot of confidence in it.”

Come match day, with thousands upon thousands of fans lining up to purchase their products, St Kilda leans on Lightspeed’s customisation capabilities to ensure everything goes as smooth as possible.

“In terms of the actual selling on a match day or at the store level, those quick keys and user interface, just from a selling point of view, are really simple, easily laid out and they're easily customisable as well.”

“They don't need to be an expert in point of sale.”

With operations as big as St Kilda’s, this means dedicated departments for different areas. It’s crucial that every blocker is removed to ensure quick, accurate data is on hand when needed.

“(Lightspeed has) really simple viewing platforms for other departments within the club. It's a pretty easy system to use too. So our finance team, if they're pulling reconciliations, they don't need to be an expert in point of sale to be able to get the information that they need.”

With data as important as revenue, it’s not ideal for time to be wasted waiting for information to update. With Lightspeed Payments, settlement happens the next day, meaning a clearer financial outlook overall.

“So, our accounts and finance team can actually go in and see that day, see the terminals. There's not a big overlap period in terms of that settling to the bank. It actually has saved us time where previously we might have to wait 2 or 3 days for the previous provider to settle amounts.”

“Single products? We have between about 4-500.”

Professional sports teams with a fanbase as big as The Saints means that their retail catalogue is expansive to say the least. Bringing all of these products into one, single location within their ecommerce system was something which made keeping track of their inventory a lot easier.

“Lightspeed has become our master record for all of our product creation—SKU creation. With those APIs set up, that flows through to our ecommerce platform, which also then flows through to our fulfilment provider. So it's our one source of truth.”

Housing the entire supply chain in one location cuts down on errors and saves time, freeing up St Kilda’s energy to be focussed on areas they need it the most.

“And the system works in reverse as well. So when information comes through from our ecommerce platform, that will flow through to Lightspeed, get recorded there, adjust our inventory, all of that. So it's really streamlined things and cut down on the amount of data entry that we've had to do.”