Atmósfera Sport was created in 1988 from the merger of fifteen stores in a cooperative format and since then has steadily developed into a leading Spanish brand in the distribution of sports equipment. The company currently has more than 250 stores throughout Spain.
The strategy of Sporty atmosphere It is based on five pillars: Digitization, constant transformation of processes, sustainability, proximity to local companies and beyond, human capital. who we spoke to Alvaro Llorens, Director of E-Commerce and Digital Business of the company to learn more about the future prospects of the group, as well as the challenges and goals.
E-Commerce News (ECN): How important is e-commerce for the company in general? Do you have expansion plans in other countries?
Alvaro Llorens (AL): The Weight of E-Commerce on the sell The company’s share is approx. 16% sell out about 8%. However, our goal is not to get excited about this metric. We consider it a useless indicator.
Because of our humbleness as a project and as a company, we didn’t want to set goals by the fact that we’re moving a project forward. We lacked the digital side and brand awareness very badly and our goals have always been: to increase the brand awareness of Atmósfera Sport among the end customer, to develop an omnichannel project that the stores would feel comfortable and proud of and that is it will help them improve their business. And finally, Position Atmósfera Sport as a competitive operator due to its level of service and range of offers. Regarding the opening of countries, we are taking advantage of the version change of our CMS next August to open France and Portugal.
ECN: Which payment methods do you use? Which are the most popular with customers?
FOR THE: We currently have multiple payment methods. We integrated Redsys and Adyen into production and activate one or the other depending on the moment. We also offer Google Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal, Bizum, store payment and installments with Sequra. For France we start with Carte Bancaire and for Portugal with Multibank.
The more than popular, most used and most removed transactions coming from Adyen and Redsys are: PayPal with 20% that Payment in physical store That’s about 30% and up to that’s about 8%.
ECN: What strategies do you implement to offer a smooth payment experience and ensure a high conversion rate in the online purchase process?
FOR THE: From atmosphere sports The payment experience affects not only the payment gateways, but the entire purchase process at the checkout.
Today, especially in the buying process, we have the highest exit rate when moving from the sessions to the product file that puts the product in the cart, where our exit rate is 65%. This percentage is mainly due to stock-outs. Another “pain” is the registration process, where thanks to social logging We improved the conversion rate from 15% to 45%. In fact, in the final step, which is the session/users who transacted, we have a 17% conversion rate.
EcN: What is your main goal when implementing an omnichannel strategy in all branches?
FOR THE: At the moment, We implemented 130 stores with all omnichannel flows. The objective of integrated branches is based on the entrepreneurial project of the company. Activating omnichannel in stores does not apply to everyone. In order for the project as a whole to have a good sense of implementation, we have activated it according to the number of actual company-owned stores. This is mainly because omnichannel does not have to be the cause, but rather the consequence of a unique image for the end customer and can create a circular benefit between the shopping experience on the web and in the store.
EcN: One of your goals for 2023 is to grow your following on social media. What key strategies or actions are you taking to gain new followers?
FOR THE: For us and with the idea of being in line with one of the company’s goals, It is important to work on creating a community. In the last two years we have seen one of the biggest growths in this area and have gone from being an almost unnoticed provider to one of the top five operators with the largest network community in the sports sector.
We have based this growth on a few axes such as: collaboration with an internal team that generates audiovisual content, collaboration with the brands, product raffles and engagement actions that reinforce the user’s belonging to the company, launch thrust Advertising to target a wide audience and reach the largest possible number of users or to cross-promote with stores. The branch network allows us to be a great channel for potential users.
ECN: With the constant change and advancement of new technologies and emerging trends (like AI), what challenges and opportunities do you think we will face??
FOR THE: We don’t see technology trends as an engine of change, but as a tool that enables us to be more agilemore productive, efficient and profitable.
This year we have made several changes in this regard, such as switching the ERP, integrating the WMS and using AI to improve processes that allow us to scale. Currently we have an average of 300 daily references in the systems and on the web. Without AI solutions, this entire process would not be sustainable for the company. Thanks to an integration of the PIM with ChatGPT, we can register products on a large scale. We work with a product data model and use a few primary attributes that we use to create short and long descriptions.
In order to work with the information from the photos and provide the customer with a visually clean product presentation, we have processes through scripts that change the backgrounds and provide consistency across the web and with that some use cases that have made it easier for us on a daily basis.
ECN: What are your final goals for 2023? What kind of invoicing do you expect at the end of the year??
FOR THE: The will of the company is projected over a period of 5 years. The main goal in which we have put all efforts is to invoice 15 million euros in these 5 years, granting 60% of the benefit of digital orders in stores. This year 2023 will be the third year of the project and we will finish the year with about 6-7 million accounts. We started the project at the end of 2020 and the billing of the digital channel reached just half a million euros.
