Wigan Athletic Football Club have recently undergone a digital transformation using ClearCourse Sports solutions.

Hear head of retail at Wigan Athletic FC, Sam Swanton, talk about the Club’s journey, his experience of the retail overhaul, how the channels work together to enhance the fans’ experience, the results and what this means for the future.

About Wigan Athletic Football Club

Affectionately known as Latics, inspired by the local pronunciation of the name, Wigan Athletic Football Club was established in 1932 and made a name for themselves in non-league football before their election to the Football League in 1978. Wigan went on to move through the Football League and enjoyed eight Premier League seasons and an FA cup win.

Wigan Athletic’s Retail Tech Upgrade

Wigan switched to TRIMS, ClearCourse Sports’ back office designed to expertly handle fashion retail needs, in 2019. Last year, they upgraded their EPOS, introduced integrated payments, and launched their own-branded fan loyalty app – all using ClearCourse Sports solutions. Most recently, they have added ClearCourse Sports ecommerce to their tech stack which went live last October. Sam commented, “we looked at massively upgrading our retail systems... ClearCourse Sports had a much better way of integrating everything under one umbrella”.

EPOS & Payments

Cygnus EPOS with ClearAccept payments offers the club speedy in-store transactions with simple reconciliation and reporting, whilst seamlessly integrating with their other sales channels and back office. With Clearcourse Sports Kit Builder, Cygnus EPOS offers Wigan fans professional kit personalisation in-store and online.

Fan Loyalty App

Wigan’s new Latics Loyalty App is powered by FUSE; our fully customisable customer loyalty app. It houses loyalty accounts, point balances, alongside their ecommerce website and a news feed. Wigan can now build on their fan engagement by rewarding purchases and specific behaviour. The app also enables mobile push notifications to registered users to alert them of events, special offers, new product launches and exclusive app user updates, e.g., new kit reveals.

Ecommerce

Switching their ecommerce to ClearCourse Sports has enabled the Club’s digital transformation. It has allowed the use of online loyalty rewards and discounts to drive sales revenue. Operational efficiencies are also gained through the automation of previously manual ecommerce tasks, meaning the Club can provide an improved fan experience. “It's great - the whole process of doing an app notification through FUSE, to log on to our online site through ClearCourse Sports and then to see the sales come through onto TRIMS... you see how each digital variation works” Sam added.

Wigan doubled their sales percentage online in the first month after launching the new ecommerce site. They were averaging 23 to 25% of total sales coming from their website. This rose to 49% one month after launch and continues to rise.

Sam summarised his experience of the digital transformation process:

“The process of the transformation - I don't want to say the word easy or seamless - but it was. We initially launched Cygnus EPOS which was key to capturing all the data that we were so data poor with for the last 4 years. Soon after that, the FUSE app came in and then later the online (ecommerce) system. For me, that was the catalyst for the whole change. We really wanted to make sure that we had everything covered. Lee and Chris at ClearCourse did everything that they could to make sure that it was smooth as possible.”

The Future of Retail at Wigan Athletic FC

Looking towards the future of the Club, Sam remarked:

“Externally, the digital world is evolving, it always will evolve, and I think we have a platform and a company that we're working with that can keep up with those changes. I have every faith in ClearCourse to tell us whenever there's an upgrade or a system that could be integrated into ours.

“We have aspirations of our own, and we want everything off the pitch to match those aspirations on the pitch. Retail is a massive part of that. We have certain milestones that we need to hit, and I truly believe that under ClearCourse's guidance, there's no reason why we can't do that in the future.”