Personalized eCommerce for your Fan Base

Background:

Varsity Fashion, a division of Varsity Brands, Inc. is the leading provider of apparel and accessories to cheer and dance teams across North America. They design, manufacture, and sell custom uniforms for many competitive teams.

Challenge:

Varsity recognized an opportunity to capture new market share in the apparel space. Their goal was to design and sell custom-designed apparel for fans to support the highly competitive cheer teams, and also extend this Fanwear apparel to other sports and spirit groups. Trifecta’s challenge was to develop online eCommerce micro-sites that could be easily configured and branded by their customer teams and extended through social channels. 

Strategy:

Trifecta partnered with Varsity to develop a comprehensive solution integrated with Varsity’s existing order management system and master product catalog. This allowed the eCommerce sites access to key product data, such as item SKUs, size charts, color lists, price lists, and inventory. A custom Java application on Heroku utilized templates and REST API calls to pull site details, merchandise updates, and dynamically create individual eCommerce sites. The use of Heroku provided guaranteed performance and real-time processing, as well as the ability to leverage add-ons for enhanced functionality. Another key aspect was the ability for customers to select customization and personalization options. AS400 integration pulled product details, and Adobe Scene 7 integration provided dynamic personalization. For fast scalability, Trifecta automated the micro-site store creation process for Varsity.

Results:

Varsity’s market reach has been expanded to offer custom fan and team apparel. The solutions gave Varsity a powerful fundraising platform, allowing teams to generate revenue from apparel sales. In four years post deployment, Varsity had exceeded their goal of 1,000 custom eCommerce storefronts by 600 percent.