Create an All Star eCommerce Portal
The Story
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. They pride themselves on designing unique, customized uniforms for each team with whom they collaborate.
Challenge
In order to create custom uniform designs, Varsity had developed a comprehensive – but time-consuming – process for engaging with their clients. Following a design process to understand the client’s aesthetic preferences, Varsity’s team would create a prototype, which would be physically mailed to the client for fit-testing and approval. The client would manually note required changes and mail the prototype back to Varsity for alterations and manufacturing. The timeline for each client order was critical, as thousands of custom uniforms needed to be completed prior to the competition season every year.
Varsity’s antiquated manual processes for ordering, designing, and prototyping custom cheer uniforms began to negatively affect their growth potential. An unfortunate client uniform emergency exposed these inefficiencies and necessitated an immediate overhaul of their operations. Varsity tasked the Trifecta team with identifying ways to streamline and simplify the order process.
Our Work
Varsity trusted Trifecta to create a custom solution that eliminated manual processes and improved overall operational efficiency.
Strategy
The Trifecta team began this project with a thorough discovery process to understand the various nuances of this complex process. We determined that a custom-built solution on Salesforce’s Lighting Platform would be the ideal improvement for Varsity. Trifecta’s solution digitized the previously manual process of capturing a team’s preferred design attributes and critical details for Varsity’s design team. We provided a visual timeline that served as a powerful forward planning tool for customers, as well as a reminder of the impacts resulting from approval delays. The team automated communications whenever possible, including automated emails to team coaches at every major stage in the process with visual indicators if their uniform delivery time is at risk due to a pending customer action. A custom cost application in Salesforce allowed Varsity to quickly create accurate retail cost and comparison. Our solution integrated with Varsity’s order management system for placing prototype order. Custom-designed dashboards and reports were tailored to Varsity’s key performance indicators and enabled better visibility among Varsity management.
The Results
Results:
Trifecta’s solution transformed every aspect of Varsity’s All Star Fashion division, generating immense value and enabling them to rapidly – and responsibly – scale their business. New, automated processes eliminate lag time in communications between Varsity and their customer, and among the many departments of the Varsity All Star staff. Transparency of an order’s status has eliminated the need for clients to inquire about order updates and manages expectations. The new cost tool allows designers to give quick cost estimates to coaches and tweak designs to fit budgets while on design calls. Visibility of previous garment styles allows Varsity designers to ensure designs are unique and custom to each team. New management dashboards allow each area of the manufacturing team to monitor progress and expected volume of new design needs in order to prepare the product floor for meeting demands that can fluctuate seasonally. Overall, this custom solution has decreased time from customer request to uniform delivery, and has reduced overall operational costs, boosting revenue.
“For a project of this nature, you have to have the trust and relationship. Good technical people can be very frustrating to work with, but that wasn't the case with Trifecta Technologies.”