Cheerleading Camps, Competitions & Apparel
Since its founding in 1974 , Varsity has been the driving force in making cheerleading the dynamic, athletic, high profile activity it is today. By combining high energy entertainment with traditional school leadership, Varsity has driven the development of an international phenomenon that now not only includes millions of young Americans, but also a rapidly growing number of participants worldwide.
While Varsity’s heritage is rich and its traditions renowned, it continues to be the innovative global leader in growing cheerleading’s influence and profile.
Our customers have always desired to see our cheerleading and dance uniforms in their school colors before purchasing. We’ve offered our print catalog online for years, but prior to this project, it was only available in one set of colors. Every school, every athlete, saw exactly the same catalog.
We wanted to bring our catalog to life for customers and personalize their experience with us. We wanted them to not just envision our products in their school colors, but be able to physically see them. People have become accustomed to self-service platforms that allow them to discover and explore product offerings before speaking to a representative.
Everyone today expects personalization and exceptional service. These heightened expectations have challenged all markets to innovate and increase self-service and discover-ability of products and services.
Going into the project, we had two objectives: (1) find out who’s viewing the catalog (coach, parent or athlete); and (2) allow them to see our uniforms in their own colors. The challenge was new in that we had never before implemented a solution to these objectives.
DCatalog is a leader in bringing print catalogs to life online. They reviewed our situation and offered a unique solution: Let the customer choose their colors. Though seemingly simple, DCatlaog proved they could handle various fabric textures and manufacturing rules, while providing an innovate way to present our products and enhance the customer experience.
From a sales and marketing perspective, we knew there would be great value in identifying between coach, parent and athlete. And we’ve known for years that customers prefer products in their school colors. They respond best to these items. These are the items they identify before the representative even walks through the door. That’s what drove us to do the project. Our own research and exploration of online product offerings support the fact that self-service and personalization have become the standard.
Involved in the project were our marketing and apparel teams. DCatalog brought the custom color portion to the table (solution 1) and then offered self-identifying (solution 2). In addition to personalizing products with school colors and identifying themselves as coach, parent or athlete, DCatalog also gave customers the ability to “heart” their favorite products. So we’re not only learning who is viewing the catalog, but whatit is they specifically like.
It took a total of three months from start to launch. DCatalog was given the print version of the catalog in mid-November and had it recolored for us by January. The product launched in mid-January. Throughout the process we’ve had no issues from DCatalog’s perspective. They were extremely quick and always very responsive.
DCatalog’s solution accomplished both of our objectives. The positive response was immediate. Employees and customers alike are thrilled with the product.
Increased
Customer reach and satisfaction, employee sales and productivity, website traffic, customer data
Provided
A personalized viewing experience for customers that matches industry standards, as well as a way to identify and classify viewers
Improved
Overall engagement, customer relationship, digital marketing strategy based on a greater understanding of our audience (who they are and what they like)
We are very pleased with the results thus far. In our opinion, the most significant and intriguing data point has been the amount of time customers spend looking at our products (11 minutes per session for a total of 6,000 hours). There is a lot of potential here that we can further examine and use to our future benefit.
