The future has arrived. Now what?

While many sports brands experienced a double-digit decline, FILA’s revenue grew nearly 10% in 2020. Here are three ways the brand took advantage of a flexible and connected commerce platform to boost sales — and tighten its relationship with retailers — during a global pandemic.

COVID-19 quickly propelled the world online — and FILA went with it. As in-person meetings came to a screeching halt, the brand had to rethink its B2B sales strategy.

FILA wanted to mimic the success of its newly launched B2C commerce site while maintaining strong relationships with its retail customers. The solution: Create a consumer-like shopping experience that provides the flexibility B2B sales require, including dynamic pricing, complex shipping functionality, and custom product catalogs for retailer-exclusive items.

The sportswear brand worked with award-winning digital consulting firm XCentium to build a B2B site that captures the FILA look and feel and allows the team to make changes on the fly — without development or code — which was a big impetus for switching from its previous order capture system to the Salesforce Platform. For FILA, it’s that flexibility — on both the business user and customer side — that’s driving amazing results.

"Our average order value has increased substantially, and I think a lot of that comes back to the flexibility the Salesforce Platform allows. We’ve also seen greater engagement — whether that’s order frequency or time spent on the site. Internally, we've seen a huge decrease in the time it takes to launch something new on the site. With our previous system, a new catalog could take weeks to actually get up and running, whereas now it takes maybe a day or two."

After its recent ecommerce success, FILA’s chairman set a lofty goal of selling a million dollars of goods a day. The brand continues to tap into insights from the platform to drive that ambitious growth.

With real-time visibility into behavioral and transactional data (on both the B2B and B2C sides), sales and marketing teams can see trends, including hot-selling items, and run promotions to drive more traffic to specific merchandise. And FILA can create segmented offers and product recommendations based on customer purchase history and seasonal relevance.

"The reporting is huge — looking at logins, how long it takes for buyers to make a purchase, and whether or not they are driven by promotions. It’s really easy to measure and react to on the B2B side now."

FILA also streamlined marketing efforts by integrating its digital asset management platform with Salesforce. Now, both B2B buyers and internal business users have easy access to product information, imagery, and other branded assets to help them market and sell new footwear and apparel.

As retailers everywhere navigate a rapidly changing and unpredictable retail market, FILA continues to see an uptick in online sales. The brand attributes its success to having a truly connected customer experience ecosystem — with sales, service, and digital commerce (both D2C and B2B) unified on a single platform.

Coinciding with the launch of its new B2B commerce site, FILA also implemented a new ERP to automate operational processes and deliver a seamless self-service experience. “The ERP is definitely high on the totem pole — and knowing how much we rely on it, it made sense to launch them together versus trying to have our B2B site come first,” said Hachmeyer.

For FILA, the integration helps the company improve demand planning and forecasting while eliminating the need to update and maintain information in multiple systems. On the buyer side, customers can now track and review their purchase history in real time, enabling a better ordering experience.

FILA’s short-term roadmap includes continuing to harness the agility of the platform to build a full, end-to-end ecommerce experience — using MuleSoft to improve the data flow between systems. “We have a lot to do yet, but we're excited,” said Hachmeyer.