West Yorkshire sports retailer invests £2.5m in tech infrastructure and IT team

As part of Bdaily’s latest feature, Retail Week, we look to Shipley, where sports retailer SportsShoes.com has announced an overall investment of £2.5m in further enhancing its technology infrastructure and expanding its IT team to 21 people.

The investment forms part of the online running shoes, running clothing and outdoor gear retailer’s ongoing strategic expansion plan. The announcement follows soon after the company stated it is also investing £2.5m in a 10,750 sq ft creative and tech hub called Unit 2 adjacent to its Bradford head office and warehouse facilities.

Established in 1982, SportsShoes.com offers customers more than 17,000 products from 150 global running and outdoor brands. From a running perspective these include Asics, Nike, Adidas, Hoka and New Balance whilst in terms of outdoor they include Haglöfs, Montane, Rab and Patagonia.

The recent IT recruits comprise a head of engineering, data and analytics manager, IT operations manager, product manager, junior support manager and four developers.

At the same time, the retailer has invested in a new e-commerce platform from Big Commerce, partnering with e-commerce agency Space48, to deliver a “best-in-class” online retail experience.

In addition, the company has further bolstered its internal IT infrastructure, security and resilience whilst implementing Google Workspace for employee collaboration and Looker Data Studio for data analytics.

SportsShoes.com’s chief technology officer, Jon Cleaver, commented: “We want our website and online retail experience to be best-in-class, so we have invested significantly in people, processes and technologies to enable us to achieve that objective.

“We are also dedicated to continuous improvement and will be utilising the new internal infrastructure and software to ensure it further drives SportsShoes.com’s innovation, ambition and expansion plans.”

The IT team is to be based in the company’s Unit 2 creative and tech hub which is due to be ready for occupation by the end of the year. The new facility will accommodate an additional 100 people over two floors and SportsShoes.com is anticipating recruiting more coders and developers in the near future as the business grows.

SportsShoes.com’s head of marketing, Dan Cartner, added: “Our marketing and IT teams work as a collective to ensure we create an outstanding retail experience both online and offline.

“This investment further enhances our ability to connect with, and serve, our customers and athlete community by being even more responsive to their needs. It means we can play an even bigger role in helping people achieve their own running, outdoor and fitness goals at whatever level that might be.”

By Matthew Neville – Correspondent, Bdaily

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