USA: Academy Sports Takes Cautious Steps Into Cyberspace

Academy Sports and Outdoors, one of the US's largest sporting goods retailers, is making the move into multichannel after it signed up with SVI Retail for the company's direct-to-consumer fulfillment product, SVI Direct.Like many brick and mortar companies, Academy Sports and Outdoors wants to use the Internet as an alternate sales channel, but prefers to tread cautiously rather than rush onto the web.Lynn Caldwell, vice president of information systems for Academy Sports and Outdoors, said: "We feel the Internet will be a very successful channel for us, but we are proceeding carefully. We want to be sure we have a solid infrastructure in place so that the customer experience on the web is as positive as the one we have been delivering in our stores.""We chose SVI's fulfillment engine because it has already been successfully integrated into the SVI merchandising solution we are currently using. We look forward to continuing our 17-year relationship with SVI as we partner with them in our move to cyberspace."SVI Direct will drive the fulfillment engine of Academy Sports and Outdoors' e-tail site currently under development. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.