Amer Sports accelerates in digital

Amer Sports©

Digital technologies are a major trend in sports and active life. “We are onto it. Our connected products make already more than five percent of the company sales,” says Heikki Takala, President & CEO of Amer Sports. “We want to drive digitally connected products and devices towards 10% of sales. And, at the same time, we aim to significantly increase the digital consumer engagement, driving traffic to our websites, services, and ultimately e-commerce.”

Amer Sports’ focus indeed goes beyond individual products and services.

“We have built what we call Amer Sports Connected Digital Ecosystem”, says Takala.
Some of the products and services of this ecosystem are in themselves revolutionary but the focus is in synergy.

Groundbreaking digital products

Connected products form the foundation of the Amer Sports digital ecosystem. Some of the products are already well established in the marketplace. These include Suunto’s connected sports instruments and the connected Precor Preva network.

However, other Amer Sports’ brands are also creating groundbreaking digital innovations.
For example, Wilson is developing a digital basketball with a Bluetooth enabled sensor and make/miss technology. With a smartphone app the user can play against himself. This technology can be applied to other inflatables as well.

In the area of connected apparel, Suunto and Salomon recently co-created a line of Movesense apparel that features an integrated sensor for heart rate monitoring and removes the need to wear a separate heart rate belt. The men’s Movesense tee and women’s Movesense bra work together with the new compact Suunto Smart Sensor.

Amer Sports©

Mobile services engage customers

Innovative mobile apps play an important role in the ecosystem. For example, Salomon CityTrail app brings the spirit of trail running into cities and urban environment.

Another example is the Suunto Movescount app which helps plan, track, and relive the activities. It can turn a sports activity into a Suunto Movie including the photos taken along the route. This movie can be shared with others in social media.

Service platforms are the third key building block of the digital ecosystem. “We have brand sites, Movescount.com and the Preva fitness network. They connect to third party services in an open manner, enabling the consumer to choose freely which services they want to use”, Takala points out.
Preva is a good example of the power of service platforms. Today, the network extends across 1,700 sites with 26,500 networked units. Over 100 million workouts have been logged, and six million media-minutes are consumed daily.

Amer Sports©

Mass customization drives e-commerce

“Our brands talk to tens of millions of consumers via our websites, and we have 60 e-commerce shops,” says Takala. “Importantly, we seek to bring the consumer information to our CRM database, where we have millions of registered customers already.”

This centralized and cross-registered Customer Relationship Management system creates synergies to the whole portfolio of brands. It helps to provide better service and create meaningful offers to the customers – and to increase customer loyalty.

E-commerce creates attractive possibilities also in product customization.

“We offer a magnitude of digitally customizable products,” says Takala. “Customization is a reality, it is a trend – and we have built good capabilities to offer customization.”

Amer Sports©

A good example is Wilson. It has developed customization possibilities that are unique in the industry.

Customizable uniforms, inflatables, and baseball gloves have been very popular. 
Customization has also been applied successfully to winter sports equipment.
 

Accelerating in digital

Amer Sports is now accelerating in digital, says Heikki Takala.

“We want to multiply traffic to our websites, getting more people to know our brands – and then increase convergence, turning that brand awareness into purchases.”

The role of digital devices is also growing. “We seek to drive digitally connected products towards 10% of the Group’s sales, and we seek to drive our Direct to Consumer sales (e-commerce and own retail) equally to 10+% of the Group sales. These two strategies represent a major positive transformation to us as Amer Sports,” states Takala.

Read more in the Precor blog:
How to use technology to plan ahead for fitness success

Watch videos:

• Wilson Smart Basketball
• Salomon CITYTRAIL™ App
• The Preva Networked Fitness Experience
• Suunto Connected Family with Ambit 3 

Source Amer Sports©