The advantage of a unified view
When Elite Eleven expanded into stores, it gained a huge boost from the Shopify POS systems that brought all the shop and customer data together.
Melbourne-based luxe lifestyle brand Elite Eleven, founded in 2014 by Lisandro Paz and Benn Martiniello, has grown substantially in the past decade, pivoting from providing football jerseys to local clubs to creating a nationwide fashion-focused brand. The business first signed up with Shopify in 2016 to take its online operations to the next level.
Elite Eleven launched its first physical pop-up experience in 2021 – an opportunity that the team jumped at and pulled together quickly.
Despite the difficulties in hosting a physical shopping experience through a pandemic that limited people’s mobility, Elite Eleven’s pop-up store was a success and paved the way for the brand to launch a more permanent physical space in Highpoint Shopping Centre, Melbourne.
It became clear to Martiniello, however, that the point-of-sale technology the brand used for its short-term pop-up wasn’t going to cut it in the long term, and a better solution was needed.
“If you’re going to commit to a physical retail space for five years, you’re going to want to plug as many holes in your armour as you can,” Martiniello said.
‘Disconnected’ channels
The main issue, Martiniello explained, was that the online and in-store experience had been very disconnected – both for customers, and Elite Eleven itself.
For starters, the brand’s online infrastructure ran entirely on Shopify, but the point-of-sale technology used in its stores didn’t communicate with Shopify’s tech stack or the third-party inventory management system.
This made it incredibly difficult for Elite Eleven’s warehouse team to restock the pop-up properly, as they didn’t have visibility of what stock had been sold and what remained on shelves.
Our store staff would have to get in touch with HQ and find out if a product would be restocked, or would make assumptions based on the stock levels shown on the website.Benn Martiniello, Director & Founder, Elite Eleven
It also became clear that having two separate systems in place had led to two independent sets of customer data that couldn’t be merged to gather new insights. This led to a fragmented view of its customers, and made it more difficult to integrate the two channels. With an eye toward a bigger national expansion, the team at Elite Eleven decided they needed to rethink the system entirely.
Unifying under Shopify
This decision played a massive role in giving Elite Eleven a unified view across the entirety of its business, as well as providing a better experience for its customers.
Tying everything together under Shopify had the benefit of consolidating the business’ inventory information, and made it far easier to keep its stores stocked. It lets store staff see the inventory levels of a particular product across the entirety of the business’ network and help customers get their hands on whatever it is they want.
Customers also benefited because all of the business’ touch points could now communicate with one another and help Elite Eleven provide a more seamless omnichannel experience. Elite Eleven now had access to a unified view of online and offline commerce across the entire business, along with customer data, ultimately providing a better experience for their shoppers.
Combining this unified customer data with third-party Shopify App Store solutions such as Klaviyo and Yotpo, Elite Eleven was able to improve its omnichannel customer engagement with targeted emails and SMS communications, such as shopping cart reminder messages triggered at critical moments in the customer journey to drive increased sales.
A smooth, easy integration
Once Elite Eleven made the decision to switch to Shopify POS, the process of getting it set up in store was painless.
Since it was already a customer of Shopify, Elite Eleven was able to add POS onto its service easily and have the necessary POS equipment shipped to store quickly. From there, Martiniello explained, the system was up and running in a matter of weeks.
The next step was to ensure in-store staff knew how to use the platform to its fullest potential and, thankfully, this too was a simple job, and has helped make the process of launching further stores far easier.
“We only need to train the staff for one day on POS,” Martiniello said.
Shopify POS is one of the simplest solutions to use – it’s essentially an iPad with some tiles. There’s almost no barrier to entry to learn the software, and we can get new staff up and running quickly.Benn Martiniello, Director & Founder, Elite Eleven
New POS pays off
60%growth in online sales from 2022-2023
240%POS sales increase year-on-year
80%increase in overall revenue from 2022-2023
The goal was to unify and simplify the business’ backend and provide a strong foundation for future growth, and from Martiniello’s point of view, the business succeeded.
From calendar year 2022 to 2023 – the year the business started launching its first Shopify POS-enabled stores – overall revenue jumped 80 per cent and online sales grew 60 per cent. The brand’s POS revenue also rocketed 240 per cent, year on year.
While some of this was certainly from new customers, Martiniello explained that much of the growth came from increased efficiencies across Elite Eleven’s business due to a simplified system.
Warehouse staff are now able to restock products across stores more easily, while in-store staff are able to gather necessary information to serve a customer quickly and effectively, reducing the amount of unnecessary internal communication and helping each team do its job better.
Additionally, the move enabled a unified view of its customers, as being able to tie each customer transaction to a customer ID meant the business would be able to understand how each customer shops and tailor individual marketing techniques accordingly.
“We could see if someone had shopped at one of our Melbourne stores, and then let them know that a new product was available in-store. Being able to give customers that kind of omnichannel experience is priceless.” Martiniello said.
“Everything just became so much more seamless and professional once we migrated to the whole Shopify ecosystem.”
The unified system also enabled the business to offer Endless Aisle, allowing customers to shop across the entire inventory of the business, which typically results in about 30 extra ship-to-customer orders a day – capturing around $3000 in incremental revenue.
Prepare to go global
From its initial stores in Highpoint and Chadstone in Melbourne, the brand launched two additional stores across Victoria, and expanded into New South Wales and Queensland. In the next year, Elite Eleven expects to launch a further six stores, all of which will be powered by Shopify POS and its new mobile hardware, POS Go, which will enable staff to take payments on the store floor to further smooth out the retail experience.
Elite Eleven is rapidly entering the next phase of its growth – from a pure-play athleisure brand to fashion-focused one operating stores across Australia and entering into the global market – and Shopify will play a major role in helping the business expand.
“We’re focused on building out our retail footprint in Australia, but we have plans to keep expanding our online business into other markets across the world,” Martiniello said.
Shopify will be the main pillar connecting all of our online and offline stores.Benn Martiniello, Director & Founder, Elite Eleven