The NBA Store Opens its First Store in the UK with Full Shopper Protection
The aggressive market development move by the NBA Store with full customer protection via traffic control.
Founded in 1988, the NBA Store is a chain of officially licensed retailers that provide the related merchandise for the National Basketball Association (NBA), also known as the palace of all basketball sports fans and worshippers.
A week ago, NBA and Fanatics, a global leader in licensed sports merchandise, has opened the very first NBA Store in the UK, in London’s well-known pedestrian shopping area Carnaby, Soho. It is an aggressive move to both NBD and Fanatics considering the impact of continuous impacts to the offline shop operation due to Covid-19 but yet a must decision.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, the NBA Store at 545 Fifth Avenue in New York, which has remained closed throughout the pandemic, once owed $7 million to its landlord, the Moinian Group. While Moinian claims that the store has broken its lease by not paying rent, the store claims that the Covid-19 pandemic has made it impossible to operate.
“Like other retail stores on Fifth Avenue in New York City, the NBA Store was required to close as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Under those circumstances, we don’t believe these claims have any merit,” said NBA spokesman Mike Bass. “We have attempted, and will continue to attempt, to work directly with our landlord to resolve this matter in a manner that is fair to all parties.”
In fact, the store in New York was struggling prior to the pandemic, incurring losses of $20 million since it opened in 2015. In an email to Moinian that was submitted as part of the lawsuit, the league’s senior vice president of global partnerships, Hrishi Karthikeyan, said “our continued ability to operate the Store is only sustainable inasmuch as there is a discernible path to profitability.” So, now the NBA has to transform offline stores into brand hubs globally rather than display merchandise and stay still to count on their luck to come.
Back to the London great opening, NBA EME director, global partnerships, Steve Griffiths, said in a statement: “Ahead of our 75th anniversary season, we are excited to welcome fans to the first NBA Store in the UK.”
“UK fans are true connoisseurs of the game, and through our partnership with Fanatics, fans of all ages will be able to celebrate their love of the NBA with an extensive range of official and exclusive merchandise,” Steve Griffiths said.
The new two-floor store, located at 14–16 Foubert’s Place in London, is being operated by retail giant Lids, the largest licensed sports retailer in North America partly owned by Fanatics and aims to offer fans an authentic NBA shopping experience.
The London opening not just marks the first official NBA store operated by Lids as part of the NBA’s partnership with Fanatics, but also will be followed up with three additional stores around the world within the next 18 months.
In order to drag shoppers back to the brick-and-mortar stores during the COVID-19 crisis, the new store in London houses an extensive range of official NBA and WNBA merchandise and memorabilia, including exclusive NBA products, apparel, jerseys, headwear, sporting goods, toys, and collectibles from major brands such as Mitchell and Ness, New Era, Nike, and Wilson. In addition, there is a customization service where fans can personalize NBA jerseys and hats for all teams.
In a time like this, to protect customers visiting the store is the top priority to famous retailers like NBA, traffic counting via smart video analytics solution widely applied for many purposes than merely calculating people for traffic conversion rates to evaluate brand attractiveness or marketing campaigns.
Under the normal conditions, the traffic data provided by SkyREC AiMS (Autonomous Intelligence Management System) reaches a high accuracy with more than 98.5% in detecting people passing by the store and anyone who turns into the shop.
Based on the storefront traffic, in-store traffic, and traffic conversion rate, the sales and marketing team in NBA headquarter is easily accessed to each store’s performance as well as a multiple store ranking via SkyREC’s daily data analytics reports anytime, and anywhere.
After visitors enter the store, to prevent the spread of contagious illnesses, traffic control which means to regulate shopper traffic and limit the number of people in a brick-and-mortar is the key. The real-time people counting driven by AI video analytics enable the store managers and employees to manage the social distance in the shop, on every floor, or in the “special areas.”
For the NBA Store, in order to maximize its brand charms and power up the shopping desire of every visitor, many specially designed display areas or experience zones are set all over the store. Some are collectible series, and some are interactive digital devices like digital signages or kiosks.
AiMS solution helps to save store manages’ time and energy on tracking the traffic and crowdedness and provide the best protection to both shoppers and the store personnel.
The National Basketball Association strengthens ties with the UK with debut store in London General manager of Fanatics’ international business, Zohar Ravid, added: “The NBA is becoming increasingly popular in the UK, and we have seen some really strong growth across our online sites, with UK sales on NBAStore.eu growing significantly in the last five years.
“Opening the first-ever physical NBA retail store in London, combining our vertical product and e-commerce strengths with Lids’ high street execution, is a logical step and clearly within Fanatics’ strategy of expanding teams’ and leagues’ omnichannel presence so fans globally are served in the best way.”
