Sports Direct have chosen Reaction Commerce in a new a multi-year strategic partnership. Sports Direct is Reaction’s first large-scale, global client for its full-stack commerce platform and managed services and will use Reaction to build out its future-proof, flexible commerce engine to realize their vision of what is possible in commerce.
The partnership will roll out to ecommerce brands under the Sports Direct umbrella, including US sites Eastern Mountain Sports and Bob’s Stores. Reaction Commerce will enable a strong foundation of event-driven architecture and plugin-driven customization across SDI brands that integrates data across the entire commerce experience. The platform will be implemented across all brands and will be used to develop and streamline commerce data into a single source of truth for online and in-store information, and add specific features such as multi-shop marketplaces, which will vary based on each individual brand’s needs.
“We’ve been on the hunt for a new commerce platform for more than a year, as recent growth and acquisitions mean that our once state-of-the-art platform no longer fits the ambitions, scale, or trajectory of the Group. Legacy platforms used in the market work on outdated technologies, many of which were created before the first iPhone, and are not built in a way that aligns the customer, operator, or developer experience with our elevation roadmap. Reaction Commerce allows us to adapt and respond quickly to meet our worldwide customers’ expectations, while also positioning our operators and developers with market-leading tools. Reaction’s architecture will allow us to incorporate data directly into each experience set, creating a dynamic, data-driven commerce platform on all sides. This was a core building block of our long-term roadmap and something we look forward to realizing with Reaction over the next few years.”
– Sports Direct International plc, Head of Elevation, Michael Murray
What’s interesting here is that Reaction Commerce offers the capability to run your own marketplace. Whilst there is nothing to suggest that Sports Direct may be considering using this feature, they would certainly be an interesting retailer worth merchants considering if they were ever to take this step. With the likes of Harvey Nichols, H&M and Debenhams running marketplaces, Sports Direct would have wide appeal to merchants supplying any type of sporting equipment from clothing to footballs, presenting an opportunity for Sports Direct to offer a vastly increased product selection.
