Olympia Sports Offers Superior Customer Service

Olympia Sports’ Need

Olympia Sports is a fast-growing retail chain that sells sporting goods and athletic footwear and apparel. They operate 155 stores in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Like many retailers, Olympia Sports' salespeople have access to an inventory locator system to find a customer's desired product at another store or in its warehouse. Instead of having the other store hold the item or having it shipped from store to store, the customer can just buy the item and have it shipped home. Olympia Sports offers this unique service for free, and the customer doesn't pay for shipping.

Endicia’s Solution

Olympia Sports uses Endicia Application Programming Interface (API), which allows it to embed U.S. Postal Service^® postage labels into its applications and websites. The API integration was done by DataVantage, maker of Store21, the POS system used by Olympia Sports. It took under 3 months to integrate, test, and roll out this new solution to all the retail stores. Now, salespeople enter the customer's information directly into Store21, the customer's address is automatically verified, and a shipping label is generated at the store where the product will be shipped from. Endicia's API is also used at Olympia Sports' distribution center when an item can't be found at one of the stores.

The distribution center and stores ship 125-150 packages per day combined. Paul estimates the company saves about 45% on shipping costs using USPS^® compared to their previous carrier. Plus, no matter how many locations Olympia Sports decides to ship from, the API allows it to use just one postage account. All 155 stores share a single postage balance, which means no more headaches for the accounts payable department.

Olympia Sports recently took advantage of a new Endicia feature that automatically notifies the post office which stores have packages ready and arranges for free Package Pickup at the locations. The system also tells the post office the number and combined weight of packages for each store.