Longacre Internet Services, the company with the Internet merchandising rights for The Open, is featuring 800 product lines. The site will provide a full global ordering and delivery service. Around 60,000 orders are expected during the duration that the site is live with approximately 70% of those orders requiring delivery outside the UK.
ufulfil.com, the e-fulfilment arm of leading distribution and logistics specialist Unipart, has been awarded the contract to build and run the merchandising internet site and to manage the sourcing, logistics, distribution and fulfilment of merchandising through the internet site for the Open Golf Championship.
Longacre Internet Services chose ufulfil.com because of its ability to provide a rapid start up for the project through the ‘off-the-peg’ e-shopping capability that ufulfil.com has developed. Longacre was also confident of ufulfil.com’s ability to provide a site that can handle the 20 million hits a day expected at the peak of the tournament.
The basic products have been sourced by Longacre from 16 of the biggest names in sports equipment and leisurewear such as Ashworth and Slazenger. Once an order for a product has been received the product will be selected and both the Open Championship Claret Jug 2001 logo and the Royal Lytham crest will be applied. In this way the company will be able to ensure that there is no obsolescent stock once the website is closed down – a critical issue on items that relate to a specifically dated event.
Commenting on the decision, Julie Hawes, director of Longacre Internet Services said “We were very impressed by the set up at ufulfil.com and their ability to create the web site and service in such a short lead time through the generic e-shopping solutions. With the heritage of their parent company Unipart and through their expertise in building and managing transactional websites, we are confident that the site will be robust enough to cope with the heavy traffic expected at the height of the tournament and that ufulfil.com will be able to offer our customers excellent levels of customer service when fulfilling their orders.”
The Open Championship shop www.royallythamgolf.co.uk