Case Studies

Marchants: 6IXSENSES teams up with one of Toronto’s biggest team sports equipment providers.

Marchant’s School Sport was established in 1975 by Bruce Marchant as a sports apparel wholesaler with just one employee. With over 50 years of experience in the industry, Marchants has become a renowned name in Toronto. Over time, the company has expanded its operations, occupying 30,000 square feet of warehouse and showroom space and over 50 employees. Today, Marchant’s offers sports and physical education equipment and uniforms for schools and institutions, as well as screen printing, embroidery, digi-print, and tackle twill services for schools, sports leagues, corporate clients, and individuals.

The one-stop shop for sports equipment

Marchant’s is a one-stop shop for all types of sports equipment, apparel, and accessories. They offer a wide range of products, from general to highly specialized equipment suitable for unique sports and field requirements. Their offering is not limited to generic balls, bats, and nets for sports, but also to large basketball, volleyball systems, institutional scoreboards for sports facilities, bleachers, and accessories. For instance, if you need a specific floor socket in particular dimensions for volleyball, Marchants will have it available. Marchant’s product items are so specialized that most large wholesale distributors don’t carry them.

The Toronto-based company has account managers on staff that are knowledgeable about a variety of sports. The managers evaluate the operations and warehousing, examine the hardware requirements, and design tailored solutions to ensure that product additions occur in synchronization with stock demand. With access to a wide network of top global sports brands, including Adidas, Under Armour, Wilson, Gildan, Russell, Spalding, TAG, Baden, Schutt, Rawling, and more, vendors are eager to work with Marchants due to their decades of experience in the industry.

As a regionally known business, Marchants has a sizable client base, including multiple School Boards that oversee over 5,000 schools. The company’s impressive clientele account for millions of dollars in sales. The Regional School Board comprises roughly 4,000 schools with a total enrollment of 600,000-700,000 children. These include the Toronto region school board, the Waterloo district school board, and other private schools. In addition, renowned universities such as Toronto, Western Ontario, and York University, as well as Colleges, Leagues (Leaside Hockey Leagues), Teams (Argos, Dolphins), and other corporations are regular clients of Marchants. The company’s revenue runs into millions of dollars, reflecting the trust and loyalty of their diverse clientele.

Apparel

Marchants’ apparel is sourced by partnering with some of the world’s leading brands. This gives students the choice to acquire branded clothes like Under Armour t-shirts with their school’s logo printed, among other things. Digital printing is another important facet of Marchants’ company. The business has invested in cutting-edge technology and uses these tools to increase production efficiency. With Marchant’s commitment to offering customers high-quality products at affordable prices, this extends to players, coaches, athletic directors, and clubs alike. Their dedication to superior quality is reflected in the technology and machinery utilized, which include:

• Screen Printing: an on-site complete screen printing department

• embroidery—an on-site computerized embroidery department.
• Twill and Heat Seal: custom cut and sewn twill and heat seal capabilities.
• Digital printing—our newest addition—is used to print colorful, complex logos.
• Graphic Design: on-site artists who can help you choose between stock-ready art and custom art created from your rough sketches or instructions

6IXSENSES, a meaningful and integrated team player in Marchant’s digital transformation journey

With over a decade of collaborative work and seven years of official partnership, 6IXSENSES is committed to providing solutions to create a fully integrated digital marketing and business ecosystem for Marchants. 6IXSENSES was an important member in supporting Marchant’s digitalization journey by improving efficiency, profitability, and reducing counterproductivity in operations. Streamlining the operations through technology has allowed a better flow of information between internal and external staff as well as suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders.

Through the years, Marchants was scaling up fast, and 6IXSENSES supported their business to grow. SIXSENSES, with over a decade of collective experience in multiple disciplines ranging from technology to strategy to marketing, has created over 2000 websites and spearheaded eCommerce operations.

The eCommerce aspect includes the design, development, implementation, and integration. There are three key areas relating to eCommerce that are offered by 6IXSENSES. Technological operations, including maintaining the website up to date, website optimization, catalog maintenance, and merchandise maintenance, are among the few regular activities. Apart from the interaction and adoption of technology, there are customer operations. Customer experience improvement is the second important pillar that looks at optimizing conversion rates and enhancing the user experience. The third pillar is the marketing operations in eCommerce, which include email campaigns, product listing and additions, improving ROI, and paid media ads. 6IXSENSES also offers other packages to Marchants, including integration, design and development, and business strategy consulting.

Conclusion

Marchants, with thousands of products in its store and a proud catalog of retail and corporate clients, is committed to providing the best quality sports equipment and apparel to schools, organizations, universities, and colleges, as well as teams, leagues, and individuals at a competitive price. Ongoing support and optimization from 6IXSENSES further enhanced Marchants’ online performance, propelling them to new heights of success in the Canadian sports industry. For example, schools have teams, like their volleyball teams, that would need jerseys sewn with the players numbers and names. Marchants can provide these custom jerseys on branded t-shirts because they collaborate with a large range of popular brands. Marchant specialized as a leader in team apparel. The local wholesaler and their devoted team members have gained comprehensive knowledge over the years relating to sports equipment and apparel, which has made them a well-known name in Canada. In essence, Marshalls is the destination for everything you need to be in the game.