Ultra Football is the world’s largest football retailer based in Sydney, Australia
Founded in 2017, Ultra Football opened its first physical flagship store in Alexandria, Sydney. Since then the company has established itself as the world's largest multi-branded football store. Partnering with Nike on the strategy & brand side, they cater to football enthusiasts globally, providing a variety of football gear from jerseys to boots and equipment.
Since moving to Rivo Ultra Football has seen:
✔️ $800K+ loyalty revenue in under 6 months
✔️ 7% of all revenue driven from loyalty
✔️ 150% boost in Ultra Rewards member AOV (average order value)
Creating a loyalty experience online that rivals the in-store experience
Ultra Football differentiates itself from other football stores by creating an in-store shopping experience that’s second to none. Just take a walk in their flagship store, Ultra Nord, and you’ll quickly realize that shopping for boots is just one part of the entire experience.
Ultra’s bootroom takes fitting to another level. Their in-store cafe, Panenka, is a third-space where fans gather to watch live matches every day, fostering a sense of community and belonging under the brand. Inside the store, there’s an indoor pitch for trying out football boots, and anyone can book the field and play a match with their mates. Don’t forget to stop in at Ultra Barber Zone FC for a fresh cut after the match. The Ultra team don’t miss a beat when creating a devoted shopping experience centered around one thing – football.
With the retail experience in Sydney being this tactile and hands-on – their team wanted to bring the energy of that experience online. However, the challenge was their previous vendor was inflexible and lacked the type of bespoke custom integration needed to evolve their online Loyalty strategy. “Our legacy software was missing what we needed to 10x the loyalty online.” says Ravil, Digital at Ultra Football.
Scaling loyalty with their existing provider would be cumbersome at best. Ravil added: “There was way too much customer friction when it came to earning and redeeming points. Our customers were confused and the loyalty program lacked a strong integration online with in-store”.
If we had stayed with our previous provider, I’m certain that we wouldn’t be where we are. We were thoroughly impressed how Rivo’s onboarding team helped us build out the custom account experience. This helped cut down launch time by 50%.
We chose Rivo due to the developer friendly nature of the product. Nike and Ultra Football are both very tech forward and Rivo’s platform was the only option that covered everything that we required for while also offering support with customisations. We were also incredibly impressed with Rivo's level support even across time zones – Rivo is a clear standout and we would highly recommend them as a loyalty partner.
Ultra unlocks a centralized channel of brand loyalty and embeds Rivo into their existing retention stack
With the help of Rivo Agency Partners, Liquorice, Ultra Football were able to ship all the features before the deadline. Since re-platforming with Rivo, Ultra Football no longer has to compromise on a sub-par loyalty experience online. Now it could unlock the same intuitive branded experience online as it has in store.
After the onboarding kickoff call, Rivo’s customer onboarding team started implementation. With Rivo, Ultra Football centralized a customer’s Ultra Rewards ID in one place. While still using the same login a customer uses when they sign into their account. “Rivo is on the bleeding edge of Loyalty”. Ravil says. “Replatforming enabled our customers to use the same account as they use for the Boot Finder and order history while keeping loyalty all in same place”.
Some of the core integration touchpoints included:
- Customer account integration: Integrated a custom loyalty portal where customers could earn and redeem their rewards through the click of a button (Rivo Metafields)
- Branded on-site Loyalty Page: Created an on-site rewards page experience with the Rivo API
- External App integration: Integrate the custom “Clubs” app which allowed Club members to enter specific loyalty tiers based on customer segments in Shopify
- Boot Finder Custom Actions: Earn points for customers completing their Boot Finder app
- Apple and Google Wallet Pass: Integrate Rivo in a custom Apple wallet pass (Rivo Wallet). The custom wallet pass app that Liquorice built with Rivo’s API not only enables Ultra Football to make in-store earning cutting edge but has also helped add another touchpoint of world-class experience in their retail stores – with location-based push notifications to the Ultra Wallet pass.
After moving to Rivo, Ultra Football saw results
✔️ $800K+ loyalty revenue in under 6 months
✔️ 7% of all revenue driven from loyalty
✔️ 150% boost in Ultra Rewards member AOV (average order value)
“The transition was seamless. We were thoroughly impressed how Rivo’s onboarding team helped us build out the custom account experience. Their API’s are without a doubt the best we’ve worked with” says Ravil. Ultra was looking to scale online rewards with Loyalty being a core part of their retention strategy. The legacy loyalty software they were using was clunky, outdated, and couldn’t handle the customization that they needed. Ultra Football and their agency Liquorice wanted to integrate loyalty deeper at the account level and make earning and redeeming points seamless from a customer experience standpoint.
They needed a solution that would work with their omnichannel focus – at scale. After the second meeting, Rivo become the clear preferred vendor stand out. Rivo, according to Ravil, opened many opportunities for how the team now thinks about retention. “If we had stayed with our previous provider, I’m certain that we wouldn’t be where we are. We were thoroughly impressed how Rivo’s onboarding team helped us build out the custom account experience. This helped cut down launch time by 50%.” Ravil says.
