Q&A: Frasers Group chief customer officer talks new Sports Direct membership, building loyalty and unlocking future success

Retail Week revealed today that Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has launched its debut membership programme in the UK via its Sports Direct business.

A benefit-based programme which puts customer loyalty at the forefront of the proposition via exclusive rewards, personalised offers and an enhanced omnichannel shopping experience, Sports Direct Membership marks the “next step” in the group’s ongoing digital transformation and elevation strategy.

Frasers Group chief customer officer David Clark told Retail Week that in the two and a half years he has been at the business, the membership programme has been “central” to Frasers Group’s thinking. He called the launch a “natural evolution” of its efforts in building the digital business.

He said the launch marks the start of an “absolutely key” element of the retail giant’s future success as the group can get to know its customers in a way it has not done before.

Clark sat down with Retail Week to discuss how Sports Direct Membership works, the importance of being a brands business, how this goes hand in hand with Frasers Plus, and plans to roll the programme out across the wider group both in the UK and internationally.

How does the new membership programme work?

“Sports Direct Membership is a new way for us to build lasting relationships with our customers and it’s about enhancing their shopping experience and rewarding them for their continued loyalty to Sports Direct and ultimately to the group.

“Predominantly, it’s a benefits-based rewards programme that unlocks benefits for consumers as they shop within our ecosystem, both digitally and within our stores. That takes shape through personalised rewards and offers and access to rewards and events across our ecosystem such as discounted gym memberships at Everlast or access to our Everlast app. It’s about taking the great value and propositions that we have across the group and packaging them up in a way that we can serve them to our most loyal customers to build value.

“Over time, as we open up the proposition to further fascias, I think we will begin to think about how we build tiering and unlocking as part of it. But customers get more out of the programme by interacting with us as we can give them more personalised rewards.”

Do you hope this engages both new and existing shoppers?

“The benefits to our existing customers are clear and I think that us knowing and learning more about their individual shopping behaviour allows us to better serve them with offers and rewards and build value with them. For us, a key part of this is helping us understand our customers’ in-store behaviour, both existing and new.

“Currently, we have a very clear picture of existing customers within our digital ecosystem but how our customers interact in our stores is a real blind spot to us. That is the customer behaviour we can’t currently understand and identify, and therefore reward. So bridging that gap between our digital consumers and their behaviour in stores is key. We certainly have a very loyal in-store customer and I’m super excited to learn and understand how they are interacting with our business. 

“We’ve been on an incredible elevation journey, both within our physical experiences through our stores and concepts or across the entire new digital ecosystem that we’ve been building and membership is the first time that we bring those two elevated worlds together for our consumers.”

How does Sports Direct Membership differ from Frasers Plus?

“I think what’s important is that Sports Direct Membership and Frasers Plus are two entirely different propositions. Sports Direct Membership is a benefits-based reward programme that’s available to all Sports Direct account holders where we reward them with centralised offers that is owned by Frasers Group. 

“Frasers Plus is our FCA-regulated credit product. Yes, there are elements as part of this that reward customers as they spend across Frasers Group, but those two propositions are entirely independent of each other.

“Customers can be members of both of those things and if you’re a member of Sports Direct Membership and you want to go and pay with your Frasers Plus account, that’s absolutely fantastic but the propositions are completely separate, unlinked and independent of each other.”

What potential does the membership programme have in future?

“We have ambitious plans around membership for the group and certainly on our road map is to roll out similar membership programmes across all of our key features, including Flannels and Frasers, that you will see in the not-too-distant future. That will allow us to reward our customers across the businesses.

“This is also currently a UK-only proposition and we obviously have significant ambitions in the European market, so we are currently investigating how we can bring better rewards and membership into our key European territories as well. 

“We are a brands business and our brand partners are going to play a really crucial role in Sports Direct Membership. We are working closely with some of our own brands to bring direct rewards to our customers and we hope to extend this to further brand partners in future. A big part of our strategy is to bring brands and customers much closer together, and this is a mechanic to help us do that.

“The retail landscape is evolving faster than ever and I think we’ve done a fantastic job at elevating our store network and creating a really great value proposition in a fantastically elevated retail environment. We’ve done a similar piece of work with our digital ecosystem and it really delivered experiential value to our consumers then and now. 

“Value is more important to customers than ever before but value doesn’t just mean great prices, we have value across the group but it’s important that we help our customers navigate that for us. Being able to connect with our customers digitally and bringing them into our stores for those amazing, elevated experiences is where we can win from a value perspective.”