Copyright cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Center Court, the Cavaliers team shop, is taking a page out of modern concessions in Rocket Arena with new self-checkout kiosks that aim to make buying a jersey or t-shirt more efficient. The two-level shop has five kiosks and one register downstairs and three kiosks and a register upstairs. The technology is in use in both the arena’s store as well as the one in Pinecrest in Orange Village. The kiosks provide a “completely frictionless” process to move lines and get fans back to their seats as quickly as possible, said Chris Kaiser, executive vice president, chief marketing officer for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Rock Entertainment Group. Checkout time has been cut in half for fans, he said, allowing for more transactions to take place in the shop. Sunday’s home opener between the Milwaukee Bucks and Cleveland Cavaliers proved to be a good start for both the team and the shop. The Cavs won, 118-113. And it was the second highest home opener for retail sales in team history, Kaiser said. The night’s top-selling items were the Classic Edition Jerseys, with Donovan Mitchell’s and Evan Mobley’s being the top two sold. Fitting, considering they led the team with 24 and 23 points, respectively. “If you walk around that team store and you were in there on that first night, you can feel a sense of newness, products you have never seen before,” Kaiser said. Fans carry items to the kiosks, with bowls of Topps cards and furry toys serving as impulse-buy options like at a grocery store. Fans drop items in a bin, and the products are scanned automatically. Multiple items can be placed in each bin. You can click on the menu to see items, but it’s not necessary. A total price pops up on a tablet. Customers can pay using any of the arena’s accepted cashless options. The whole process is new but should not be a shock to customers, considering it’s very similar to the Mashgin technology already in use at self-serve concessions. The store uses Greenville, South Carolina-based EXO company’s RFID technology to quickly read the barcodes. The company says on its website that as many as 25% of customers leave when the wait is too long. “It’s super easy,” communications coordinator Katie Priefer said, adding that the kiosks are not taking away jobs and workers have more time to help people. Multiple teams in several sports use the technology, including the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium, Boston Celtics in TD Garden and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Customers don’t have to deal with anyone, though workers are there to help folks if needed. That checkout process used to be three minutes. Now it’s cut in half and possibly faster, Kaiser said. Team-store sales already were going up, Kaiser said. “The demand from last year was unprecedented,” he said. “We were up 40 percent. It’s almost been a full flip of our products year over year.” The Pinecrest location opened in April. The team is on pace to exceed 4,500 orders within its first six months, what Kaiser calls a “major success.” Hopefully, he said, if Pinecrest continues to perform as well as the team thinks it will, additional satellite stores might be opened. While Kaiser said jerseys make up more than half of the retail business, the store isn’t relegated to Cavaliers items only. Monsters, Charge and WNBA apparel also are available in the two-level store. More sales and products are moving into assorted products by brands. The team finished 64-18 last season, making it as far as the second round of the playoffs. “It’s always helpful if the team is doing well and you have a sellable player; that’s always going to help boost the business to a certain extent because jerseys do make up a little more than half of that retail business,” he said. “But it’s becoming less and less important. That’s become Nike’s new strategy, where they want to be less dependent on jerseys because it’s a lifestyle nature. People want to show or represent their fandom.”
