Fueling Growth for Lids with Cloud Transformation
Fans shouldn’t miss the game because of broken systems or long lines. SEP partnered with Lids to remove costly inefficiencies and deliver faster, smarter digital experiences for fans and staff.
Opportunity
Lids’ complex ERP slowed updates, created costly errors, and threatened a major European soccer launch—SEP stepped in to transform their cloud strategy.
Services
Results
- Met urgent soccer launch deadline
- Saved $300K yearly in ERP costs
- 30–40% faster future integrations
Client
Lids: Where Fans & Fashion Meet
Headquartered in Indianapolis, Lids is a global retailer with over 1,200 locations across North America, Europe, and Australia.
The brand sits at the crossroads of fan and fashion, offering officially licensed headwear and apparel for collegiate and professional sports teams, as well as custom designs and lifestyle fashion.
About Lids
Industry
Retail / Apparel
Headquarters
Indianapolis, IN
Locations
1,200+
Markets
North America, Europe, Australia
Opportunity
ERP Complexity Threatened Growth
Lids is a global leader in licensed sports apparel and accessories. Behind the scenes, their business runs on a heavily customized Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP system to manage inventory, orders, and vendor data. Over time, those customizations became a burden. Updates grew risky, errors slipped through, and storage costs climbed higher each year.
The pressure intensified when Lids faced a major deadline: launching a merchandise integration for a European soccer club before the season opener. Missing that deadline would have put a critical partnership at risk. To avoid rising costs, reduce manual errors, and deliver on time, the Lids team turned to SEP for cloud expertise.
What We Did
Artificial Intelligence
Data
Design
EDI
IT Modernization
iPaaS
Strategy + Innovation
Solution
Cloud Transformation in Action
Our partnership with Lids began as a focused effort to solve their immediate integration challenge, but soon expanded across multiple teams and departments. What started as a single project grew into a long-term cloud transformation.
Building a Cloud Foundation
We began by working alongside IT leaders to review their Azure architecture and prototype cloud automations. The proof of concept showed how routine tasks like messaging and data transfers could run more reliably in the cloud. That early success paved the way for a broader vision.
Next, we built an Azure integration hub—a reusable cloud platform that handled inventory checks, vendor lookups, and order tracking. Automations cleaned up data, converted currencies, and logged every action. The result was greater transparency and faster issue resolution for staff.
Meeting the soccer club deadline was a turning point. We designed a nightly transfer system that delivered the club’s full merchandise list each morning. The system automatically matched product codes, sizes, and prices, converted currencies using current exchange rates, and flagged errors before they could cause problems. The launch went live on time, preserving a vital contract.
Expanding to Fan and Staff Experiences
In addition, the partnership expanded into fan experience. On game days, long lines meant fans sometimes missed the action to buy gear. To fix this, we created a Shopify-based web app that let fans scan a QR code, order from their phones, and pick up purchases quickly. Behind the scenes, each order triggered cloud automations in Dynamics 365, and stadium staff tracked fulfillment in real time with a custom dashboard.
“My team never needs to follow up to get status from SEP.”
You’re really good at hitting your timelines and quickly fixing any issues. My team never needs to follow up to get status from SEP.
We also tackled hidden bottlenecks. For example, in campus bookstores, staff still tracked inventory in Excel spreadsheets. Manual handling led to mistakes and delays. By automating the transfer of Excel data into the integration hub, we improved accuracy and added a user-friendly tool to handle errors with less disruption.
Over time, SEP’s cloud work touched IT, Merchandising, Accounting, and Marketing teams. Each success built momentum, creating a scalable foundation for Lids’ future growth.
Tech Stack
.NET
Azure
C#
Logic Apps
Shopify
Terraform
Results
SEP + Lids: A Winning Cloud Partnership
SEP’s cloud transformation partnership helped Lids cut costs, speed delivery, and meet critical deadlines. By building a reusable Azure hub and automating error-prone processes, Lids avoided $300K in annual ERP costs, delivered on time for a major European soccer club, and set the stage for faster, future integrations—powering continued global growth.
$300K yearly ERP cost savings
European soccer launch delivered on time
30–40% faster future integrations
Scalable foundation for global expansion
“Their professionalism and expertise were outstanding.”
It was a diverse project, so there were challenges, but they were handled very well from the SEP side. The professionalism and expertise of that team were outstanding—I’ve never experienced anything like it.