Major Sports Retailer Taps AI To Help Set Retail Prices

AI has been helping a major sports retailer in the U.S. determine the right markdown price for its products across hundreds of stores.

So much so that Academy Sports + Outdoors, one of the largest sporting and outdoor goods stores in the U.S., just entered a multi-year arrangement with Revionics, a retail pricing AI firm.

This effectively extends their partnership, which has already been running for over a decade now, Revionics said in a recent statement. It deferred from disclosing the specific timeline under the new arrangement.

Tapping the AI platform would allow Academy Sports to optimize its pricing strategy across over 300 stores, from determining the best base price to setting markdowns based on location-specific demand that can clear seasonal inventory without sacrificing profit.

The AI push marks a leap forward for the popular retailer, which was founded nearly nine decades ago in 1938. Russel Kolb, who climbed the corporate ladder from being an IT business analyst in 2005 to now vice president, recalled how they used to price everything manually.

“When I first joined Academy, we had approximately 70 stores, and our pricing team was manually analyzing individual stores and markets,” said Kolb, vice president for pricing, merchant systems, and master data management.

“But now, we have more than 300 stores, and we leverage technology to help identify the right price across all stores and our highly varied assortment. That’s where the Revionics tools really shine—we’re able to unlock pricing strategies that deliver consistent value to shoppers and achieve stronger results, while easily scaling to manage more stores and products,” he said.

The partnership reflects a larger trend in the retail industry to integrate AI in their pricing strategies, as traditional pricing methods struggle to keep up with the complexities of a fast-changing market. Revionics co-conducted a survey of nearly a hundred retail professionals last year and found two-thirds of them are expecting to increase their investment in AI pricing technologies over the next two years.

“In the retail sector, we’re seeing a clear shift: The market leaders are moving away from legacy pricing practices and adopting AI price optimization to secure both their margins and customer loyalty,” said Matthew Pavich, senior director of strategy and innovation at Revionics in a previous statement.