INVESTMENT in a Logopak/Adpak e-commerce auto bagger has helped Classic Football Shirts (CFS) satisfy demand during the busiest period in the retailer’s 20-year history.
As World Cup fever drove unprecedented demand from football fans globally, orders dispatched by the Hyde-based company rose 101% in June and July, compared with the same period in 2025.
The firm was able to handle the surge in demand due to a five-year technology partnership with Shipster, the Manchester-based multi-carrier shipping software provider for e-commerce retailers, warehouses and distributors. This year, Shipster worked with CFS to integrate a Logopak/Adpak e-commerce auto bagger into its e-commerce fulfilment operation, adding automated packing and label application for carrier collection.
Shipster sends the relevant shipment and label data to the Logopak system, which prints and applies the shipping label as part of the automated packing process. For eligible orders, packing time was said to be reduced from minutes to seconds.
During the World Cup, the combined setup helped CFS manage record order volumes, with the packing machine automatically packing almost two-thirds of all orders during the tournament.
Founded by Matt Dale and Douglas Bierton in 2006, CFS has grown from a student-house startup into a global e-commerce business serving customers in more than 130 countries and generating annual revenues of more than £30 million. The company houses a collection of more than one million authenticated football shirts and memorabilia items.
Brandon Evans, outbound operations manager at CFS, said, “The World Cup has always been one of the biggest moments in the football calendar for us. Every tournament creates a new wave of nostalgia as supporters reconnect with the teams, players and shirts that defined previous World Cups. Whether it’s a classic Brazil shirt, a memorable England kit or a shirt worn by one of football’s biggest icons, fans want to own a piece of those memories.
“This World Cup put our fulfilment operation under sustained pressure and Shipster made a massive difference. Without the automation and flexibility we’ve built into the operation with Shipster, we simply wouldn’t have been able to dispatch anywhere near the volume of orders we achieved and still maintain the speed and service our customers expect.”
Tony Cheetham, founder and CEO of Shipster, added, “Major sporting events can create huge spikes in demand almost overnight, so retailers need systems that are fast, flexible and capable of scaling quickly. Classic Football Shirts has some unique operational challenges. It manages more than one million individual products, ships to customers around the world and regularly experiences sudden peaks in demand driven by tournaments, product launches and viral moments. Over the last five years, we’ve worked closely with the team to build a highly automated and increasingly sophisticated fulfilment operation that gives CFS the speed and flexibility to adapt as demand changes.”
