Ann Arbor-based Cliff Keen Athletic, a powerhouse in wrestling and officiating attire, is adding muscle to its on-line presence.

The company, founded by longtime University of Michigan wrestling coach Cliff Keen 52 years ago, is rolling out a new Web site that allows customers to design their own uniforms, see real-time inventory, access the company’s Twitter and Facebook pages and gain access to the latest videos and tips on wrestling and officiating.

It’s the first Web site revamp in four years, said Chad A. Clark, vice president for sales. At the same time, the company is test marketing an expansion into the triathlon market to take advantage of growing interest in the sport.

Cliff Keen Athletic sells wrestling uniforms and gear for high school and collegiate wrestling along with officials' wear for most sports.

With the new Web site, coaches and other customers will be able to design custom uniforms, selecting a style and adding color, lettering and custom graphics. The uniform builder will allow teams to create and see their designs before an order is placed. Until now, teams historically have chosen whatever uniform style (and there are 18 to 20 uniform styles for wrestling singlets) their school colors appeared on in the catalog.

“Or, if you had a creative coach, they would use markers at home to color a uniform and then send it in to the dealer,” said Jim Keen Jr., who, ,along with Jim Keen Sr. and Tom Keen, owns the company. “Before this, you had to imagine what it would look like.”

The new Web site is designed to help direct sales customers as well as dealers. While most of the company’s sales are though dealers, it doesn't don’t want to miss selling to customers who don’t have access to a dealer or retailer that sells Cliff Keen, Clark said. The redesigned Web site will help both: It has a business-to-business portal where dealers can create their own user profile, log-in and space and use a shopping cart of their own to make purchases rather than faxing in an order. “It’s paving the way for the next generation of sporting goods transactions,” Clark said.

And it offers real-time inventory to both dealers and consumers. “It’s much more streamlined for the end consumer and the dealer,” Clark said. On the back end, it will also integrate the company’s accounting system with its Web site, eliminating the need to hand-enter sales data into its computer system.

While sales are the end goal, the company wanted to develop a Web site that attracted heavy traffic, “You want to bring people back to your site to see what’s new,” Keen said. Toward that end, the new site will include videos of wrestling moves and officiating highlights.

“We’re marketers,” Clark said. “We not only want to attract and keep a client base, we want to continually interact with them. That’s why we do social media and have built a robust fan base. We want to have consumer dialog and interaction.”

The company began rolling out the Web site changes this summer and will continue to upgrade it in future weeks.