<img src="https://secure.leadforensics.com/176401.png" style="display:none;">
+ Growth
  • Increased product visibility across multiple channels
  • Expanded market reach with efficient product launches
  • Boosted customer engagement through consistent information
  • Enhanced sales performance with accurate data delivery
+ Effiency
  • Streamlined product information management processes
  • Reduced time spent on manual data entry
  • Improved collaboration between product teams
  • Accelerated time-to-market for new product offerings

"We see a lot of potential for our further development thanks to the PIM/DAM solution. Because it not only simplifies our processes and thus saves valuable time - it also gives us a whole new flexibility."

Jasna Brnjakovic
Senior Online Marketing Specialist, RUKO GmbH

About RUKO

The family-owned company from Holzgerlingen near Stuttgart (Germany) is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of precision tools for metal cutting. The extensive product portfolio is aimed at professional users in industry and trade and their products are exclusively sold through retailers. Within the industry, RUKO is considered as a guarantee of reliable quality and customer-oriented solutions.

Founded in 1974, the company employs around 240 people and generated an annual turnover of approximately 42M€ in 2021. RUKO is part of the Rothenberger Group – which is the tooling and machinery division of Dr. Helmut Rothenberger Holding with an annual turnover of around 424M€ in 2019.

ruko-fabric-inline
Pain

Overcoming the chaos of siloed data

RUKO faced significant challenges due to managing product information across multiple marketing channels, relying on three separate systems: an InDesign product catalog, the nextmart trading platform, and their company website. This fragmented approach created a complex web of coordination, leading to frequent errors and inefficiencies. Data transfers between channels were limited, resulting in incomplete access to product information, such as the 17 language variants of their online catalog. The lack of a central system meant redundant and error-prone maintenance processes, with varying levels of detail across different channels. Each product information update—like dimensions—required adjustments in multiple databases, adding to the manual workload. Additionally, managing image assets involved a tedious manual process through Photoshop’s batch processing.

However, with a fast-moving ready-to-wear market, the colossal manual entry of different product data (6,000 color references per season, assortment tracking, product feature updates in different languages, etc.) became extremely challenging. Furthermore, primarily using spreadsheets for this purpose was very time-consuming and error-prone. These files quickly became archaic in the context of Lacoste’s digital transformation and they would often contain numerous data entry errors, which resulted in a slow time-to-market that was harmful to sales. Another major challenge involved variable data such as collections, which must be renewed every six months and had to take into account the difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Therefore Lacoste needed to adopt a tool that would streamline the creation and distribution of its product catalogs on both its merchant and marketplace sites. This made it clear that Product Information Management (PIM) was the right solution to quickly enrich databases, accurately aggregate content, and shorten time-to-market, all while increasing agility and flexibility.

Aim

Uniting data for a seamless future

RUKO aimed to streamline its operations by implementing a PIM/DAM solution, connecting various channels to enhance data maintenance, improve product data quality, and enable easy exports in desired formats. With positive experiences from the Rothenberger Group using Contentserv, RUKO recognized the opportunity to leverage these synergies for its own benefit. The goal was to create a central source for all product information, ensuring all systems received the necessary data. This shift promised a significant reduction in maintenance efforts and an enhancement in data quality. Efficient workflows would be established directly through the PIM system, facilitating cross-country coordination for translations. Additionally, the cloud solution would enable location-independent collaboration, while future simplification steps would allow for automatic creation of catalogs and product labels via the PIM system.

In addition to these initial objectives, there were two other quantified objectives: the implementation of the PIM solution should make it possible to increase the average value of orders and reduce product returns.

Lacoste evaluated five PIM solutions, and at the end of 2016, they selected Contentserv. Contentserv allows data to be quickly onboarded and adjusted via user-friendly, intuitive interfaces, and for information to be distributed across all sales media. A pioneer in the PIM industry and a leader for 20 years with an international customer portfolio, Contentserv has extensive experience in product information management.

Gain

Trusting proven solutions for future growth

The successful implementation of Contentserv at Rothenberger AG provided compelling evidence for RUKO to adopt the same reliable solution. This prior success story enabled RUKO to leverage valuable insights, resulting in a faster implementation process and significantly reduced costs. The cloud-based PIM/DAM solution not only streamlines data management but also equips RUKO with robust capabilities to adapt and thrive in a competitive landscape. With enhanced flexibility for future scaling, RUKO can now confidently position itself for growth, ensuring it meets the evolving demands of its customers while maintaining high-quality product data across all channels.

The Contentserv PIM solution provides great flexibility in data generation, with users managing an impressive amount of data (2,400,000 attributes, 24,000 references, and 172,000 ean/UPC barcodes). Export procedures integrated into the solution speed up the automatic creation and editing of catalogs and web pages, allowing Lacoste to export up to 40,000 items daily. Users can then assemble images, technical attributes, and prices by simply dragging and dropping them onto dynamic models subject to pre-established rules.

Other significant advances include the ease of creating new attributes such as information that allows consumers to refine their choices and maximize their shopping experience. This process used to take several months and now takes only 2 or 3 weeks. Furthermore, as fashion is governed by seasons, it is necessary to reconfigure entire offerings every six months. The Contentserv PIM solution allows Lacoste to maintain the attributes (about 300 per product) of the models that remain on sale, and thus, avoids rebuilding the catalog from scratch.

Facts & Figures

Industry: Precision tools for metalworking


Annual turnover: approx. 42M€ (2021)


Target market: Core market in Germany, presence in more than 70 countries worldwide


Type of products: Drilling, countersinking & cutting tools for metal cutting

Facts & Figures

Number of digital assets: approx. 0.5 TB of data


Online channels: online platforms for business customers


Offline channel: Specialty retail

Facts & Figures

Contentserv solution used: PIM & DAM


Usage model: SaaS


Implementation partner: parsionate GmbH

Why (How) RUKO uses Contentserv

  • Centralized PIM/DAM solution for streamlined product information management across all channels
  • Enhanced Data Quality through automated processes and real-time updates
  • Cloud-Based flexibility enabling location-independent collaboration and efficient workflows
  • Seamless integration with existing systems for effortless data synchronization and localization

However, with a fast-moving ready-to-wear market, the colossal manual entry of different product data (6,000 color references per season, assortment tracking, product feature updates in different languages, etc.) became extremely challenging. Furthermore, primarily using spreadsheets for this purpose was very time-consuming and error-prone. These files quickly became archaic in the context of Lacoste’s digital transformation and they would often contain numerous data entry errors, which resulted in a slow time-to-market that was harmful to sales. Another major challenge involved variable data such as collections, which must be renewed every six months and had to take into account the difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Therefore Lacoste needed to adopt a tool that would streamline the creation and distribution of its product catalogs on both its merchant and marketplace sites. This made it clear that Product Information Management (PIM) was the right solution to quickly enrich databases, accurately aggregate content, and shorten time-to-market, all while increasing agility and flexibility.

Ready? Here you grow.

Get in touch with one of our Contentserv experts to discover the Product Experience Cloud.