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+ Growth
  • Expanded reach with consistent, engaging product experiences
  • Accelerated time-to-market for new products
  • Enhanced brand impact through unified product data
  • Strengthened customer loyalty across diverse markets
+ Effiency
  • Reduced manual effort with centralized data management
  • Accelerated updates for real-time product accuracy
  • Lowered operational costs by simplifying workflows
  • Streamlined collaboration across global teams

"Working with the Contentserv solution plays such an important role by now that the manual process model would no longer be possible. The solution’s high level of integration saves employees a considerable amount of time. Regarding the catalog, it can be prepared in German and then quickly translated into as many as 27 languages. This was not possible before."

Dirk Huntemann
Senior Application Coordinator, Spectrum Brands, Inc

spectrum-brands-case-study-fish-food

About Spectrum Brands

With its mission “we make living better at home”, Spectrum Brands is a global home essentials company and one of the leading vendors of shaving and personal care products, small household appliances, pet products, and products for cleaning, lawn and garden care, as well as pest control in private homes. To meet the needs of consumers around the world, the business has a large portfolio of market-leading, well-known, and trusted brands. In Europe, these include Tetra, FURminator, IAMS, Eukanuba, SmartBones, and Good Boy as well as Remington, Russell Hobbs, and George Foreman, among others.

spectrum-brands-case-study-fish
Pain

When growth outpaces tools

Before Contentserv, Spectrum Brands relied on a customized content management system that became a bottleneck for their expanding needs. Lacking essential functions like tagging and automatic image format conversion, the system required constant, time-consuming programming. Realizing the limitations, Spectrum Brands sought a professional PIM solution built to support diverse and complex application scenarios out of the box.

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

Building efficiency for growth

The goal was clear: establish standardized processes, reduce data entry errors with fixed workflows, and create a strong foundation for localized product information. Additionally, Spectrum Brands needed an automated solution to produce a magazine-style catalog every two years, which previously demanded significant manual effort. The team required a PIM/DAM platform as a single source of truth, seamlessly integrated with SAP’s ERP, and featuring user-friendly workflows, mass data processing, and flexible data models tailored to various brands and product categories. After careful evaluation, Contentserv was selected, and, with the support of SDZeCOM, it was successfully implemented over a collaborative year, refining workflows and attributes to ease daily operations and expedite time-to-market.

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

Turning complexity into efficiency

With Contentserv, Spectrum Brands transformed its internal processes and achieved significant cost savings while opening doors to new efficiencies. Managing 25,000 products and over 370,000 media assets for 12+ brands, the company now automates 80% of its catalog creation, reducing the production cycle from one year to just a week. Translation management also supports catalog publishing in 27 languages, a feat previously unimaginable. With tailored workflows, product description costs dropped to one-fifth, and up to 50 global users collaborate seamlessly across locations. Now, Spectrum Brands is evaluating a move to Contentserv’s cloud solution for even greater collaboration and continuous innovation.

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 and figures

CHF 3.7 bn (2020) Annual Sales


Food Industry


Worldwide


Dairy products and vegan alternatives

Facts and figures

15,000+ SKUs


bdigital assets


Online Print


Wholesale Supermarkets

Facts and figures

Industrial Food Service


Business Partner SDZeCom GmbH


Contentserv solution: PIM & DAM


Contentserv solution: SaaS

Why (How) Spectrum Brands uses Contentserv

  • PIM/DAM for unified data ensures accurate, accessible product information across 12+ brands
  • Automated catalog creation with Priint Comet Connector cuts production time from one year to a week
  • Translation management simplifies catalog publication in up to 27 languages globally
  • Custom workflows reduce product description costs to one-fifth, enhancing efficiency across locations

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.