"We’ve been using the Contentserv solution for some years now and we raised accuracy and completeness of our product information to 85%, compared to 10% before we implemented the PIM solution."
Nico de Troyer
Master Data Specialist, Varo
Varo, a leading European provider of innovative power tools and equipment, is known for its commitment to quality and performance. With a growing presence across multiple markets, Varo needed a way to effectively manage and harmonize their extensive product data. Contentserv enabled them to centralize, enhance, and distribute this data seamlessly, empowering Varo to stay agile in a competitive landscape while maintaining their high standards for product excellence.
"We’ve been using the Contentserv solution for some years now and we raised accuracy and completeness of our product information to 85%, compared to 10% before we implemented the PIM solution."
Nico de Troyer
Master Data Specialist, Varo
Varo is one of Europe’s leading companies in worldwide distribution of power tools, garden equipment, hand tools, and accessories. Headquartered in Lier, Belgium, the company also supplies safety tools, lighting, pumps and high-pressure cleaners, and home and lifestyle products. Its own brands, Powerplus, Kreator, and Premion as well as different private labels, are on sale in many DIY stores all over the world. With more than 60 years of experience, Varo operates in over 22 countries, with a focus on Europe and Asia, and has approximately 140 employees.
Managing over 130 product groups, Varo faced an overwhelming task of organizing and distributing vast amounts of data, images, and translations across multiple channels. With product information scattered across ERP systems, WMS, Excel sheets, and catalogs, data quality and consistency suffered, leading to redundancies, errors, and high costs. Translation management was equally burdensome, with up to 22 languages required, making accurate updates nearly impossible.
The lack of a centralized repository forced teams to operate in silos, resulting in frustrating rounds of communication just to retrieve product information. Varo recognized the need for a product information management system to eliminate these inefficiencies, allowing them to automate, standardize, and maintain quality in product content effortlessly.
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.
Varo’s goal was to establish a centralized, multilingual platform to seamlessly manage and enrich product data and digital assets, ensuring brand consistency across channels. They required intuitive workflows for team collaboration, simple localization within their corporate design, and robust structures for mapping complex product relationships. Key needs included a criteria-based approval process, compliance with international standards like GS1, and a flexible integration with existing systems to reduce operational costs and boost data quality.
In 2017, after evaluating five PIM solutions, Varo chose Contentserv for its comprehensive capabilities. The implementation journey—marked by collaboration with Parsionate as the strategic framework provider—involved overcoming initial challenges and establishing best practices to shape a reliable data structure. By 2021, Varo launched their enhanced PIM system, powered by Contentserv’s Product Experience Hub, achieving efficient data management, dynamic content export, and real-time synchronization. Today, Varo enjoys streamlined workflows, centralized rights management, and an optimized system that continues to evolve with their growth.
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.
With Contentserv, Varo achieved a single source of truth, enabling data sovereignty and consistent management across all digital assets. Product Experience Hub’s flexible configuration allowed Varo to boost data quality, raising accuracy and completeness to 85% from 10% pre-implementation.
The PIM/DAM integration streamlined complex data communication, standardizing workflows, automating translations, and enhancing time-to-market while reducing costs. Sales saw a 70% reduction in time spent on manual updates, focusing more on strategic growth and client engagement.
Today, Varo’s 25 active users enjoy quick, secure access to centralized data with automated workflows, even generating multilingual user manuals. Recently, Varo integrated QR codes into packaging, allowing consumers to access detailed, multimedia product information instantly, creating a seamless digital experience.
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.
Industry: Industrial equipment and tools
Number of articles: 4000
Digital assets: approx. 50 GB
Languages: 27
Benefit: 60-70% faster product data maintenance
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.
Get in touch with one of our Contentserv experts to discover the Product Experience Cloud.