Betty Barclay ensures global consistency through efficient data management.

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.

Contentserv was chosen as the optimal platform to meet these requirements, and achieve the goal of improving data quality from the ERP, enriching it and then delivering it to the needed touchpoints. Using Contentserv’s built-in Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, the Betty Barclay Group aimed to boost brand engagement and performance, promote their stationary retail channels and improve customer experiences.

In cooperation with the implementation partner hmmh and the team of the Betty Barclay Group, Contentserv collected and defined all requirements of the project. This included data and criteria-based release logic preparation, as well as defining individual module details. Once every criteria was determined, hmmh carried out the implementation, and Conterserv was tailored to meet all desired outcomes as the global solution for every Betty Barclay brand. It took only 11 months for the implementation to be completed. Today Contentserv makes it possible to import and export volumes of data in bulk as well as automatically enrich and deliver content to their desired channels. This means that the Betty Barclay Group is now able to easily import data into the system, apply the necessary data quality rules and enrich their product data. Once data is ready, Contentserv’s connectors ensure that high-quality product data is delivered to their respective e-commerce site or marketplace.

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.

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.