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How Otter Distribution managed to scale their product content process in just one year!
THEIR STORY
From brick and mortar-only to selling online across 4 websites
Otter Distribution opened its first physical store in 1999. Since then, the footwear company has grown to be one of the largest retailers and distributors in the Romanian market. They own one multi-brand store (www.otter.ro) and 3 other websites for their sub-brands.
As you can imagine, being one of the top shoe retailers and distributors is hard work. To maintain that position, they had to find a solution that could help streamline manual work and free up time for what really matters. Having said that, they wanted this transition to be within a certain budget. And that is how they came across Plytix.
After more than one year of working in the PIM (during a worldwide pandemic), Otter quickly prepared themselves for the switch to online shopping. They are now able to process and syndicate double the amount of products to all of their 4 websites, all from one place!
THEIR GOAL
"If we want to continue evolving, we need a tool that allows us to centralize and syndicate all our product data. And fast."
For years, Otter Distribution relied on product data sheets as their source of information. However, the problem with that approach is that different people worked on the same product information (in multiple websites). This led to slight differences in the information presented to customers and created confusion. Having all the information in one place would eliminate that risk.
To add, these spreadsheets were coming from 5 owned brands, plus the products coming from the brands they distributed. Quickly, the need for a single source of truth became real. They needed a tool that could help automate old-school processes and enable collaboration between internal departments and buyers.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT SOLUTION
Let's get rid of spreadsheets, once and for all!
The Otter team researched some of the best-in-class PIM tools to find something that was pocket-friendly while also offering the features that big PIM providers have. This is how they found Plytix.
"From manually gathering and entering all product data to having a tool that syndicates everything to 4 websites in half the time - data management is now easier than ever."
But that's not all ...
Features like Advanced Filtering, Bulk Editing, and Computed Attributes have been huge game changers for Otter. "Managing product data in the PIM allows us to customize on the fly, and process twice as many products than before."
They also use Brand Portals to share content with copywriting agencies. This means that they don't have to send millions of emails for different spreadsheets. Therefore, even more, time saved.
THE RESULTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES
“Today, online selling is all about product customization. The faster you're able to do that, the faster you'll win in a crowded market."
Plytix gave Otter an environment where they could manage their product data, and collaborate between different departments and agencies. But what really made all the difference for them was being able to syndicate that product data to 4 different websites instead of doing all of it manually. Here's an example:
"On Black Friday in 2019, we couldn't manage to upload more than 2200 unique SKUs into our websites. After implementing Plytix and a bunch of new processes, on Black Friday in 2020, when most of our competitors weren't prepared for the new norm, we managed to prepare and upload 4500 unique SKUs. This translates roughly into 27000 products as one unique model has at least 5 subcodes for each size."
Pretty cool, huh? Bearing in mind that they went from 6 product attributes for each SKU to about 15!
- "We are syndicating our product information to 4 websites!"
- "We are saving 80% of the time we previously spent on manual data entry!"
- "We can process more than twice as many products in the same timeframe as we could before!"
- "We went from having only 6 product attributes to being able to process 15 product attributes!"
"On Black Friday 2019, we could only process 2200 SKUs. After investing in Plytix PIM, we doubled those numbers for Black Friday in 2020, syndicating 4500 new SKUs to 4 websites."
Alin, Product Lifecycle Manager, Otter Distribution
