Costa Farms

Managing product information for living products, each with unique attributes, seasonal considerations, geographic restrictions, and retailer-specific requirements, requires a high level of coordination. 

Previously, Costa Farms’ technology environment consisted of multiple disconnected platforms supported by manual processes, making it difficult to maintain consistent and accurate product data across channels.

Much of Costa Farms’ product information was managed through spreadsheets, while critical knowledge about product codes and data structures often lived with individual team members. This created a complex internal system described as a “Rosetta Stone,” where generating and managing product codes required specialized expertise rather than intuitive tools. 

As a result, onboarding new products or updating existing ones was time-consuming and highly dependent on a small number of knowledgeable employees.

The lack of a centralized system also forced teams to repeatedly enter the same product information into multiple platforms. This redundant data entry created inefficiencies and increased the likelihood of errors. At the same time, slow response times for product update (sometimes taking several days) made it difficult for Costa Farms to meet retailer deadlines and respond quickly to changing market demands.

These challenges were particularly visible in product syndication and digital merchandising. For example, images sometimes failed to synchronize properly on marketplaces like Amazon, leaving teams to manually troubleshoot issues that were difficult to diagnose. 

Without a unified system to manage product data, media assets, and channel-specific requirements, Costa Farms faced growing operational friction that limited speed to market and hindered their ability to efficiently scale their omnichannel presence.

To address these challenges, Costa Farms implemented Akeneo Product Cloud as the central platform for managing and distributing product information across its growing retail and marketplace ecosystem. 

By establishing Akeneo PIM as a single source of truth, the company consolidated product data that had previously been scattered across spreadsheets and multiple systems. This centralized foundation allows teams to manage detailed product attributes, imagery, and channel-specific requirements for more than 1,500 plant varieties in one place, ensuring consistent and accurate information across retailers and digital channels.

With Akeneo Activation, the Costa Farms team can now syndicate product information directly to key partners such as Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, replacing fragmented manual uploads and legacy syndication tools. 

In addition, Costa Farms implemented structured workflows within Akeneo, allowing creative teams to contribute marketing content directly in the platform, eliminating spreadsheet-based processes and improving collaboration across departments.

The Result: Helping Product Data Take Root

Since implementing Akeneo, Costa Farms has significantly streamlined how it manages and distributes product information across its retail ecosystem. By centralizing product data and replacing manual processes, the team eliminated several operational bottlenecks that previously slowed product creation and syndication. 

Tasks that once required complex manual coordination, such as linking product images or managing specialized product code systems, have been simplified or removed entirely, allowing teams to focus on maintaining high-quality product information and supporting retailer requirements more efficiently.

The platform has also driven strong internal adoption and collaboration across teams. Although the initial deployment was planned for 10 users, Costa Farms now has 29 active users working in Akeneo, demonstrating how central the platform has become to daily operations. 

With a unified system in place to manage product data and syndicate it to major retail partners and marketplaces, Costa Farms has established a scalable foundation to support its growing catalog of more than 1,500 plant varieties while ensuring accurate product imagery, attributes, and pricing across channels. This transformation has positioned the company to more effectively manage complex retailer requirements and expand into new sales channels with confidence.