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Abitare is a Luxembourg company specializing in furnishing, decoration and interior design since 1996. Abitare markets its products across two brands: Abitare Living and Abitare Kids brands.
Akeneo PIM allowed us to throw ourselves in a global and omnichannel approach.
Abitare Holding is a multi-brand retailer: Abitare Kids, Abitare Living, and Flexa Shop. Initially, it was two shopping areas that were 5000m2 each, dedicated to furnishings and toys at the mid/top-end of the price range and located in Luxembourg. Following a meeting with the manufacturer Hape Toys, who immediately captured the emotional capital of the brand by visiting the Abitare Kids store in Luxembourg, the newly formed group expanded across the European market. This association has two strengths: 1) for the manufacturer to be as close as possible to what the end customer want, and 2) for the retailer to shorten the distribution chain and provide better value through its products.
The group is focused on strengthening its presence in digital by acquiring a robust eCommerce platform, enabling it to broaden its territory and open new countries more easily.
During the eCommerce re-platforming timeframe, Abitare sought out a Product Catalog Management solution: “Our system integrator incorporated Akeneo PIM into its global value proposition. They convinced us that integrating Akeneo PIM provides a best-of-breed solution to manage our product information.”
In the short term, this solution allows the company to dissociate the product management from the eCommerce re-platforming and to simplify the overall project. In the long-term it provides a way to structure product data that simplifies the process of opening new sales channels to enable acceleration of product offerings to reach a critical mass.
Akeneo was selected for its ergonomics and ease of use. It also allows us to model our catalog according to our needs and to introduce a strong collaborative dimension.
Two projects were led in parallel with support from the system integrator and mobilized two different teams:
The design workshops raised the operational stakes. The guideline was to standardize the solution for all teams. Although the teams were dispatched across China, Spain, the Luxembourg headquarters or in-store, the objective was that each of them can contribute and easily adopt the solution.
Once this standardization phase was achieved, the business teams worked on normalizing existing data thanks to the new conventions, which were more stringent, more complete, and qualitative. “This effort to upgrade 15 000 product sheets was significant but mandatory to lay the foundation for a more robust future”. Simultaneously, the technical teams set up Akeneo and integrated it into the Abitare ecosystem by automating data flows with the ERP and the eCommerce platform.
“We focused initially on the top 20% of products that generate the most revenue. All of the company’s tradespeople helped to ensure that the 20% of records were properly filled. As for the remaining 80%, they continue to be filled according to feedback coming from customers or retailers in the store. These comments can be related to simple typing errors or to a real need for additional information, which can consequently trigger a conversion (buying) or lose a sale. In-store sellers are directly involved as part of the product enrichment workflow“.
It is also necessary to integrate the arrival of new products with a renewal rate of + 30% per year. Coordination and efficiency are two key drivers.
By dissociating product management from eCommerce re-platforming, we clarified and specialized responsibilities between product management and merchandizing. It is a real change of mind for our teams. It allows us to throw ourselves in a global and omnichannel approach.
The team was involved very early in the project and the data model was understood and shared. Akeneo PIM adoption was easy, thanks to its simple and intuitive interface.
«In terms of optimization, efficiency and collaboration, Akeneo is a fantastic tool; nothing is lost, it’s deeply reassuring, and it’s the place where we spend most of our days. The collaboration comes quite naturally. Because all teams (marketing, manufacturing, customer service, instore sellers) now have access to the solution and really contribute, they get to know each other and talk, which was not the case before».
“Akeneo makes us more productive by automating and simplifying tasks that we previously did by hand in the backoffice of our eCommerce website. The time we are saving has been relocated to higher valuable tasks like managing the relationship with our vendors or highlighting product categories on our website or in-store.”
«Akeneo also allows us to view which products are published on our different channels in real-time with confidence.“
An immediate benefit of this approach is that once the job is done for a brand or a channel, it is very simple and quick to duplicate on another channel or country. This offers us many opportunities to deploy in China, Germany, on Marketplaces, or to automate the management of our paper catalogs.
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