How Group Ici Scaled Product Experiences and Reduced Returns with Akeneo Activation
When onboarding a marketplace before Activation, it took two months. Now we it takes less than one week. It’s really simple and intuitive to use.
Group Ici is a growing French manufacturer that specializes in wallpaper and handmade children’s room decorations. All products are designed and manufactured in France, where craftsmanship and quality are core to the company’s identity. By collaborating with various artists and designers, Group Ici offers many original pieces.
Fighting for a greener world, the French manufacturer ensures their products are made from FSC-managed forests and that they’re PVC-free via eco-friendly printing technology and resources. In line with their brand’s mission, the company prioritizes customer satisfaction by crafting sustainable products that embody a sense of home.
Before Akeneo, the Group Ici team relied on manual flat-file uploads to syndicate product information to marketplaces. This approach was time-consuming, error-prone, and limited the team’s ability to meet marketplace requirements or scale efficiently.
Onboarding a single new marketplace took up to a month, and critical product details like “Made in France” or paper composition were buried in long text fields, leading to data inconsistency and increased return rates.
But the challenges didn’t stop there: Group Ici found that launching catalogs diverted the team’s attention from developing new products, and that adding channels in languages they weren’t well-versed in (such as German) was difficult, as they couldn’t provide accurate translations.
As Group Ici aimed to expand their digital commerce footprint, it became clear to them that the need for accurate product data was more important than ever when delivering exceptional customer experiences and consistent, multiple sales channels.
It took a really long time to manually put the product in flatfile, and we had to concentrate our efforts on providing the obligatory attributes.
Group Ici’s journey with Akeneo began by adopting Akeneo PIM to centralize and enrich product data across their catalog. By creating a single source of truth, Group Ici was able to streamline collaboration across teams, and replace manual processes, laying a strong foundation for scalability.
As their ambitions grew, it became clear that leveraging the full Akeneo Product Cloud, particularly with Akeneo Activation, was key to expanding their marketplace presence and delivering consistent, localized product experiences across Europe.
Group Ici was able to launch their first marketplace, Mondial Tissus, in just four days by following a clear implementation workflow:
During implementation, Group Ici discovered that many marketplaces required attributes that were hidden in long text fields. To meet these expectations, the team restructured its PIM to include dedicated fields like “Made in France” and “Non-woven Paper Composition” which not only improved data clarity for marketplaces but also enhanced the end customer’s product experience.
Group Ici used Akeneo Activation to map attributes across multiple channels without creating redundant fields, which allowed them to efficiently align their product data with channel-specific requirements while still maintaining data governance and a single source of truth. They also added optional, marketplace-specific attributes to meet the unique expectations of each destination.
Additionally, they gained real-time visibility into each channel’s readiness and how their product detail pages (PDPs) performed. This insight enabled faster issue resolution and better collaboration with channel managers to ensure accuracy.
Akeneo’s native translation management also played a key role in Group Ici’s international growth. Thanks to Akeneo’s automated translation support, they were able to expand into global marketplaces without needing internal resources which removed a major barrier and made global scale not only possible, but efficient.
With Activation, we realized the importance of certain attributes and transformed our setup to align with marketplace requirements. Before implementing Activation, make sure your PIM is well-structured and your product data is in good shape. Activation can be a game changer, but to truly unlock its potential, your foundation needs to be solid.
Before adopting Activation, launching on a new marketplace took more than a month. With Activation, they launched their first marketplace, Mondial Tissus, within just four days. This agility has allowed the team to accelerate expansion and seize new sales opportunities with ease.
Thanks to enriched, localized, and accurate product data, Group Ici has seen a 50% reduction in return rates. Customers now receive better product information, including clear details like material composition and country of origin, which has built greater trust and satisfaction.
Akeneo Activation’s automated translation and channel-specific mapping allowed Group Ici to expand into new languages without the need for in-house language expertise, which streamlined access to international channels and unlocked meaningful revenue opportunities.
With faster setup and better alignment with channel requirements, Group Ici launched a new wallpaper collection tailored to Castorama’s audience, which is expected to increase sales by 10–20%. This new line was specially designed with a price point that resonates with Castorama’s customer base, offering a mid-market alternative to their existing collections.
Activation made it possible to test and scale this collection quickly across Europe. Additionally, Group Ici significantly increased the volume of products pushed to marketplaces, from just 300 SKUs to their entire portfolio of over 900. They also introduced
the Charlie Suzy brand to online marketplaces for the first time; since going live with Activation, the brand has seen an immediate spike in demand, with consistent daily order volumes ranging from 10 to as many as 20 across key platforms.
Group Ici considers Akeneo Activation a catalyst for change. With time saved and operational clarity achieved, the team is more confident in testing new channels, expanding product lines, and recommending Activation as a must-have for companies going omnichannel.
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