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Case Study: INTERSPORT

INTERSPORT develops its omnichannel strategy thanks to Akeneo's PIM

Akeneo's PIM has made it possible to lay the foundations for an omnichannel strategy by optimizing our organization's efficiency. Intersport's objective is to sell the right products, at the right time with the right product information.

Michael Alimi, Director of Organization and Information Systems

Challenges

  • Digitize the INTERSPORT group to improve the product catalog's visibility.
  • Manage large volumes of product attributes.
  • Move away from a traditional Excel enrichment model.

Benefits

  • Centralization of product information that prevents task duplication.
  • An enrichment shared between the digital and physical channels.
  • Saving time for employees and focusing on tasks with high-value add.

The Challenge

Initially founded in 1924 under the name La Hutte by the Scouts de France association, the  INTERSPORT group took its final name in 1958 when the first European sporting goods association was created. With 813 stores and 15,000 employees, this innovative, customerfocused group is the number one physical network of sports stores in France and wanted to improve the visibility of its product catalog digitally.

In 2016, INTERSPORT began a digitalization process and set up its eCommerce platform, which was intended to become a digital version of its instore offering. From then on, the priority was to showcase their wealth of products online. However, the product data available to the INTERSPORT team was relevant to an in-store channel and not adapted for eCommerce.

Faced with an ever-growing omnichannel catalog that currently has more than 50,000 products, the use of Excel files by employees raised the issue of how to support a large volume of information, and how to converge this information from one end of the chain to the other without creating duplicates or missing key information.

INTERSPORT called on Akeneo in 2018 to integrate its PIM solution with the aim of developing its digital offering. In 2020, the PIM project became the basis of the omnichannel offering for the company, enabling product data to be fed in realtime to the tools used in-store and online.

 

The objective of the PIM project was to expand the catalog displayed on intersport.fr in order to increase the visibility of the brand's product offering and generate additional sales for the 350 members of the cooperative network. But also to use this enriched product data for multiple omnichannel uses.

Michael Alimi, Director of Organization and Information Systems

The Solution

In 2018, the groundwork began with Akeneo’s PIM. The initial goal was to do away with Excel files and centralize the enrichment of product information for Intersport’s digital side. As soon as it went live, Akeneo’s PIM was a hit with in-house offer teams wanting to implement a point-of-sale information project – however once a product was initialized, stores needed to complete the product information in-store.

INTERSPORT therefore changed its PIM project from a dedicated digital strategy to an omnichannel strategy that addresses both the INTERSPORT group’s internal website and product information at the point of sale. This change opened up new monitoring opportunities, particularly in terms of performance, while supporting a significant volume of attributes, given the number of brands and products offered by INTERSPORT. This meant that contributors were no longer just members of the digital team, but everyone who had anything to do with the product. This is a real bonus for providing buyers with complete, high-quality product information.

 

Choosing Akeneo allows us to facilitate our omnichannel strategy and the development of our banners in France and Europe.

Michael Alimi, Director of Organization and Information Systems

The Result

Better collaboration between teams for the benefit of the product

Using Akeneo’s PIM allowed INTERSPORT to centralize all its product information from the stores’ websites and physical locations, thus avoiding duplication, while managing a large volume of attributes linked to the products offered by the group. This product data management system saves time and resources, an essential point for this sporting goods retailer.

 

Untapped functionalities with future potential

And that’s just the start. INTERSPORT, which initially used Akeneo’s PIM to centralize, organize, and export product information now wants to continue benefiting from all the advanced functionalities offered by Akeneo’s solution. The ultimate goal is to rely more on the dashboards provided by the PIM, which are still under-used, to monitor other data, such as completeness.

 

The added value of employees at the center of priorities

While teams traditionally worked with data enriched via Excel files, the switch to Akeneo’s PIM considerably improved product information work processes. This means that the digital and supply teams can work hand in hand, avoiding silo effects from one end of the chain to the other. What’s more, the time saved by using Akeneo’s PIM helps refocus INTERSPORT’s staff on activities with higher added value for them, such as working on the editorial identity of product data.

 

A special thanks yo our partners who supported this project:

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