Butlers selects Akeneo’s PIM to streamline their product strategy and fuel global expansion

London, December 2, 2021 – Butlers, one of Europe’s leading homeware retailers has  announced the selection of Akeneo, a global provider of Product Experience Management (PXM) solutions, to manage the company’s product information as part of its evolving omnichannel strategy. 

With 113 stores across 11 countries, the homeware specialist recently began improving their online operations. With Akeneo’s product information management system (PIM), Butlers have been to take their entire store online in the space of eight weeks. Launched in 1999, Butlers has added around 3,000 new product items per year and today their catalogue features approximately 15,000 products across a wide range of channels, including an eCommerce website, in-store and social media. 

Prior to onboarding Akeneo’s PIM, Butlers faceded the challenge of managing their product inventory as efficiently as possible. Since implementing PIM, Butlers can now access identical accurate product data for their online and offline product assortment. This has reduced time to market and boosted productivity across their team of 800 employees, unlocking rapid growth and scale globally. 

Enriching product descriptions

Currently leveraging around 20% of Akeneo’s PIM, Butlers primarily uses the tool for product information and descriptions, producing rapid benefits. For example, the batch function combines products of one type into groups. Attributes such as the capacity of cups (in milliliters) can be changed or updated within seconds for any number of similar products. Previously, the process required each individual to be updated individually, which when carried out across whole product ranges becomes a hugely time-intensive process. With 15,000 items in the entire product catalog, Akeneo’s PIM solution produced immediate time and cost savings, as well as creating the potential to continuously improve its product data strategy.

Akeneo’s PIM streamlining in-store operations 

Butlers intends to use the PIM for customer support in the future, where the sales staff in-store will also gradually benefit from the user-friendly PIM via handheld devices, improving their productivity. Using the PIM, staff will be able to provide engaging, tailored recommendations, improving customer service and streamlining the omnichannel experience. 

Tailoring for a global audience

“A key aspect of why we chose Akeneo is the extremely high variability of the PIM. It allows you to individually control channels, and adapt the product inventory to the marketplace available in that specific country, as well as in several languages” explains Dr. Lasse Meißner, Head of Butlers Digital. This requirement for product descriptions, becomes invaluable due to cultural differences – “Now our product descriptions with approximately 350 attributes – which includes colors, shapes or designs, for example – are relevant to every country, region, marketplace or language”.