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Alltrade Tools manufactures automotive, home, and garage tools. While most of their product lines are only sold B2B, a few are also sold direct-to-consumer on channels like Amazon or Costco.
They’ve been a client since 2019, so we spoke to Leah, Content Manager and Digital Marketer at Alltrade, to find out how Plytix has helped them manage and share their 5000-strong product list with their retail partners.
Before Plytix, it took Leah a month to share product information with partners
“When I first started at Alltrade two and a half years ago, one of my first ecommerce projects was to share 800 SKUs with Summit Racing,” Leah told us. Summit Racing was a new retail partner that wanted to sell a selection of Alltrade’s products on its website. It was a great opportunity. “But the product information was everywhere. I had to manually hunt it down. It took me a full month to find it all and format it how they needed it,” Leah explained.
“The problem was that Alltrade had been in business since the 70s and had been recording product information for all of that time. Everything was saved across different files and folders. And there were duplicates of every file,” Leah told us, “but with slightly different pricing or dimensions.” And that’s before she even got to the images. “I would sieve through 10 different versions of each product photo to find the right size in the right resolution.”
Even creating the catalogs they needed to let their partners browse their products was a nightmare. “We had a team of five who worked on creating printed catalogs, only to have them outdated by the time they got to print,” Leah told us. But for a B2B business like Alttrade, whose sales depended on sharing products with retail partners, this wasn’t good enough.
With Plytix, Leah can create product catalogs in less than 5 minutes
“Our data foundation is really strong now. I can confidently respond to channels that reach out asking us to share products with concrete, concise information because I know I can trust what’s in Plytix. A job like sharing 800 SKUs with Summit Racing, which took me a full month when I first arrived, takes me 20 minutes now.”
Alltrade also use Plytix to share product information, both with their own sales reps and with their retail partners. “I share Brand Portals with our sales reps when they’re on the road,” Leah told us. Brand Portals are digital product catalogs that auto-update with product information from their Plytix account. “Now I, alone, can export a multiple-page catalog with 120 products, all categorized, in less than 5 minutes,” Leah explained. “It used to take a team of 5 to do that!”
“It used to take a team of 5 to create our printed catalogs. Now I can make a digital catalog almost instantly.”
On top of Brand Portals, the teams at Alltrade use Plytix to organize their sales presentations and manage their product content. “It’s literally become our main hub of communication in the company,” Leah told us. “We have 50 users in the system! Sales reps generate their own catalogs, and the product team updates product information directly. We refer to Plytix when deciding what products to manufacture. Everything.”
Choosing the right PIM system
“I hadn’t heard of Plytix, or any Product Information Management (PIM) system for that matter. All I knew was that I needed product and content organization. I ended up booking demos with more than 10 different software companies,” Leah told us. “But with Plytix, the level of customer support and enthusiasm sealed the deal.”
Leah’s take: The best thing about Plytix
“The time I’ve saved! A month full-time just tracking down product information is no fun for anybody. I’m a marketer. I’m meant to be growing our sales.”
Alltrade Tools results with Plytix
- Creating a 200-product presentation takes minutes
- Creating a product catalog takes one person, not five
- It takes 20 minutes, not a month, to share product information
