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Birlea Furniture Ltd is a trade-only furniture company (they supply businesses, not end customers). They’ve been a Plytix client since 2020.
We spoke to Michael Prime, their Marketing Manager, to see how Plytix has helped them share product information with their retail partners since then.
Before Plytix, Birlea used print catalogs that were outdated almost before they were shared
“Selling B2B isn’t like selling direct. We don’t make one-time sales. Our retail partners decide whether to carry and re-stock our products long-term, and that decision depends on having the right product information from the start,” Michael told us.
“But before Plytix, we used four different spreadsheets, each managed by a different team, to track our product information,” Michael explained. “Product details were in one place, images somewhere else, and pricing in another. It would take days to find the right information to list products on our website. Some data we didn’t have at all, and we’d have to call up the factory.”
Sharing their product information with retail partners was just as painful. “We relied on printed catalogs,” Michael said. “They took hours for our design team to put together. And they were outdated basically by the time they were printed.” Prices changed, products were discontinued, and because printing took so long, Birlea couldn’t customize catalogs for individual partners. “Everyone got the same one, whether all the products were relevant to them or not.”
But they were getting by until 2019, when Birlea made two big moves. They acquired the premium brand Willis & Gambier, and they started working with major reseller websites (like Argos and Wayfair) in the UK. “It was exciting, but from a marketing perspective, it meant twice the workload—two brands, two sets of product information, two sets of catalogs, and even more retail partners to manage,” Michael said.
“We’d expanded into high-end and UK retail markets, but it wasn’t paying off as expected. Not because there wasn’t demand, but because we just couldn’t provide the product information our retail partners needed, when they needed it, in a way that looked professional.”
By switching to Plytix, Birlea saved £15k a year and built trust with their partners
“Now, we have one central source of truth for all our product information. Our team can always find what they need to add products to our website. Everything’s stored in one place, complete with images, videos, and compliance details.”
But, from Michael’s perspective, the biggest change was swapping their printed catalogs for Plytix Brand Portals. “They’re easy to create (we don’t even need to involve our design team), and our sales team can tailor them for each partner themselves,” Michael told us. “We have one catalog with all of our products for our customer service team. One with our UK price list, one for Europe, and then individual ones for specific clients, too,” he explained.
“If a partner wants to see extra products or different product information, we can just go in and add it to the Brand Portal in a few clicks.” The impact has been huge.
“We’ve completely eliminated the £15k we were spending on printing, and we’ve built a huge amount of trust with our partners, who finally have the information they need to buy from us.”
Choosing the right PIM system
“We were originally just looking for a central source of truth for our product information. And just for that, the price at Plytix seemed too good to be true,” Michael told us.
Then, they discovered Plytix Brand Portals. “When we started looking for a PIM, the intention was never to use the ecatalogs the way that we do now,” Michael explained. “But Brand Portals really opened up new opportunities for us. We realized we’d be able to ditch our printed catalog—and all the time and costs associated with it—completely.”
Michael’s take: The best thing about Plytix
“Brand Portals improved our reputation from a branding point of view: our product information looks much more professional, and our customers love it! The increase in sales speaks for itself, I think.”
Birlea’s results with Plytix
- Increased trust and stronger relationships with retail partners
- Grew sales
- Saved £15k a year on printing their catalog (and their clients love being able to access their product list digitally)
- Consistent branding and professionally presented products across all their marketing resources
- Share product information to 100 retail sites in minutes
- Saved 70% of time when uploading new products
