|
Floral Innovations is a B2B brand helping flower growers and retailers build a digital presence with website building, photo editing tools, and even an AI-powered plant doctor. In 2020, they used Plytix to launch Floracontent, a platform designed to help their clients compile the product content they need to sell online, too.
We sat down with Michiel Kuipers, Floral Innovations owner, to speak about how using Plytix as the central source of truth for Floracontent allowed them to work agilely enough to survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, plant sales in the Netherlands saw a huge slump. And we saw a gap in the market,” Michiel told us. “Our clients needed to move their stores online, and using Plytix, we were well-equipped to help them do that.”
“We actually started selling our clients’ plants ourselves in a web store and on marketplaces like Amazon and Bol.com to test the market,” Michiel told us. “We needed to understand what product information consumers needed—when you want to start selling plants online, there’s a whole lot of essential product information that goes along with that. There are images, technical product specifications (like height, pot type, size, or price), and textual content such as care instructions, origin, and storytelling.”
They quickly realized that having all of this product information was essential. But collecting it was hard. “While many of our producers had this information available ‘somewhere’ in a system or folder, finding it, formatting it, and sending it to their retail partners or sales channels was close to impossible.”
For Michiel and Floral Innovations, the goal was clear: to give their clients a central source of truth where they could collect, optimize, and share their product information.
“With Plytix, everything fell into place,” Michiel told us. “We integrated the Plytix API with our own software—specifically, our Floracontent Order Management System (OMS)—making it the central source of truth for all our Floracontent product information.” From there, it was easy to optimize, update, and add anything that was missing.
“We shared this database of our client's products and product information with retail partners through Brand Portals,” Michiel explained. Brand Portals are branded digital catalogs that are automatically populated with the latest product information. “Our partners just filter products by criteria like price, size, or seasonality. And once they find what they need, they just download the product information directly.”
“In short, we gave clients access to a single database that automatically sends product information to multiple sales channels. “
“They can fill their web store in one go, sell on Bol.com and Amazon, and send product information to other online retailers—all from one platform.”
“We knew that to make Floracontent successful, we needed a tool that would simplify information management and help our clients provide consumers with as much product information as possible,” Michiel told us. In short, they knew they needed a solid Product Information Management (PIM) system.
“My team are experts in the industry and are familiar with the type of technology required to make sales, so we initially tried to build a central system to manage product content for plants and flowers ourselves. But why reinvent the wheel when there’s already someone out there doing exactly what we wanted, how we wanted it?” Michiel asked. So instead, they turned to Plytix.
“I’ll give you two! First, with one central source of truth, we only have to do the work once. We optimize product information, distribute it to sales channels, and share it with resellers via Brand Portals, all from one place," Michiel told us.
“Second, the results speak for themselves. Now that buyers get the information they need, they’re staying on our pages longer and making more purchases. Page dropouts are down, and sales have increased.”