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Otter Distribution has been a Plytix client since 2019. The footwear brand is one of the largest retailers and distributors in the Romanian market.
But, with four websites (one multi-brand webstore and three other websites for their sub-brands), getting their products online and in front of consumers hasn’t always been easy. We spoke to Alin, the Product Lifecycle Manager at Otter Distribution, to find out how Plytix helped.
Before Plytix, Alin was spending all his time updating spreadsheets
“Our process was very manual before Plytix. All our product information was stored in spreadsheets. But since we owned five different brands, each one had its own way of formatting and storing product information,” Alin told us.
“Different people would be adding the same product information to each of our websites. But they would be taking it from different product sheets.” This led to slight differences in the product information on each website.
“We also could only store six attributes per product,” Alin told us (attributes are things like size, color, and material). “It wasn’t enough to give customers the full picture.” But even with just six, keeping the information accurate and up to date across four websites was a struggle.
“And then the COVID-19 pandemic happened,” Alin explained. “Getting more products online became the priority, and we realized just how much we needed a single source of truth for our product information to do it.”
Since adopting Plytix, Otter sends product information to its four websites in 20% of the time
"On Black Friday in 2019, we were only able to upload 2200 unique SKUs to our websites,” Alin told us. “In 2020, after implementing Plytix, we managed to prepare and upload 4500 unique SKUs. That’s more than double.” Because 2020 was the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Otter outperformed all their competitors who were still struggling to digitize their businesses. “Our competitors weren’t prepared for the new norm,” Alin explained. “We were.”
“We can upload more than double the amount of products to our website in the same amount of time.”
And it’s not just adding products to their websites that’s become easier—it’s adding the rich content needed to sell. “Today, online selling is all about product customization. The faster you can do that, the faster you’ll stand out in a crowded market,” Alin told us. “We went from just six product attributes per SKU to about fifteen!” That means more detailed, high-quality product information to drive sales.
They also use Brand Portals—branded digital catalogs that auto-update with product information from Pytix—to share product information with copywriting agencies. “We just send the Brand Portal to our copywriters, and they can use the information to write great product descriptions, which we then add to our websites.”
Choosing the right PIM system
"We knew that if we wanted to continue evolving, we needed a tool that allowed us to centralize and syndicate all our product information. And fast,” Alin told us. “We researched some of the best-in-class PIM tools to find something that was pocket-friendly while also offering the features that big PIM providers have. That’s how we found Plytix.”
Alin’s take: The best thing about Plytix
"From gathering and entering all our product information on all four of our websites manually, to having a tool that syndicates everything for us in half the time? Product information management is easier than it’s ever been!"
Otter Distribution’s results with Plytix
- Work 80% faster since ditching spreadsheets
- 4 websites managed from a single source of truth
- 2.5x more product imports per week
- 2x as many products added to their website for Black Friday
