Solution: Product Information Management (PIM) Industry: Furniture Industry
450% More Products with Marketplace Integration
The Challenge
Black Red White is Poland's largest furniture group, responsible for around 20% of all sales in the domestic furniture market. It specializes in the production and distribution of furniture and home furnishings. The company has been offering a diverse selection of products at competitive prices for three decades. Thanks to this, Black Red White has become one of the most recognizable and valued brands on the Polish market. Currently, BRW's offer is available not only in furniture showrooms throughout Poland and in the online store, but also in 55 foreign markets.
Due to the constant expansion of the assortment base, the company wanted to open a marketplace for partners and distributors to acquire new products for the brand’s retail customers. In addition, Black Red White's goal was to launch a new B2C sales channel through Home24, a popular marketplace platform in Germany. It was necessary to organize, standardize and centralize dispersed product information, as well as perform system integrations.
- Black Red White had several different sources and systems storing product information, which resulted in scattered and inconsistent data, as well as problems with its timeliness.
- As the product range grew, managing product data became difficult and time-consuming, hence the need to implement a system that would enable the easy editing, updating and publishing of product information across multiple channels.
- With an ever-growing product range, it became necessary to reduce the time to market for new products, taking into account various channels such as the company's own e-commerce and marketplace.
- With the growth of Black Red White, there was also a need to introduce a new business model - providing partners and distributors with a marketplace platform and enabling them to sell items in the BRW's online store.
- It was necessary to integrate all systems in the company and ensure their smooth operation.
The Solution
- At the beginning of our cooperation, we conducted a workshop to identify the needs of Black Red White.
- In order to effectively manage product information, we implemented a PIM-class system - Pimcore.
- To ensure full scalability and performance of the PIM system, we used AWS cloud infrastructure and Elasticsearch - a tool designed for advanced data search and indexing.
- The implementation of the PIM system was divided into two stages. The first involved feeding Black Red White's e-commerce with ERP data. The second involved opening the marketplace to accept products from third-party vendors, making products available for sale on BRW's own e-commerce platform.
- The PIM system's functionalities also include the automatic grouping of products into coherent structures. This makes it easy to associate items with each other. For example, presented dressers in different colors will be visible as variants of the same product, which can be configured from a single tab, greatly speeding up work.
- To ensure a seamless flow of data between the PIM system and the marketplace, we have made appropriate integrations.
- As a result of the integration, the PIM system sends the data model to the marketplace platform, where suppliers complete the product information. PIM then retrieves the updated data and transfers it to the e-commerce, where it is presented to end customers.
- In order to integrate customer systems such as Pimcore or ERP with the BaseLinker tool, we used the previously implemented Unilinker integration platform. This is Unity Group's proprietary integration hub, ensuring high efficiency in transferring data between systems.
- The Unilinker integration platform enables the transfer of key data to BaseLinker: product data and category tree from Pimcore, as well as inventory, prices and invoices from the ERP system.
- Ultimately, the product information goes to the German marketplace Home24.
The Result
The Technologies
/ Behind Solutions
Cross-Border E-commerce Model for a Furniture Maker
Launching sales in the marketplace for BRW.
We Can Help You
As Well
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