“It’s honestly very exciting to see all this information in one, easy to use place. It’s also moved a lot of our automated processes into a tool that we have direct ownership and control over, so we’re able to set up new automation”
Build-A-Bear
Established in 1997, Build-A-Bear is a renowned brand that’s left an undeniable mark for over two decades. With a robust online and global presence in more than 500 stores, Build-A-Bear has solidified itself as a household name, known for its unwavering commitment to exceptional customer service and heart-driven culture.
In 2022, Build-A-Bear embarked on its journey with Pimberly, seeking a comprehensive solution to enhance its Product Information Management (PIM) processes. Fast-forward to 2024, the implementation of Pimberly PIM solution has enabled Build-A-Bear to efficiently manage all aspects of its product information. As such, productivity has greatly improved across various areas of the organization.
Build-A-Bear operates through two primary sales channels: its UK website and its US website. Despite offering the same range of products on both platforms, the company needed to distinguish between the two by employing distinct US and UK SKUs for each product.
Before adopting Pimberly, the Build-A-Bear team managed each SKU independently, duplicating, and editing accordingly for each channel. This approach to product data management proved to be highly time-consuming, placing significant strain on the merchandising team and adversely affecting overall productivity.
Pimberly helped Build-A-Bear achieve a centralized and definitive source for managing all aspects of product information. Crucially, the creation of a master SKU means products are seamlessly exported to both the US and UK websites. This consolidation of the UK and US SKUs under one parent product has significantly transformed the operations of the merchandising team, enabling them to differentiate effectively between the two sales channels through Pimberly’s scoping functionality.
Given the magnitude of its product catalogue, Build-A-Bear faced a formidable task in ensuring the enrichment and accuracy of over 27,000 products. The management of such a vast range of items required meticulous attention to detail, as even minor attributes could be overlooked and pushed to the website. Considering this challenge, the implementation of a functionality to track the progress of each product was as an attractive driver to Build-A-Bear.
Build-A-Bear deployed Pimberly’s lifecycle functionality to monitor and manage the status of products, ensuring completion prior to distribution to its sales channels. By leveraging this feature, the team are confident each product adheres to specific criteria – as set by them – before it’s made available on the website.
This process guarantees any errors or omissions will be promptly flagged, allowing for immediate rectification. Consequently, Pimberly’s lifecycle functionality significantly contributed to enhancing data accuracy, reinforcing Build-A-Bear’s commitment to delivering exceptional products to their customers.
When researching potential PIM vendors, Build-A-Bear sought a system capable of streamlining manual processes, to enable the merchandising team to redirect their efforts towards other essential projects.
Pimberly’s automation functionality has been instrumental in advancing productivity across various teams within Build-A-Bear. Our Workflows have been effectively utilized to transition products through different stages in their lifecycle, as well as to rationalize data and concatenate diverse attribute values, promoting a cohesive and organized product dataset. For Build-A-Bear, a significant benefit of our automation functionality is the elimination of the manual data import process into their eCommerce platform, Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Instead, the system automatically facilitates the synchronized release of products to both the UK and US websites, adhering to intervals pre-defined by the team. This hands-off automation approach streamlined operations and enabled the merchandising team to focus on strategic initiatives, contributing to a more efficient and dynamic approach within the organization.
You can quickly import data into Pimberly from multiple sources in any form. The platform can connect to all your supplier, manufacturer and data feeds in minutes. You’ll see faster product on-boarding with less work!
Pimberly manages all of your product information, attributes and assets. Dashboards give a clear view of completeness across product ranges, and with the power to handle unlimited SKUs, Pimberly grows with your business.
