“Pimberly is our single source of truth for product data and has helped us have a consistent voice across all channels – As we were previously running the catalogue and eCommerce side of things very separately this was difficult to do.”
Head of IT
Established in 1987, Cotton Traders is a British heritage fashion brand built on proud rugby heritage. At it’s core, Cotton Traders is a direct-to-consumer business earning 79% of shopping revenues from direct and online shopping and 21% of revenues from over 80 retail stores across the UK.
Over the years, Cotton Traders has consistently demonstrated its commitment to growth and innovation. Notably, the company’s growth in the direct customer base, smarter targeting strategies, new store openings, a dedicated Ireland website and onboarding third-party marketplaces, has further solidified it’s market presence. Additionally, Cotton Traders invested in mainstream advertising through prime-time television campaigns to drive brand awareness by capturing a wider audience.
Cotton Traders has a number of different channels to market, with a primary focus on online platforms, digital communications and catalogue distribution. However, due to specific data requirements for each of these channels, it became apparent that Cotton Traders operated as two distinct entities within the same organisation. Notably, variations in data structure required separate handling for eCommerce and physical catalogue.
The catalogue data, which came first and was managed in an external system, wasn’t compatible with their eCommerce website. So, Cotton Traders developed a data management system designed to effectively house and manage the eCommerce data. This separation in data meant work was duplicated for each channel.
Now with Pimberly, Cotton Traders has established a centralised hub for the management of both data variants and removed the need for two separate systems. This development empowers the organisation not only to guarantee data consistency across both channels but enhances productivity by doing so in a unified platform.
Furthermore, Pimberly’s capabilities provide Cotton Traders with the flexibility to maintain a parent product. This feature enables them to make necessary changes and adjustments tailored to the unique requirements of each channel, streamlining their product management processes improving customer experience through product personalisation.
Cotton Traders has significantly expanded its brand presence by strategically offering its products on various third-party marketplaces. Without Pimberly, the process of integrating their product data into marketplace platforms would have been extremely time consuming and also required extensive manual data input and enrichment.
Cotton Traders opted for a more efficient and streamlined approach by leveraging Pimberly’s feed functionality. With their product data already centralised within the Pimberly platform, the process became easy. The team now seamlessly outputs their data from the central platform to marketplace platforms. In doing so, Cotton Traders have removed the need for additional resources to manage the complex and time-intensive manual data entry.
The buying department plays a key role in managing the base product data, given their in-depth knowledge of the products they’ve sourced. Prior to Pimberly, the process involved the manual importing of base data into an external platform. This presented challenges, with certain individuals responsible for inputting data for the whole buying department, rather than their own subdepartments e.g. womenswear, homewares.
Pimberly has introduced a transformative shift in Cotton Traders’ data-loading procedures, empowering sub-departments to have control over their data. This enables each department to take charge of its specific categories. As a result, data accuracy has markedly improved, as those inputting the data are intimately familiar with the products they have sourced. Furthermore, the introduction of ad-hoc uploads has meant buyers now compile data in a spreadsheet format and seamlessly transmit it to Pimberly.
“Pimberly has evolved our entire loading process so each individual buying department can look after their own product data – before this wasn’t possible”
Head of IT
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.
