“With Pimberly, having a master product data source has been hugely important for our growing business. Previously, product information was stored in numerous places and collating this data was difficult and time-consuming.
Pimberly allows us to easily manage data across ten websites and has helped streamline our product processes, giving us more time to focus on marketing strategies”
Global Head of eCommerce, Gill Marine
Gill is the world’s leading marine apparel brand trusted by the most extreme adventurers on the planet. Founded in 1975 in Nottingham UK by Nick Gill, an avid sailor who wanted to develop the world’s best performing and most comfortable marine clothing.
Gill has grown rapidly to provide technical clothing for the most demanding conditions now sold in over 35 countries worldwide.
Previously the eCommerce team had to battle with their prior platform and manual processes — it became a real barrier to growth. With Pimberly they were able to regain time and ownership. This provided Gill with the ability to be dynamic and fast, really fast. In the first half of 2020, Gill Marine was able to launch two US-based websites, open 10 online stores (4 B2B and 6 B2C) and a dedicated Amazon Store.
This was made even easier with the BigCommerce-Pimberly API Connector.
On top of this, they launched a new brand, Gill Fishing, with an eComm site that was built from scratch, to reach the booming US fishing market. Using Pimberly the team at Gill created this in-house without the need for any external development work, saving the company $’000s – but more importantly, it took just 1 month from start to first order!
There is a move from ‘safe and reliable’ to ‘new and exciting’, Having product data at our disposal has helped us a lot. We are being found online by a steady influx of savvy online shoppers.
Oliver Cole, Global Head of eCommerce
Pimberly helped my team to work dynamically regarding the retail challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic impact of global shutdowns meant that consumers were less likely to make big purchases, like expensive jackets, and were also spending less time on the water.
Gill Marine
More and more customers are wanting deeper knowledge on the products they are buying, so having the ability to rapidly, add, enrich and push new content and attribution to the eComm channels is essential. Deploying Pimberly enabled Gill Marine to offer an extensive product range with detailed technical content which keeps them competitive.
A recent example of this is raising awareness of Gill’s sustainably manufactured products. Using unique product codes and rich product data, they were able to rapidly increase the visibility of this range across their channels, to ensure sufficient exposure to the increasingly ethically minded demographics.
Also, during Covid-19 Pimberly has enabled Gill Marine to quickly pivot its product focus to a new pandemic-ready range, including new products such as face masks and UV products.
The previous platform Gill was using couldn’t integrate with their ERP system, leaving the team with several manual and laborious tasks. This stunted their ability to be a flexible and forward-thinking company – something they knew had to be done – and they wanted the best of breed PIM solution.
With so many brands to manage across such a wide range of countries, companies like Gill can find it a challenge to keep up with the complexities of their product data and there were disparate data sources and differing infrastructure between their European and US teams. They knew to drive all markets across the world they needed to achieve a single digital architecture at any time, anywhere, any-device access and collaboration.
The core team at Gill Marine isn’t hugely ‘technical’, with their expertise being focused on strategic eCommerce & branding. They found that their prior platform was hard to use and hampered their agility in the workplace. They wanted to be able to use a solution that empowered them.
With Pimberly we have removed so much duplicated effort and improved the quality of our data!
Oliver Cole, Gill Marine
As the company expanded, so did their requirements, and they soon outgrew using their existing eCommerce platform as a product information tool.
PIM wasn’t originally on their radar, but they soon realised that without a SaaS PIM platform they wouldn’t be able to fulfil their future ambitions of international expansion.
Gill Marine knew that they needed the support of a SaaS PIM provider who would be willing to dedicate the time and attention needed for the project to be a success. They wanted to have the option of hopping onto a train and having a face-to-face meeting if they needed it.
We had actually scheduled a much longer project timeline. In fact, there were numerous times when Pimberly was waiting on us so they could move onto the next section
Gill Marine
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