“Before Pimberly, it would take weeks for us to import brand data from start to finish. Since we have been using the platform, that time has been reduced to days.”
Michael Sà, eCommerce Manager
The Quark Group is the largest private and Canadian-owned retail footwear chain in Western Canada, with roots dating back to 1977. The company remains owned by its founding families and has expanded to operate 40 stores nationwide encompassing two brands, as well as their eCommerce store, quarkshoes.com.
The company had no centralised system for handling digital assets and product data. Instead, files were fragmented across shared local hard drives, and product information was manually maintained in spreadsheets before being imported into their ERP system.
“The process was not only inefficient but also a major obstacle to scaling our digital operations.”
Michael Sà, eCommerce Manager
Before implementing Pimberly, The Quark Group had no centralised system for handling digital assets and product data. Instead, product information was fragmented across locally stored spreadsheets and imported manually into their ERP system.
Without a centralised platform for product information and media assets, cross-team collaboration was not possible. The eCommerce team were losing time manually entering and proofing data, whilst producing inconsistent product information. This was slowing their time to market to a crawl, leading to lost opportunities and ultimately affecting The Quark Group’s drop-shipping expansion strategy.
The need to simplify the product onboarding process and integrating with Shopify using the new Shopify v2 connector, was quickly identified, so Pimberly worked closely with eCommerce Manager Michael Sà, to develop a set of product templates to align with the data provided by their core vendors.
Using preconfigured Feeds, the templates allow The Quark Group to quickly and efficiently upload products to support both their dropship and wholesale areas of the business. Pimberly passes core product data to the existing ERP, Imagine Retail, which is responsible for passing price and stock data to Shopify. With ambitious plans to expand their drop-shipping capabilities and improve integration with Shopify, The Quark Group needed a smarter way to handle product information.
“The approach was time-consuming, error-prone, and not sustainable. We were spending hours tracking down files, verifying information, and correcting discrepancies.”
Michael Sà, eCommerce Manager.
“Direct engagement with Pimberly’s team, particularly through discussions with CEO Martin Balaam, who we met at retail expo Shoptalk in New York City, reinforced our confidence in the solution”
Ryan Krahn, Vice President
Recognising the inefficiencies in their current system, The Quark Group sought a PIM solution to streamline their operations and selected Pimberly as their PIM/DAM partner to scale their business. After evaluating multiple providers, they chose Pimberly for several key reasons, namely its competitive pricing relative to the market, the feature-rich platform that provided more value compared to competitors, and for providing the ability to centralise and enrich product information efficiently – resolving their biggest pain point.
The business’s previous processes for gathering and standardising data were very manual, leading to lost opportunities, inconsistent product information, and a lack of collaboration across teams. Managing assets was equally challenging, as their ERP could only store a single image per product, forcing them to rely on Shopify for additional imagery.
By utilising Pimberly’s sophisticated workflow automations, the eCommerce team can also ensure high-quality product information is published to Shopify for consumption by their customers in a timely manner – delivering products to market much faster than before.
Pimberly’s fully integrated DAM also helps The Quark Group deliver better shopping experiences across their retail channels by allowing them to store as many product images and digital assets as needed, all tagged to the correct products and in one place, something they were unable to do with their ERP alone.
By centralising their product information in Pimberly, The Quark Group can finally unlock the benefits of collaboration across teams – no more hours wasted chasing other departments for information only to sift through confusing spreadsheets.
“Pimberly has given us the ability to scale without limitations. We now have the foundation we need to grow, innovate, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.” – Ryan Krahn, Vice President
Since going live with Pimberly, The Quark Group has already seen significant improvements by automating their workflow. eCommerce teams can now complete processes that took as long as a week, like managing vendor data and restructuring product information, in just hours.
This means that instead of wasting time dealing with manual errors and spreadsheet corrections, the eCommerce team can focus on enriching product content to increase sales and customer satisfaction.
As The Quark Group continue to grow, they anticipate deeper integration between Pimberly and their ERP and Shopify platforms, further optimising their product information processes. By centralising product data and streamlining their internal processes, they have positioned themselves for scalable growth in the competitive retail space.
“A process that previously took a week to manage vendor data and restructure product information now takes just an afternoon!”
– Michael Sà, eCommerce Manager
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.
