Empowering Fashion Retail: Unleashing the Potential of LAIKA Digital Platform for Product Content Management

Welcome to our series of longreads, where the LAIKA team delves into the captivating histories behind some of the most successful implementations of our digital platform.

In this edition, we are excited to share a special case study featuring one of the most well-known fashion retailers in the world, who performed a big step forward empowering the business by implementing a modern PCM platform.

Intro

In the dynamic world of fashion retail, staying ahead of the competition requires an unwavering commitment to innovation and efficiency. For fashion retailers, managing an extensive range of products, associated content, and digital assets is a monumental undertaking.

In this article, we delve into the transformative power of the LAIKA Digital Platform within the context of fashion retail. We explore how this innovative solution has been successfully implemented by one of the leading fashion retailer to revolutionize their product content and asset management practices.

LAIKA Digital Platform has emerged as a game-changer, providing fashion retailers with an integrated and intelligent solution that addresses the unique challenges of the industry. LAIKA empowers fashion retailers to efficiently curate, organize, and optimize their product content and assets, thereby enhancing collaboration, streamlining workflows, and accelerating time-to-market.

In the fast-paced world of fashion, where trends evolve rapidly and consumer expectations are soaring, the LAIKA Digital Platform provides fashion retailers with a competitive edge. By centralizing all product-related information, including images, videos, descriptions, and specifications, in a single, intuitive system, LAIKA ensures consistency, accuracy, and agility throughout the entire product lifecycle. From concept and design to marketing and sales, the LAIKA Digital Platform serves as the nerve center for managing product assets, enabling fashion retailers to react swiftly to market demands and deliver captivating experiences across various channels.

Challenges Faced: Transforming a Limited Digital Presence into a Dynamic Ecosystem

Before the project, the Customer faced significant hurdles in expanding their digital footprint and effectively managing their product information.

• Low digital presence: a mere 8% of their extensive product catalog was available online, leaving a vast majority of their offerings untapped in the digital realm.

• Insufficient product data: the existing online presence was limited to a single image and a title, providing minimal information to potential customers.
• No space to scale: there were simply no technical capabilities to effectively enrich products with more attributes and assets.
• Firm deadline: the solution had to be delivered as fast as possible to allow content development team to start preparations for a big release.

Compounding the challenge, the fashion retailer had no prior expertise or experience with dedicated product management systems. Manual processes and disjointed data repositories resulted in inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and time-consuming tasks. The lack of a centralized system meant that information about products, such as descriptions, specifications, and additional images, were scattered across various departments, impeding collaboration and hindering the ability to enrich the customer experience.

Recognizing the immense potential of the digital landscape and the need to adapt to changing consumer behaviors, the Customer set a strategic goal to enhance their entire digital ecosystem. Their objective was clear: to enrich their product information, expand their online offerings, and establish a robust platform for digital transformation of the business. The implementation of the LAIKA Digital Platform emerged as the transformative solution to overcome these challenges and drive their digital transformation journey.

Enriching the Digital Ecosystem: Unleashing the Power of LAIKA Digital Platform

The LAIKA Digital Platform provided the Customer with a comprehensive suite of tools and capabilities to tackle their digital transformation goals. With its intuitive user interface and extensive functionality, the platform served as a Product Content Management (PCM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, revolutionizing the management and distribution of product content and assets.

One of the primary objectives was to enrich the product information available online. Leveraging the LAIKA Digital Platform, the fashion retailer embarked on a systematic process of catalog enrichment, collaborating with various stakeholders across departments. Detailed product descriptions, multiple high-quality images, videos, and comprehensive specifications were incorporated into the platform, enabling customers to make informed purchasing decisions.

Furthermore, the LAIKA Digital Platform seamlessly integrated with existing and newly added systems, ensuring a smooth transition and avoiding disruption to the fashion retailer's day-to-day operations. It served as a centralized hub for product data, acting as a single source of truth, eliminating data silos, and facilitating efficient collaboration between various teams involved in product management.

Below we'll highlight just some highlights of the configuration we've prepared for this implementation.

Product variants

In order to establish the optimized and effective product enrichment process we've made a decision to introduce three-level product variation model - Style, Product (Color variant) and SKU (Size variant).

• Some product attributes are common for all color and size variants of the product — we put them on a Style level (e.g., title, collection, style, season, etc.)
• Some attributes differ per color variants but are the same for all size variants — we put those on a Product level (e.g., color, materials, long description etc.)
• Some attributes are specific for size level — we put them on a SKU level (e.g., size name, dimensions, weight etc.)

All product variants are created automatically during product import process and are interconnected with each other. Information from the higher level is inherited to lower levels so that content managers can get a full product view on each level of data model hierarchy.

This allowed to:

• avoid data duplication
• speed up the enrichment as there is no need to repeat the same data multiple times for different variants of the product

Product Taxonomy & Categories

Navigating through an extensive product catalog can be a daunting task for both customers and internal teams. The fashion retailer in question faced a particular challenge with their internal product categories. While they had established a system for categorizing products internally, it was primarily designed for internal purposes and lacked user-friendliness.

Recognizing the importance of intuitive navigation and user experience, the LAIKA Digital Platform played a pivotal role in revolutionizing the fashion retailer's product categorization process. A new categories tree was established and LAIKA became the source of truth for navigation category tree.

To ensure a smooth transition, the LAIKA Digital Platform enabled the configuration of mapping between the existing internal categories and the new user-friendly categories. This mapping allowed for accurate and automatic assignment of products to the correct categories during the import process.

Only some of the products which due to any mistakes could not be correctly classified are assigned to a temporary category and require manual user review and assignment.

We've also configured inheritance of external product categories from Style to all variants to make the classification and reclassification of products more convenient.

This allowed to:

• save ability to use both internal and external product categories for search within the PCM platform
• automate and optimize product categorization and eliminate huge percent of manual effort in this process

Product attributes and data model

In the world of fashion retail, accurate and detailed product information is paramount. In this case we had a task to help the Customer to come out with and configure comprehensive product attributes, covering both essential product specifications and compelling marketing copy.

With the LAIKA Digital Platform, the Customer gained granular control over product attributes, enabling them to define and manage a wide range of attributes tailored to their specific needs. This included both global attributes, applicable across all products, and category-specific attributes, allowing for further customization and specificity.

Product specifications, such as size, color, material, and dimensions, were meticulously configured as global attributes, ensuring consistency and standardization throughout the product catalog. By establishing these universal attributes, we have eliminated ambiguity and provided customers with clear and accurate information essential for making informed purchasing decisions.

In addition, we have facilitated the configuration of category-specific attributes, allowing for further enrichment of product information. These attributes were tailored to each category, enabling the fashion retailer to highlight unique selling points, such as jeans fit, neckline type and and other specific but relevant details. By leveraging category-specific attributes, the retailer could deliver targeted and compelling marketing copy, capturing the essence of each product and engaging customers on a deeper level.

The LAIKA Digital Platform's flexible attribute configuration capabilities empowered the fashion retailer to adapt to their evolving business needs. As market trends shifted and new product lines emerged, they could easily add or modify attributes to reflect these changes, ensuring that their product information remained up-to-date and relevant.

By configuring comprehensive product attributes, the fashion retailer achieved several significant advantages:

• First and foremost, customers benefited from an enhanced shopping experience, as they could access detailed product specifications and persuasive marketing copy, all readily available in a user-friendly format.
• The LAIKA Digital Platform's robust attribute management capabilities ensured that the right attributes were associated with each product, facilitating accurate filtering, comparison, and search functionalities on their online platforms.
• Internally, the streamlined attribute configuration process reduced manual effort and eliminated inconsistencies. With the LAIKA Digital Platform serving as a centralized hub for product attributes, the fashion retailer's teams could collaborate more effectively, ensuring that the right information was assigned to each product and that marketing copy aligned with the brand's messaging and positioning.

In summary, the LAIKA Digital Platform empowered the fashion retailer to configure comprehensive product attributes, encompassing both product specifications and persuasive marketing copy. Through the management of global and category-specific attributes, the retailer achieved consistency, accuracy, and enhanced customer experiences, while enabling seamless collaboration and operational efficiency internally.

Localization of product data

Recognizing the importance of localized content and seamless customer experiences, the LAIKA Digital Platform provided robust multilingual capabilities. Through its intuitive interface and advanced language management features, the platform facilitated the configuration of product attributes in various languages, ensuring accurate and contextually relevant information for customers worldwide.

With the LAIKA Digital Platform, the Customer manages product attributes in multiple languages, including but not limited to English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and more. By tailoring product information to the language preferences of different countries, the retailer can deliver a personalized experience, building trust and rapport with their global customer base.

The platform's flexible attribute management system allowed the fashion retailer to assign locale-specific attributes to each product. This enabled them to provide comprehensive and localized information, such as product descriptions, features, and marketing copy, in the preferred language of their target markets. By speaking directly to customers in their native languages, the Customer can foster stronger connections, heightened engagement, and increased conversions.

Furthermore, the LAIKA Digital Platform's intelligent workflows and automation capabilities streamlined the translation process. Seamless integration with external translation service facilitated the translation of product attributes into multiple languages, reducing manual effort and accelerating time-to-market for new products and updates.

By configuring product attributes in different languages for more than 10 countries, the Customer successfully expanded their global reach and provided localized experiences to customers worldwide. The LAIKA Digital Platform's multilingual capabilities empowered the retailer to overcome language barriers, communicate effectively, and tailor product information to the preferences and expectations of diverse international markets.

In conclusion

The implementation of the LAIKA Digital Platform brought about a remarkable transformation for the customer. With their digital ecosystem fortified, they witnessed a substantial increase in the number of products available online, significantly expanding their reach and customer engagement. What was once a mere 8% representation of their catalog evolved into a comprehensive online product offering, capturing the attention of fashion enthusiasts and driving sales growth.

The enriched product information on their online platforms played a vital role in elevating the customer experience. Potential buyers now have access to a wealth of information in different languages, allowing them to make well-informed purchase decisions. Detailed descriptions, multiple images showcasing different angles and close-ups, and product videos provided a holistic view of each item, mimicking the in-store experience and fostering customer trust.

About the author: Vera Mikhiayonak is an expert in PIM and DAM domains, LAIKA digital platform product owner and head of business analysis team with unique experience in development for various customers.