Project Details

Problem

Today’s shoppers rely on the Internet as their primary source for information and, with their mobile devices keeping them constantly connected, they can access the web on demand for immediate answers. Orgill, the world’s largest independent hardlines distributor, recognized that shoppers in their industry are no different. From home improvement DIYers to pro contractors, these shoppers increasingly conduct product research on Orgill retailer sites before buying – regardless if their final purchase is made online or in a dealers’ brick-and-mortar store.

Servicing a large dealer network with more than 10,000 retail hardware stores, home centers, pro lumberyards, and farm stores throughout the world, Orgill provides a wide range of retail services and support, including a large product catalog for dealers to sell in their stores and via their online sales channels. These Orgill items are enriched with all the content shoppers want, including product features, specifications, images, manuals, and more. However, most Orgill dealers sell many more products in their stores beyond the Orgill catalog. As a result, Orgill dealers needed to find a way to enrich that data as well so they could display their entire product offerings on their own websites in a consistent, organized manner in order to help shoppers and pros make more informed buying decisions.

After years of utilizing basic, unenriched data, Aubuchon Hardware enlisted an internal resource to collect additional content from manufacturer sites, which became an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. “With essentially one person trying to enrich over 80,000 SKUs, we were definitely at a scale disadvantage,” said Will Aubuchon, company CEO.

Kevin Shute, Director of Merchandising at McCoy’s, said they spent more than a decade – and big dollars – manually capturing data. They looked to different rep groups and vendors for enriched data and found even the vendors’ own salespeople didn’t have good information about their products. “It was a struggle,” admitted Shute. “Unfortunately, while we made significant progress, it took us 13 years to learn that we couldn’t do this ourselves in the long term.”

In order to alleviate their dealers’ product enrichment challenges and meet end-customer demands for instant and reliable content, Orgill searched for a technology provider who had the capabilities to perform high-quality data enrichment on a massive scale, as well as the eCommerce tools to create a stellar online experience.

Solution

To discover how Unilog helped solve Orgill’s PIM Content challenges, download the case study and learn more!