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The Look Cycle group brings together Look and Corima, two historic brands that are part of France’s sporting heritage. Through these two brands, Look Cycle offers unique know-how and highly innovative, high-quality products, associated with the feats of cycling’s greatest champions. Made in France, its products are sold in seventy-five countries through distribution subsidiaries and a network of retailers. But the group faced major challenges in getting product information to its international resellers and customers. To address them, Synolia helped this long-standing client implement a PIM solution (Akeneo) and a DAM (Scaleflex). Two complementary, essential solutions to carry its world of passionate cyclists across the globe.
Look, an iconic brand of the 1960s, invented the clipless pedal and is the world leader in that category, as well as a manufacturer of high-end carbon bikes and components. Corima, for its part, has specialized for more than thirty years in designing and manufacturing carbon wheels for cycling, handbiking and disability sports, meeting the highest quality standards. Both belong to the Look Cycle group, headquartered in Nevers, in Burgundy.
Backed by its French know-how, the group sells internationally through a large distribution network. In recent years, Look Cycle has launched a major digital transformation. Product information management issues led it to rethink its organization and the way it distributed resources, which until then relied on SharePoint.
With more than 2,000 product SKUs and thousands of assets to share with reseller partners around the world, Yannick Hermant, Head of Digital and IT at Look Cycle, quickly saw the need to bring a PIM solution (Akeneo) and an asset manager into the group’s information system.
“Organizing the distribution of product information to seventy-five countries and across our various distribution channels is very complicated. Our content was scattered, and we struggled to update information consistently. We were also limited on the asset side and sometimes had to use poorly secured transfer tools to work around file size issues when sharing resources with our resellers. ”
A high-performance PIM solution to support the group’s growth in B2B and B2C e-commerce, and an asset manager able to meet the specific needs of distributing B2B product information internationally.
Look Cycle wanted to improve the product experience it delivers to its customers. In B2B, by giving all its reseller partners the same level of information, with high-quality resources. And in B2C, by contributing to a premium brand image.
The Akeneo PIM met Look Cycle’s initial information management need: linking each piece of content to a product SKU. But more advanced needs quickly emerged around asset management and sharing resources with partners.
“Initially, we hadn’t pictured separate PIM and DAM solutions. We had rather considered an Akeneo PIM with its built-in asset manager. But our needs evolved over time. We had other requirements across the whole asset management side.”
The partnership between Look Cycle and Synolia predates the Akeneo PIM implementation project. We had already supported the group on two major projects in its digital transformation (CRM with SugarCRM, and customer support with Zendesk).
“Synolia is a long-standing partner with whom we share common values: passion and excellence. We have done many projects together, they keep supporting us as our solutions evolve, and we trust them completely. We are very pleased with their quality of service and responsiveness. They know our company and our challenges very well.”
“We brought in Scaleflex on Synolia’s recommendation. Getting up to speed with the solution was quick thanks to the scoping and training workshops. On top of that, all our specific requests were delivered outside the roadmap within a few weeks. We appreciated how our requests were taken into account and how quickly solutions were found. We really felt the energy of the Scaleflex and Synolia teams.”
In the Look Cycle project, the Scaleflex DAM added a feature that complements the PIM and is specific to asset management: a resource access portal. In other words, a portal that gives resellers free and easy access to resources, anywhere in the world.
Beyond being complementary, the PIM (Akeneo) and DAM (Scaleflex) solutions also integrate easily with each other thanks to a connector available on the Akeneo marketplace, which Synolia helped build. As a result, the client did not have to plan for developing a connector in its information system.
“I’m a strong advocate of a composable ecosystem, which gives us a great deal of flexibility and scalability. We are still a mid-sized company, and we need a solid ecosystem that can support future growth.”
To deploy the Scaleflex DAM, Synolia worked with Look Cycle’s stakeholders: the internal communications manager (in charge of communication with all partners), the content department, the digital department (to address the e-commerce site’s SEO and web performance issues), as well as the design department and the group’s category manager.
All the teams involved contributed to rolling out the tool: from designing the folder structure to migrating thousands of assets and filling in metadata. We also helped them get started with the Sharebox and Airbox features.
“Configuring the Scaleflex DAM is fairly simple and matches the way we store our resources. That helped us get comfortable with the tool very quickly.”
The group now has three categories of users:
“It’s when you give access to someone who isn’t especially comfortable with digital tools that you realize how easy the tool is to use. Finding the asset you need is very easy.”
The Scaleflex solution, of course, centralizes digital resources on a single platform. That saves contributors a considerable amount of time! All the more so because every asset addition or change and every metadata entry is automatically reflected in the PIM for each relevant product.
“Sometimes the line between the PIM and the DAM is even a bit blurry for users, since DAM data flows into the PIM. And that is clear proof of real transparency between the two tools! In the end, no matter where the content comes from, everything is available on a single platform.”
With Scaleflex’s Airbox feature, Look Cycle’s ambassadors can upload content easily, quickly and securely.
“We have many ambassadors who produce content. It used to be hard to share it with our teams. Today it’s easy, fast and secure.”
The built-in resource portal is also a major advantage for the group. It saves the cost of developing a dedicated application and helps streamline its information system.
The tool also includes valuable analytics features. They make it possible to monitor partners’ logins and asset usage. Sales teams thus have reliable data to follow up with partners and encourage them to promote the products in store.
For Look Cycle, the Scaleflex DAM project with Synolia is a success. And the teams are eagerly awaiting the rollout of the Akeneo PIM… Coming very soon!
“Synolia has a real ability to adapt to the company it works with. It’s a reliable partner, and we have never had a failure with them.”
Want to learn more about the Look Cycle project or about implementing a PIM or DAM? Contact Synolia, your PIM partner agency!
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