Designbestseller is among the most established brands in the industry with decades of experience in furniture. In 2011, they were among the first to launch on the web, a choice that fueled their growth to 100+ people in Germany and France.

Marvin Schmidt and his Online Catalogue/ Content team carefully maintain whatever information you see on all of the thousands of product pages. “So we’re talking basic information like measurements & weights (gross/ net), tariff codes, CO, designers, GTINs etcetera,” says Schmidt. “But it goes all the way up to ensuring the right categories are filled, filters are correct, and that we use the latest images/ videos and highlight all the benefits & USPs correctly. We basically manage and deliver the data that gives our customers a great user experience. Also, all internal company processes (sourcing, logistics, etc.) work with our data. It’s the basis for all other departments.”

The challenge: reducing manual labor that led to growth limitations

Whenever new products needed to be added to the Designbestseller shop, Schmidt and his team used to structure and upload the product data manually; a tedious and time-consuming process.“It takes days out of a team member’s calendar to structure new product data.”

Schmidt: “When we allow new products or manufacturers in our shop, the new product data needs to be added to our platform in a very specific format. The problem is that each manufacturer has its own way of delivering this data. Every data point is different for every product from every manufacturer.”

So far, this has led Designbestseller to limit new product launches. Also, new manufacturers would be denied access if they could not comply with Designbestseller’s data structure template for every product.

“As onboarding new manufacturers is a vital source of growth for us, this was an important bottleneck to invest in”, says Schmidt.

How Decodata’s automation platform helps

Now, all Schmidt’s team has to do with new product data is forward it to Decodata. The Decodata platform digests the raw input and creates an output file that is fully aligned with Designbesteller’s data template. Schmidt’s team can then directly upload the data to the webshop.

“What we win is time”

“What we win is time”, says Schmidt. Time to improve our content, by adding information that customers need to make a purchase decision (i.e. product videos, care instructions) and help the other teams at DBS. We also learned that Decodata already collaborates with some of our suppliers. VITRA, for example. We were pleasantly surprised that we can work with a partner that already knows the industry.”

Data will fuel the customer experience of the future

Schmidt also sees a long-term need to keep investing in data quality. “The eCommerce channel for furniture is growing rapidly. That’s why we want to bring the consumer experience in our online store up to par with the experience in our retail store in Aachen, and enrich our database with more valuable product information. We need to grow the number of data points that we have for each product. In the end, the basis for anything online is data. Investing in data quality management therefore should be a core concern for any furniture business that aims to stay in the game.”