Light Matters is one of the fastest-growing lighting specialists in the Netherlands, with a physical store. With almost 9000 lamps from brands like Flos, Louis Poulsen, and Artemide in the webshop, you would think they offer just enough. Nothing could be further from the truth; Light Matters’ webshop is far from full.

Whereas Light Matters’ physical store lets you dive into the beautiful world of lighting, with personal advice, explanations about light, and detailed lighting plans. Online, Light Matters delivers éverything, from technical to decorative lighting. That means the webshop must always be up-to-date, reliable, and complete.

Manual data processing costs time, energy, and money

Lieke is responsible for all the products in the webshop, from adding and removing products to changing prices and product codes.

Lieke: “On a day, I add 60 to 70 new products. That seems little. But some lamps have 10, 20, and sometimes even more variations and specifications. Think of colors, sizes, and materials. All with their own product codes and names. I put all this manually into Excel. Not to mention the many images that have to accompany the products.”

Expanding Light Matters’ collection this way costs a lot of time, energy and, indirectly, more money than desired. And so this is immediately Light Matters’ most significant growth limitation. The collection is not growing fast enough.

“You want to be able to introduce a new brand or new collection right away and not have to wait five months because you can only put everything online in small batches,” says Lieke.

Besides adding new lamps takes a lot of time, updating existing products takes just as much time. “In January, and sometimes throughout the year, suppliers provide new price lists, often with new product codes. I also process this product information manually, which delays everything even more.”

“Outdated product information harms our margins. Think of an increase in purchase prices while sales prices online have not yet been adjusted. So it’s incredibly important that these changes are made quickly.”

Manually adding products also proves very error-prone

Manually adding or changing products takes time and is very error-prone, Lieke also noticed. The answer was ‘yes’ when we asked whether she ever made crucial mistakes. Once a comma shifted in a price list by importing different data sheets. And so there were €1200 lamps that stood online for only €1.20.

“And so there were €1200 lamps

that stood online for only €1.20.”

“That was a bit of a scare. Fortunately, I check all products several times after publishing, so this time, I quickly corrected the error. I don’t want to know what would have happened if I hadn’t seen this…”

Meanwhile, Light Matters is using Decodata’s automation system. Light Matters expects that by adding product information automatically, they can add, expand, and change collections faster, with the added benefit that this data will also be error-free.

“At some point, you just don’t see the errors anymore. You don’t want to check all the products three times, but you should. So with Decodata’s import sheets, I hope to work faster and experience less pressure because mistakes almost can’t be made,” said Lieke.

We look forward with interest to the coming months to see how things progress with Light Matters and Lieke. Keep an eye on us to stay up to date on their progress and experiences with our automation system.

Photo credits: Flos, Artemide en Louis Poulsen