With an own brand you are the source
An own brand plays by different rules than a distributor: there is no supplier feed delivering your data. You are the source. So your product data has to be in order, because there is nobody to put it right for you.
The situation
At a distributor the question is whether the supplier's feed is right. With an own brand the question is whether your own data is right, and nobody asks that out loud.
Colours, sizes, print areas, prices per quantity, photos per colour: it often sits in a folder, a price list and the owner's head. That works until you want a second sales channel. From that moment everything that sat in someone's head has to sit somewhere a system can read it — and then it turns out how much was written down nowhere.
The challenge
With printed textile a second layer appears. A shirt does not have one print area but several — front, back, sleeve — and a customer wants to combine them. Each area has its own maximum size and its own price.
That has to be in the data before the customer can see it on screen, otherwise you build a configurator that makes nice pictures and wrong prices. It is the same trap as with a watch, but with more areas at once: three positions each with their own price breaks and setup cost, in one quote.
How we did it
What we always do with an own brand, and did here too: first the product data and the images, then the sales environment, then the connection to the sales channels. The environment runs with its own back office, its own editorial layer for the texts and its own 3D component for visualisation.
The same setup was later reused for a second brand, De Drukclub, which runs as its own tenant beside the original — with its own databases and its own addresses, on the same building blocks. That is the proof the setup was not built around one brand but around the way an own brand works.
The result
The most important result is not visible on screen: the own data sits in one place, with the print areas and the price per area in it. So the customer can combine what they like without a wrong price coming out.
The second result only became clear later. When a second brand was added, it cost no new project but a second tenant on the same building blocks. There are no figures on lead time or on the number of products with several print areas; those were not counted.
One source for the own range
With the print areas and the prices per area in it, instead of in a folder, a price list and someone's head.
The setup proved reusable
A second brand on the same building blocks cost no new project: De Drukclub runs as its own tenant with its own databases and addresses.
What runs today
The environment runs on our servers with its own back office, its own editorial layer and its own 3D component. The second brand sits beside it as a separate tenant, on the same building blocks but with its own data.
What may be said publicly about this customer, including the name of the second brand, still has to be confirmed. We name it above because it is in our own documents, but it comes straight back out if that is not intended.
What the customer says about it
This quotation is a draft. We wrote it down the way we understood it from the conversations, so that it can be put to the customer. It only goes live once the customer has approved it word for word and the name and role are in place.
“We are the supplier ourselves. So our own data had to be right first.”
Three stories that belong with this one
The cases are connected: the same catalogue, the same technique rules and the same agent come back in several stories. These three sit closest to what you have just read.
Do you have an own brand?
With an own brand it starts with your own data: colours, sizes, print areas and prices per quantity. Send us what you have, even if it is a folder of photos and a price list, and we show what is needed to make it sellable.