A manufacturer digitising the whole chain
Spranz is a German manufacturer and supplier of promotional products, with Metmaxx as its consumer brand. We are currently building Magic Logo, the Metmaxx sales environment for consumers, the PIM with DAM, the supplier portal and the agent.
The situation
A manufacturer sits on both sides of the chain. On one side are suppliers delivering material, packaging and documentation — often by email, often as an attachment, often just too late. On the other side are distributors and consumers who want to see a product with their own logo on it, with the right technique and the right price.
Between those two sides sits the product data. If it is wrong, the product is skipped by the trade or fails the print proof — and in both cases the manufacturer never hears why.
The challenge
Spranz is not tackling one thing but the whole chain, which makes the project heavier than a shop project. Three things came up along the way, and all three were data questions rather than build questions.
First, the decoration data: the techniques on the price list have to match the techniques in the database one to one. In a check on 423 base SKUs, 37 products were missing a technique. That is not a disaster, but it is exactly the kind of gap that makes a distributor skip your product.
Second, the sizing in the proof. A proof has to match at actual size what the engraver or printer does. In a check of the existing products, 177 of 376 products were too small in the drawing because the original PDF had a different format than the drawing area. That has been corrected with a script.
Third, the environments. There is a development environment and there is the live environment in Germany, and they have to hold the same data without a test in the Netherlands accidentally touching the German shop. We built a fixed synchronisation route for that instead of relying on discipline.
What we are building there
The parts below go into use separately and belong together. They all run on the same product data, so the consumer shop, the logo tool and the feed to the trade do not each get their own truth.
That is why the project runs in this order: first the data and the images, then what the customer sees, then what the suppliers deliver themselves.
Why this case matters to others
Spranz shows what happens when a manufacturer tackles not one thing but the whole chain: from what its suppliers deliver to what its customer sees on screen. Every part has value on its own, but the difference is in the coherence.
The same product data feeds the consumer shop, the logo tool and the feed to the trade. So a mistake only has to be repaired once.
Where it stands
In implementation. 758 Spranz products are in our PIM today, in the same structure as the large supplier feeds. The 37 base SKUs without a technique and the 177 products that were too small are known and are being reviewed.
Result figures and an approved quotation will be added once the project is further along. We do not put outcomes on the site that we cannot demonstrate.
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.
“Our data is what the trade resells. That is where it starts, not at the webshop.”
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.
Are you a manufacturer?
We scan your feed and show what a distributor makes of it: which fields are missing, which techniques do not match and which products are skipped as a result. You get the report even if you do nothing with us afterwards.