VillaVerde - Sevea group susbidiary- is the first network of independant garden centers in France.
In six months, not just 25,000 products were published online, but more than 42,000
Products were exclusively distributed in physical outlets until 2014, when VillaVerde chose to embrace e-commerce and open its own online sales platform. This was a major challenge for the company, as it had to embark on its digital transformation in an entirely new field.
And because VillaVerde wished to extend its positioning as a «local retailer» to online retail, it was not one but 70 shops that had to be created, each with its own catalog, designed according to the characteristics and buying habits pertaining to each location.
For VillaVerde, entering the field of e-commerce had to start first with the appropriation of new tools and the development of new processes. Akeneo PIM is directly connected to a Magento platform hosting 70 shops, which allows the team to outsource the management of its product data, from creation to distribution on various online and offline channels.
One of the first challenges met by the e-commerce team was to design and build a product catalog from scratch, in order to structure the database that would feed 70 future online shops, all within a few months.
To address this issue, VillaVerde chose the Akeneo PIM open source solution. Intuitive and easy to use, the solution was the ideal choice for VillaVerde to fully support its digital transformation.
We took ownership of this new tool very quickly. A few hours using it were sufficient for us to become independent. Its usability and clever widgets enabled us to exceed our objectives and build a more complete catalog much faster than originally planned.
Convinced Akeneo was the right tool, VillaVerde participated in the Early Adopter Program, becoming one of the first beta version users. Early adoption allowed them to experience the application as it grew over the course of its different versions.
The team expects to collect more than 25,000 product references from its suppliers, centralize and enrich them in the application before publication to online shops. Data is provided by multiple suppliers, in various formats and for various categories.
In 6 months, not just 25,000 products were published online, but more than 42,000!
With Akeneo, we consider our e-commerce website as part of a much larger system to distribute our products and engage our cross-channel strategy more rapidly.
Today, Akeneo occupies a central position in the e-commerce architecture. Benefits are multiple for the team: Managing the catalog daily with Akeneo and its unique interface allows significant time savings; creating and updating new references is simple and fast, significantly reducing time to market.
VillaVerde does not stop there. The company has plans to leverage the solution’s cross-channel features and distribute data to other channels. In-store interactive kiosks will be available to present constantly updated catalogs. The marketing department also plans to use the InDesign connector to feed paper catalogs.
Beyond e-commerce, Akeneo becomes the data centralization tool within the information system; the centerpiece that will allow VillaVerde to engage and develop its cross-channel strategy.
A special thanks to our partners who supported this project:
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