Managing Product Data Across Four Sales Channels with HootCore PIM | Multichannel Retail Use Case

One Change, Forty Cards to Update

Product data lived inside the platform that also ran the online store, so catalog management depended on the same release queue as development.

Three kinds of work took up most of the team's week:

• setting the same specification separately on every item in a product line
• waiting for a release whenever a category needed a new attribute
• replacing product images card by card whenever a supplier updated a shot

None of it was difficult, and none of it could be delegated to a rule. The cost showed up in how long a seasonal range took to reach the site.

One Rule Instead of Forty Edits

The retailer moved product data out of the eCommerce platform into a catalog management system built around its own attribute structure.

The change that mattered most was where an edit is applied. A value that holds for a whole product line is now set on the line, and the rule fills it across every item in that line, including the ones added later. The card stopped being the place where routine work happens.

The same shift covers the two other kinds of work that used to fill the week. Attributes belong to the content team, so a category can take a new one without a development request. And product images live in a single library, so one replacement reaches every card and every channel that uses it.

With the catalog in its own system, the team was able to:

• Fill a specification across an entire product line with one rule instead of forty edits
• Add and restructure attributes without waiting for a release
• Attach a new size or colour to an existing line so it inherits the shared data
• Update a product image once for every place it appears
• Publish to all four sales channels from one set of product data

The content team works inside the catalog structure it already had, and the system takes over the operations that used to repeat.

• Rules applied to the product line

A specification that holds for a whole line is set once, and the rule fills it across every item in that line. For a line of forty near-identical products, one rule replaces forty separate edits.

• Attributes owned by the content team

Creating or restructuring an attribute is a task inside the system. Categories change when the range plan changes, not when the next release allows it.

• Variations inherit the line's data

A new size or colour joins the group it belongs to and takes on the shared data, so the new item starts from what the line already knows.

• Images stored once, used everywhere

Product images live in a single library in HootCore DAM. A replacement propagates to every card and every channel that uses it, which removes the card-by-card work a supplier photo update used to create.

• One catalog behind four sales channels

All four channels read from the same product data, which removes the reconciliation that separate channel exports require. Distribution rules decide what each channel receives, in the format it expects.

Moving a catalog of this size out of an eCommerce platform is the part retailers worry about most, since the storefront has to keep selling throughout.

The work went in three stages.

• Mapping. The existing attribute structure and product groups were documented as they were, so the catalog kept its own logic instead of being reshaped to fit a standard model.
• Migration. Product data and images moved out of the eCommerce platform into the new catalog system, with the storefront continuing to read the data it needed.
• Rules. The operations that used to repeat card by card were rebuilt as rules and bulk actions, and day-to-day control of categories and attributes moved to the content team.

Forty Edits Down to One

A specification that covers a product line is now set once and applied across every item in it, which is where the change is most visible. The rest of the catalog work moved the same way, and the timings below come from the retailer's own measurements on the same catalog, before and after.

• Creating a new attribute: 10 → 2 minutes, without a development request.
• Updating images on a product card: 14 → 3 minutes.
• Adding a variation to an existing line: 2 → 1 minute, with shared data inherited
• Catalog structure under content-team control. Changes follow the range plan instead of the release calendar.
• Seasonal ranges reach the site on the range plan, not on the release calendar.

See what your own catalog looks like under rules: book a demo with a product line that repeats itself.

"A single product line can hold forty items with nearly identical specifications. We used to set every specification manually, product by product. Now one rule fills them across the entire line at once."

Head of Product Content, multichannel retail, company under NDA

"The change we felt first was not speed but that catalog structure became our own task instead of a request waiting for a release."

Category Manager, multichannel retail, company under NDA

Most systems in this category ask the catalog to fit the product. Here it went the other way, and that decided the choice.

• The catalog kept its own structure. Attributes, product groups, and category logic were documented as they were and carried into the new system, so nothing had to be renamed or flattened to match a standard model.
• Rules were built around how the range actually works, at line and category level, which is where most of the repeated work in a large catalog sits.
• The team configures the catalog itself. Attributes and categories are content-team tasks, not development requests, so the system keeps up with the range plan rather than the release queue.
• Catalog management, media, and channel distribution in one platform, with no middleware between product data and the storefront and no separate vendor for each layer
• The platform can be extended to fit the business, from AI product data enrichment on the same data model to modules added when the business needs them, with no second migration.

A catalog of this size is maintained through thousands of small operations, and what it costs to run is set by how long each of them takes.

Setting a value once for a whole product line instead of forty times changed that arithmetic, and the same shift covered attributes, images, and variations. Catalog work now moves at the pace of the range plan.

Send us a product line that repeats itself and see what one rule does with it: book a demo.