Thanks to Pimcore Perfectly Prepared for Further Growth
Future-proof PIM system with product data extraction for online store and print catalogs
The Challenge
The expanding multi-channel mail order company 7days Marc Staperfeld GmbH is one of the leading specialists for fashionable and innovative workwear. The company, which is active throughout Europe, sells its articles via an online store, newsletter and catalogs. In order to be able to conveniently extract product data for store and print publications, 7days wanted a modern PIM system that could be expanded to include additional languages, products, countries and distribution channels as required without any programming effort.
Publication Planning in Pimcore
Catalogs and page structure are created in Pimcore
Articles from the tree are assigned to the pages by drag&drop
A selection of the stored images and texts can be made for each article
Finally the export URL is generated in the desired language and price group
Automated Catalog Creation in Adobe Indesign
The URL generated in Pimcore is inserted in the corresponding dialog in Adobe InDesign
In InDesign, the data is displayed in tabular view, the so-called "palette
Layout modules created with placeholders are saved in the InDesign library and filled with data via drag&drop and placed in the document
One unfilled and one filled library object: The green markers indicate that the data placed in the document is up-to-date
Red markings, on the other hand, indicate changed data - these can be updated via a simple dialog
The Result
In order to meet the requirements of our customer, we used the flexible open source software platform Pimcore: The system is ideally suited to maintain all data centrally and in a targeted manner and then export it. When expanding the product range or opening up new sales markets, the 7days team can easily add new content and language versions for the various sales channels at any time.
From Pimcore, the product data is imported and processed in InDesign via EasyCatalog using a web interface. For optimal publication planning, Blackbit has extended its own Pimcore bundle for EasyCatalog export, so that the assignment of products, variants and illustrations to the individual chapters and pages is now convenient and less time-consuming than publication planning in EasyCatalog itself. The InDesign templates created by Blackbit according to the customer's specifications enable 7days to design and publish catalogs easily and independently. The automated print output and simplified mass changes (e.g. with CSV import) reduce manual effort and speed up catalog production. In addition to the interface for InDesign (print), we implemented the desired export function to provide product data for the existing Magento store.
