DANIELS Accelerates E-commerce Growth with AI-Driven Centric PIM and Centric DAM

We had no visibility of how many products were at what stage, where in the launch process, which ones were ready and where we had information missing.”

Finn Grande, Head of e-commerce at DANIELS describes the situation prior to implementing Centric PIM™ and Centric DAM™ “Managing the product range was overwhelming,” he says. At the time, the company’s PIM (Product Information Management) team had five employees just to keep up with the workload of getting products on the website. Furthermore, updating existing product data was very time-consuming. Grande gives an example. “We decided to change the spelling of ‘Kashmere’ to ‘Cashmere’ as it is more common. We had to manually go into every single product entry across the entire website to replace the ‘K’ with a ’C’ for each description that had the word ‘Cashmere’ in it.” Today, AI automation enables batch updates. Product content is transparent, accurate and all information is found in one system.

Curating exceptional fashion since 1967

Headquartered in Bornheim, Germany, Daniels & Co. – Herrenmoden GmbH is a retailer of high-quality men’s and women’s apparel. The company offers over 200 brands plus its own private-label products, which now make up 40% of the product offer. Known for exceptional customer service, DANIELS operates stores across Germany and, since 2020, has expanded its reach with an e-commerce site serving customers throughout Europe.

E-commerce at scale requires rich, structured data

With two collections per year, each containing about 3,200 color variants, DANIELS generates massive volumes of product data. Managing this manually was a major challenge.

Before Centric PIM and DAM, data collection was entirely manual. Products were examined, photographed and described, then manually entered into different spreadsheets. These lists were then consolidated into a master spreadsheet, then copied into the store system. Media and digital assets were stored on local servers and uploaded by hand, adding yet another layer of work.

Grande recalls, “Altogether, we had 450,000 records to manage annually. That includes roughly 6,400 color variants per year, representing around 30,000 SKUs, with about 70 data points per color. This had been the biggest challenge in recent years.” He notes, “It was a huge pain to collect and enter all the data in two locations. Spreadsheets have limited capabilities and we could not map business workflows or create value lists.”

A perfect case for an AI-powered PIM and DAM solution

DANIELS recognized the need for both a Product Information Management and Digital Asset Management solution to centralize product information and digital assets and AI to automate repetitive tasks and improve data quality by identifying inconsistencies across assortments. After an extensive search, the team narrowed the field down to three vendors, with Centric PIM and DAM ultimately getting the nod.

Grande explains, “Centric PIM and DAM cover all our needs, including the flexibility of adding modules. We especially value the flexible data model, which we configured to reflect our product structures. In our case, this meant organizing assortments across attributes, classes and products for consistency and efficiency. We also ran a test to ensure our existing workflows and product data model could be mapped in the system. That successful proof-of-concept sealed the deal.”

Grande goes on, “We were particularly impressed that we can set up Centric PIM and DAM ourselves and expand the solutions at a later date without the need for large developer resources or third parties.”

Flawless implementation under budget

From decision to go-live took just under nine months. Grande says, “The process went flawlessly, with very, very few issues. The implementation came in 30% under budget, which of course was a pleasant surprise.”

Meeting the goals of the product information management project

With Centric PIM and DAM, DANIELS achieved its key objectives:

• Collect product data more effectively
• Centralize, map and automate data workflows
• Gain full visibility of workload and products ready to sell
• Significantly improve product information quality and governance
• Streamline management of product ranges and attributes

In practical terms, Grande notes, “Centric PIM and Centric DAM streamline product data collection and shortens the go-to-market process, cutting the time it takes to get a product live on the website from three days to just over one.” Data collection is no longer the limiting factor in listing products on the website.

“We don’t have to enter product data into two locations—spreadsheets and the store system—anymore,” explains Grande. In addition, the data is structured with governance over product hierarchies, attributes, validations and relationships. “Attributes are now classified in groups, so we only see the information relevant to each product when we edit it, i.e., for a jacket, we don’t have to rummage through all the shoe attributes until we have found the right properties.” This saves time in locating and entering the information needed for each specific category. “It reduces the overall time from ‘goods receipt’ to online availability, down from seven or eight days to three or four days. That is about a 50% reduction.”

Cross-selling made better and faster with AI-tagging

Previously, to create product references like, “complete your look” or “you might also like this” the team had to manually search for every product in an outfit from a photoshoot and then link them individually. Grande reflects, “Processing 120 shoots with around 50 products each would have taken a full day per shoot, which we simply didn’t have time for.”

Now, digital assets are centralized and AI-tagged in Centric DAM, making them easy to retrieve and reuse. “Most recently, we worked on a cross-selling automation process that saves an incredible amount of time,” enthuses Grande. “Now, during the photoshoot, when the model is wearing the entire outfit, we can simply scan the product ID numbers into a text field, which is then read by our ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) system. The corresponding products are electronically identified, transferred to Centric PIM where product references [for cross-selling] are created automatically.” Grande points out, “It is not a lot of extra work during the shoot; we lose very little time. This has reduced our cross-selling back-end process from a theoretical 120 days, which we never managed to do, to just 40 to 50 days per year.”

This means cross-selling at scale, driving more revenue without adding workload.

Time saved, increased accuracy and more

The time saved on data collection and listing cross-sell items has been the most significant factor according to Grande. “Roughly speaking, we have saved 270 days of labor per year. These are the big wins that I can clearly identify.” He further states, ”What is difficult to measure is the increase in turnover due to the shorter time to market or because cross-selling now works better.”

In addition, duplicated work, manual data entry and listing inconsistencies are a thing of the past. With a single source of truth for product content and assets, DANIELS drives faster product launches, consistent consumer experiences at scalable e-commerce growth.

Grande sums up more of the benefits realized by DANIELS since implementing Centric PIM, “My overview of workloads gives me insight for personnel planning. We are collecting and managing product data with fewer resources. Employees make far fewer mistakes resulting in a tremendous increase in data consistency and data quality.”

What’s next

With Centric PIM and DAM now powering product readiness for e-commerce and omnichannel selling, DANIELS is setting its sights on the next stage of digital growth. Looking forward, the company plans to enhance cross-selling by adding “save” and “look book” features, making it easier to present curated outfits and looks to customers.

Another area to tackle is the sampling process for the DANIELS private label line. The goal is to map samples in Centric PIM and DAM and automatically sync their product images into the ERP system so buyers, warehouse employees and retail customers can access them directly at checkout.

In addition, DANIELS also plans to launch thematic channel collections, dynamically grouping products—like a “White Linen” collection—using attribute filters and drag-and-drop workflows. Grande explains, “We want to map brands as objects in the system. This will allow us to create new collections and group products dynamically, giving our consumers inspiration while streamlining our internal processes.”