Mob-in Expands Into New Marketplaces With AI-Powered Centric Syndication

“Before Centric, creating a new marketplace in a new country took 3 days.”

Mariane Thorrez, Marketplace Manager at Mob-in mentions the amount of time it took to set up a new marketplace to sell Homesight wares. Today, that time has been slashed to 1.5 days—50% faster! How did these time-savings come about?

Homesight and Mob-in

Founded in 2010, Homesight started out by distributing bath furniture and fixtures to retailers in France. Over time, they began to manufacture their own-brand products. In 2015, the website Mob-in was launched as the company’s only channel to sell their wares directly to consumers. Four years later, Mob-in products can be found across France in marketplaces like Leroy Merlin, ManoMano and Maisons du Monde. Today, Mob-in is now present in 11 marketplaces across seven countries—Italy, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Portugal and Belgium—with plans to add four more marketplaces in the near-to-mid-term. The company likewise plans to extend into even more EU countries, with Austria and Switzerland as the latest targets.

Manual work slowed growth

Thorrez, formerly from Amazon, joined Mob-in with a mandate to expand to more marketplaces and channels. Beyond marketplaces, Mob-in also invests marketing dollars in social media channels like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and a dedicated site aimed at industry professionals. To begin selling on new exchanges, Mob-in had to determine and fulfill all the parameters needed for each different channel. Orders had to be manually entered as well, which was a very slow and resource-draining process.

Cutting down the work with AI to get onto new marketplaces

Enter Centric Syndication™, part of the Centric Software® suite of solutions which includes PIM, DAM and Digital Shelf Analytics as well as retail planning, PLM, competitive market intelligence and Pricing & Inventory optimization.

Centric Software’s AI-powered multi-channel feed solution connects consumer goods brands and retailers of any size to 1,000+ marketplaces, retail, ad networks and DTC channels. Previously, adding a marketplace typically took quite a bit of set-up to meet specific requirements unique to each channel. With Centric, marketplace-specific requirements and configurations are automated. Thorrez illustrates the power of Centric and its embedded AI engine, “Before Centric, creating a new marketplace in a new country took 3 days. With Centric, it takes us 1½ days. That’s 50% faster.”

Statistics have shown that consumers do research ahead of time before setting foot in a brick-and-mortar store. Shoppers interact with brands an average of six touch points in their typical purchase journeys and are 90% more likely to purchase from a retailer with omnichannel marketing. That’s why it’s important to have the right and consistent product information available on more than one channel or marketplace. “We’re growing fast. Centric Syndication makes it easy to scale and enter new markets and expand into new channels without draining our resources,” says Thorrez.

Staying in compliance

Keeping track of the different compliance rules and regulations for each country is a big task. Centric Syndication organizes that information into country categories so the right information, language and photographs are available to easily set up in the different marketplaces or channels.

The General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), enacted in December 2024, is a European Union rule that ensures the safety of non-food consumer products sold in the EU in stores and online. The GPSR covers obligations for manufacturers, importers, distributors and online marketplaces where the brand must provide company information for every product sold in the EU. Failure to comply with the GPSR can incur penalties and listing disruptions. Thorrez notes, “It’s reassuring to know we’re in compliance, as this is a particularly sensitive area in e-commerce.”

Homesight has 1,100 products in their catalog and information must be provided per the GPSR, for each product. Needless to say, it is a big job. With Centric Syndication a configuration is being created to automate this. Thorrez estimates the time to add the GPSR data will go from 4 hours to 2 minutes. Multiplying that by the current number of marketplaces (11) x 4 hours = 44 hours, down to 22 minutes with Centric Syndication, resulting in a 99% faster process.

Other benefits of Centric Syndication

Stock is updated every six hours in Centric Syndication, giving an almost-live snapshot of what is in inventory. If there is information missing, it is flagged right away and steps are taken to get or correct it.

Up next is connecting Centric Syndication to Mob-in’s e-commerce site. Orders can be accepted directly through Centric Syndication instead of having to enter them manually.

Thorrez concludes by saying, “Mob-in has a very good relationship with the Centric team who is very responsive and takes customer feedback seriously.” She gives an example. “We had asked for AI to be added to Centric Syndication and it was. We love the AI functionality and use it every day!”