Customer Case Study

500,000 Products, Enriched for Dealers

Orgill, the world's largest independent hardlines distributor, teamed with Unilog to build a 500,000+ item Industry PIM its dealers subscribe to for enriched content.

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Industry

Independent Hardlines Distribution & Retail Services

Location

Memphis, TN

Products used

CX1 Content Subscription Industry PIM CX1 Platform

Executive Summary

Orgill, the world’s largest independent hardlines distributor, partnered with Unilog to solve its dealers’ product-enrichment challenge. Unilog built and maintains the 500,000+ item Industry PIM, a group-shared catalog dealers subscribe to for enriched content and, optionally, an integrated eCommerce platform.

500,000+products in the Industry PIM

10,000products enriched per week

2%of McLendon’s revenue from web sales in 9 months

Dealers Without Product Content

Today’s shoppers rely on the Internet as their primary source for product information. Orgill, the world’s largest independent hardlines distributor, recognized that shoppers in its industry, from home improvement DIYers to pro contractors, increasingly research products on Orgill retailer sites before buying, whether the final purchase happens online or in a dealer’s store.

Orgill services a dealer network of more than 10,000 retail hardware stores, home centers, pro lumberyards, and farm stores. Its own catalog items are richly enriched, but most dealers sell many products beyond the Orgill catalog and needed a way to enrich that data too, so they could present their full assortments online in a consistent, organized way.

Enriching data in-house proved costly and slow. Aubuchon Hardware assigned one internal resource to enrich more than 80,000 SKUs, leaving it at a scale disadvantage, and McCoy’s spent more than a decade and significant money manually capturing data before concluding it couldn’t do the job alone.

A Group-Shared Catalog, Maintained by Unilog

To relieve its dealers’ enrichment challenges and meet end-customer demand for reliable content, Orgill searched for a provider that could perform high-quality data enrichment at massive scale and offer the eCommerce tools to create a strong online experience.

Unilog was the only company that could offer both a powerful eCommerce solution and product content services under one roof. Its all-in-one platform gave Orgill flexibility and scalability, including integration with many point-of-sale systems, a built-in PIM to manage custom catalogs, and a first-class shopping experience. A dedicated team of product specialists captures, cleanses, and enriches content, including products outside the Orgill catalog, made available to dealers through the new Industry PIM Content Subscription program.

Unilog began building Orgill’s catalog, the Industry PIM, in 2017, starting with Orgill’s 120,000-item stocking assortment. As each new dealer joined, any items not already in the catalog were enriched and added; by early 2020 the Industry PIM had grown to over 500,000 products, maintained and updated daily. Unilog also builds taxonomies tailored to dealers’ retail niches, including Home Center, Pro Lumberyard, Hardware Store, and Farm Store. Dealers can implement the Integrated eCommerce solution and Content Subscription program together, or subscribe to just the Industry PIM Data Program.

10,000 Products Enriched Every Week

Early subscribers such as Aubuchon, Buchheit’s, and McLendon’s helped Unilog fine-tune taxonomies and are already seeing benefits ranging from increased traffic and sales to internal efficiencies.

Encouraging metrics

Better content means more of McCoy’s web pages are indexed by Google, driving higher organic rankings and more page views. McLendon’s, which also uses Unilog’s Integrated eCommerce platform, saw web sales reach 2% of overall revenue after just nine months.

Internal efficiencies

Subscribers save time and money by relying on Unilog for enriched data; McCoy’s had its 43,000-item catalog enriched quickly and gets ongoing product updates.

Group-share benefits

The shared program lets independent dealers build scale to compete with giants like Lowe’s and Home Depot; when Dixieline signed on, a third of its items were already enriched.

Future expansion

With more than 500,000 items in the Industry PIM and up to 10,000 products enriched each week, dealers can expand into new brands and categories they couldn’t have tackled alone.