Boohoo accelerates growth with customised PIM solution

The challenge

British online fashion retailer Boohoo Group PLC is home to a portfolio of 13 market-leading brands – including boohoo, PrettyLittleThing, Karen Millen, and Debenhams.

Since its IPO as a single brand in 2014, the group has grown considerably, with acquisitions forming a key part of its business strategy.

But with each acquisition, the size and complexity of the group’s catalogue and product data grows exponentially.

As an example, Boohoo gained around 2 million additional SKUs between 2020 and 2022. It has more than 600,000 product models – and individual products can have up to 50 variations.

Without standardised governance – or a centralised PIM solution to handle the complexity of this product data across the group – Boohoo faced several key challenges:

Data management was complex and costly. Managing the group product catalogue – one of the largest and most complex in UK retail – was manual, time intensive, and costly.
Time to market had room for improvement. The complexity and manual effort impacted product time to market and Boohoo’s ability to quickly scale data management to support additional retail brands and products.
Product data was not quality assured. A modern and flexible PIM solution ensures that the product information you present to customers is accurate, relevant, and up to date. Without one, Boohoo had no guarantee that the product information was consistent and accurate – which posed a risk in terms of customer experience, conversion, and operational costs.

Two women modelling boohoo clothing in a summery setting

Three men modelling Burton clothing, part of Boohoo Group PLC

The retail group therefore needed a centralised, standardised, and streamlined way to manage product information across its channels to:

Cut the cost, complexity, and manual effort required to manage product data across the entire group.
Reduce product time to market and provide the flexibility and scale to rapidly add new brands, products, and channels to its portfolio, supporting the group’s acquisition strategy and business growth.
Ensure accurate and compelling product information at every touchpoint, guaranteeing the best possible customer experience across its websites and mobile apps.

What we did

PrettyLittleThing – a Boohoo Group PLC brand – was already reaping the rewards of the Akeneo PIM solution and the group was keen to extend these benefits to its entire retail portfolio.

But with the unusual volume and complexity of Boohoo Group’s product information and requirements, extending and enriching Akeneo’s out-of-the-box functionality would be key to supporting the group’s goals and growth ambitions.

That’s why Boohoo Group approached long-term Akeneo Solution Partner, Inviqa. Our team has a strong track record in customising and extending commerce platform functionality to drive better outcomes for our retail clients and their customers.

Working as one team with Boohoo Group’s in-house developers, our consultants, commerce specialists, technical architects, and software engineers enabled the fashion retailer to maximise the business and customer benefits of Akeneo, transform product experiences, accelerate time to market, and support business growth.

Male model wearing Burton clothes, part of Boohoo Group PLC

Highlights of the partnership included:

A thorough Discovery and technical consulting phase to clarify and align on Boohoo Group’s goals, technical architecture, and solution requirements. Our commerce and technical consultants uncovered how to ensure value delivery for the business and its customers.
Embedding ourselves within Boohoo Group’s delivery team to customise and implement a bespoke Akeneo solution to drive efficiencies, automate manual processes, and serve the group’s growing portfolio or retail brands, products, and sales channels.
Development of a custom ‘Product Wizard’ tool using Symfony and Akeneo’s native API to support the complexity of Boohoo Group’s product catalogue and make it easier for the group to create simple or complex products, as well as manage and scale product information across its retail brands.
Other key customisations – including a SKU generation tool, barcode service, and extended system maintenance information – allow Boohoo Group to create products in bulk, easily integrate new brands as the group scales, and manage and assign barcodes to products.

Akeneo’s native functionality was also key to meeting Boohoo Group’s needs.

Reference Entities enabled us to create and enrich common information shared between related products – for example, sizing guides.
Akeneo’s flexibility and Connections functionality was essential for integrating with Salesforce and Boohoo Group’s ERP – and for enabling the additional customisation required to optimise the retailer’s technical architecture.
Meanwhile Product Models enabled Boohoo Group to handle its 600,000 product models effectively and reduce the complexity of managing products with up to 100 variations per item.

Woman modelling PrettyLittleThing Clothing on grass

The results

Boohoo Group has one of largest and most complex product data sets in UK retail. With big growth ambitions and a strong acquisitions strategy, this complexity is set to grow even further.

That’s why Boohoo Group urgently needed a standardised and centralised approach to product information management to meet the group’s business objectives and ensure product data quality and performance at every customer touchpoint.

The customised Akeneo solution we developed enables Boohoo Group to:

Cut the cost, complexity, and manual effort of managing product data for 5 million SKUs and more than 600,000 product models.
Reduce product time to market, allowing Boohoo Group to create hundreds of product variations with one click – with the flexibility and scale to seamlessly integrate new brands and products.
Ensure accurate and compelling product information at every online and offline touchpoint as Boohoo Group’s omnichannel strategy evolves. The group can quickly measure the quality and consistency of product information and deliver superior digital customer experiences that increase conversion and reduce operational costs.

Model showcasing silver Karen Millen dress

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