Food for thought – LAGO at Swiss Colony
For Monroe, WI, based Swiss Colony, to be able to aggregate and to manage their product data in one system for delivery to web and print on an on-going basis is an important part of maintaining their status as a leader in the food and food-related multi-channel market. The company was founded in 1926, and has since grown to incorporate a diverse line of food and non-food brands. Currently 8 brands are managed in LAGO including Seventh Avenue, Midnight Velvet, Monroe-n-Main, Country Door, Ginny’s, The Tender Filet, and Montgomery Ward. Well known for its cheese and meat products, Swiss Colony even operates its own bakery as well as a food wholesale business. However, the majority of its revenue is generated through its non-food brands that sell a range of products from clothing, furnishings, kitchenware, jewelry, electronics, and even NASCAR merchandise.
When inefficiencies and other problems began to hinder the production of their catalog and limited their opportunity to re-purpose data, they knew they needed to rethink their strategy and find the right solution.
The process of finding a suitable vendor to provide a content management system to store and maintain their 30,000 active SKUs began back in 2000. After a long and tedious search that lasted almost six years, they decided on Comosoft’s LAGO based on the strength of the company and the robustness of the solution. Finding a company with a solid track record and a flexible solution that would work for them was key in their decision. During the six years Swiss Colony searched for a solution, they saw at least two vendors drastically change the course of their business strategy and another trying to force a specific solution upon the company. Comosoft clearly understood the end-to-end process between merchandising, creative and I.T. very early in their evaluation, and LAGO was a clear reflection of this knowledge.
“Comosoft has really shown its strength as a company, it was important for us to choose someone who would be there if we needed them.” says Cathy Crubaugh, Director of Catalog Project Management/Production at Swiss Colony.
Prior to using LAGO, Swiss Colony had built a database application in MS Access, which allowed them to plan each catalog cycle but did not help them in the production. They outgrew the system quickly. For their multiple brands, the print catalog is still the main business driver. “Many of our customers are a bit older, and while the catalog drives business to the web, we still receive a lot of orders through our call center as well as through mailed order forms,” says Scott Clement, Data Administrator and Analyst at Swiss Colony.
In all, Swiss Colony produces over 6,700 printed pages per year, which includes catalogs that range from 48-200+ pages, as well as flyers and mailer inserts. All product information is also being used to feed the e-commerce sites. Images are being delivered to Adobe Scene 7, which feeds into the e-commerce engine.
Once Swiss Colony decided to move forward with LAGO, it took them about six months to implement the system and they went live in March 2007. “Comosoft was with us every step of the way,” states Cathy. “They worked with us to configure the system, train users, and subsequently, made suggestions on how to overcome user adoption issues.” Every new system requires some change, and with over 100 people in merchandising, marketing, the creative and e-business departments, as well as the buyers being involved in the usage of LAGO, getting buy-in from all departments and all individuals was not easy.
Swiss Colony has made many improvements to their catalog production and data maintenance since installing LAGO. They stay current on the latest releases and are already using LAGO 3.11, which allowed them to upgrade their Mac Desktops and move to QuarkXPress 8. “LAGO works for both MAC and PC users, which is huge for us,” enthuses Cathy. “We have definitely experienced significant time savings when we repurpose our product content from one catalog to another, which is something we had hoped for when we implemented LAGO.”
The first invaluable advantage with Comosoft was the structuring of data for multi-platform delivery and the creation of a single source for that data. This enabled them to create their printed catalog brands more efficiently as well as deliver data to their Web site. LAGO also integrates with their homegrown Mainframe program and Sample System that is used for new product introduction. “We are definitely able to repurpose content much more easily because we have been able to dramatically reduce the number of errors in our database,” says Scott. “Today, we believe in our data integrity, which was not the case prior to installing LAGO.”
LAGO’s powerful workflow capabilities made a huge difference, too. “None of the other vendor solutions we looked at came close to LAGO,” states Cathy. LAGO allows users to put placeholders and initiate parallel workflows, which lets them continue to work on their pages while copy is written and photos are being updated. “We used to have all our hi-res images at the printer but now we have them in LAGO and can use them for print and web,” Scott adds.
“The key to success with LAGO lies in the attention they give to creating good relations and listening to input from users,” says Cathy. “This includes their bi-annual user conference, which we have used to build close relationships with other LAGO users.”
Swiss Colony’s continued confidence in Comosoft makes their business partnership a win-win situation. In the future, Swiss Colony would like to discuss how LAGO could help in reaching customers through other channels.
