Flints Case Study - Channel Studios

Flints

Flint Hire & Supply Ltd – aka Flints – offers a one-stop shop for scenic artists, art department crews, stage managers, production managers, workshop managers, set decorators, engineers, carpenters, painters and propmakers working in live and recorded entertainment.

Established in 1981, Flints supplies the materials and tools needed to create a production from scratch. They deliver an endless range of supplies to the captivating world of theatre, film and television, as well as to schools, universities, museums, shop displays and fine art.

The past few years have been particularly busy at Flints as their product range has been constantly expanding. Their service offerings have grown, new partnerships have been established… all of this whilst moving to new premises and also setting up a second location.

The Challenge

Customers are a constant focus for Flints, driving the changes that have been happening.

Flints had been looking for ways that their product and marketing teams could become more efficient. They had a sharp focus on continually improving their products and services for customers, and so that their wider marketing briefs could be encompassed.

This thinking led the business to look at Product Information Management (PIM) systems. This would be a means of reducing time consuming aspects of workload associated with managing their product data, whilst making it easier and quicker to maintain marketing channels such as websites, brochures and catalogues with up to date products and information.

Product and marketing teams were closely involved in key parts of this process – actioning some of these changes whilst trying to promote all the improvements to customers and prospects. This exacerbated a work overload that had been steadily building as Flints marketing strategies moved with the times.

The Solution

From the first demo presented by Channel Studios and Plytix, Flints saw ‘Plytix PIM’ as a tool they would understand and have the confidence to use instantly. Interfaces were clean and intuitive for everyday use, yet there was also the flexibility to cope with the information management demands of Flints’ considerable and diverse range of products.

During the initial investigatory phase carried out by Flints and Channel Studios, an underlying cleverness to Plytix had also been discovered, one that would become invaluable when the time came to publish the new Flints catalogue, as by this time it had become clear that the demands of Flints’ brochures and catalogues were surprisingly complex.

Packing a huge variety and amount of product information into pages, allied with a frequently wry sense of humour, the Flints Reference Catalogue is a much loved publication among theatre technicians and art departments. In implementing Plytix, therefore, Flints and Channel Studios set about shaping the PIM to fit into the way Flints work – configuring all the complexity of the catalogue in a straightforward, understandable structure within Plytix.

The Implementation

As is nearly always the case (in our experience), Flints discovered that the richness of the product information in their catalogue often exceeded the information on their website. This meant capturing the data from Flints catalogue became a key goal of the implementation. Channel Studios undertook this capture over the course of several weeks – scraping the data from InDesign documents and PDFs, classifying it, mapping it to Attributes and importing it to Plytix.

EasyStructure for Catalogue Production

It’s important that the structure of the Flints catalogue works in a way that customers like to use it. Deeply layered chapters, sections, subsections, product groups and individual skus – make navigation easy and familiar. Managing and optimising this structure on an ongoing basis is therefore very important to Flints. Unfortunately the usual methods of doing this – spreadsheets, or within a PIM – make it very difficult to visualise this heirarchical structure.

Flints therefore used the Channel Studios EasyStructure system. This turned their catalogue heirarchy into a visual tree structure, making it clear exactly what went where, and in what order. Channel Studios initially captured the structure of the last Flints catalogue from InDesign and populated it to EasyStructure. Flints was then able to adapt as needed. They could add, remove, and reorder heirarchy levels and products to suit their next catalogue.

With the rich product data safely captured into Plytix, and the catalogue structure safely managed in EasyStructure, Flints set about defining their next catalogue. This involved adding new products and ranges, removing underperformers and obseletes, tweaking the structure and groupings and updating product changes from suppliers.

Simultaneously Channel Studios created the catalogue pages for the new catalogue a section or subsection at a time, laying out products in a new improved design that had been developed between Flints and Channel Studios, in advance of production – keeping all that’s good and individual about the catalogue whilst creating more space and improving delineation.

An Efficient Proofing Process

Proofs were uploaded to the proof system where Flints could check pages and identify any additional product data tweaks that might be needed. During this process Flints marketing team had temporarily reduced in size, due to exhibitions and holiday-leave. Channel Studios stepped in as overflow marketing assistants for Flints. This involved helping to update their Plytix and EasyStructure with any necessary edits and changes.

During the final production phase, prices were added to pages automatically via a price-merge of the latest prices from the Flints order processing system.

The Results

The new catalogue looks impressive, with a punchy distinctive cover, hitting schedule in good time for its launch at an exhibition the Flints team were attending at Alexandra Palace – an auspicious debut!

Next Steps

Having implemented Plytix PIM and successfully produced a product catalogue from their PIM data, with Channel Studios support, Flints continued to build on the foundations they had put in place, with a clear focus on improving their online presence and increasing ecommerce sales.

A key development has been connecting Plytix directly to Shopify, creating a streamlined flow of product information between the two systems. Shopify is also integrated with Sage through the Unleashed Shopify plug-in, allowing the different systems to work together seamlessly.

Flints has also expanded the ways in which its product data is distributed and used:

Plytix to Shopify integration – product information is automatically fed from the PIM into the Shopify website, helping to keep online product data accurate and up to date.
Plytix to Google Shopping feed – product data can now be distributed directly to Google Shopping, helping Flints increase the visibility of its products online.
GEO-optimised product descriptions – all products on the Shopify website now use descriptions structured for Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), helping Flints improve how its products are discovered through AI-powered search and generative engines. Analytics have also been set up to measure the effectiveness of this approach.
Digital catalogue publishing – rather than producing a printed catalogue next year, Flints plans to reduce distribution costs by creating an updated digital flipbook catalogue. This will use the latest product data, include links from individual product codes directly to the relevant website pages, feature new products and incorporate the latest pricing.

The digital catalogue will also allow Flints to retain an important benefit of its traditional catalogue programme: the marketing campaign and sales activity generated around the launch of a new catalogue.

This latest phase demonstrates how Flints is continuing to get more value from their PIM investment, using a centralised source of accurate product information not only to manage its website, but also to power Google Shopping, GEO-optimised content and digital marketing materials.