Customer Spotlight: Matas Group

Matas is a leading Scandinavian health and beauty brand. Founded in 1949, Matas Group has grown to become a market leader in the competitive health and beauty space. Today, the brand has an international network of brick-and-mortar stores and a growing e-commerce presence across Denmark and Sweden. Following the acquisition of Kicks Group, Matas Group currently has an extensive Nordic network of almost 500 stores and an annual revenue of DKK 7.6 billion. Over the last five years, Matas Group initiated a digital transformation to align with evolving consumer preferences.

With a well-established retail presence and growing interest from digital shoppers, Matas Group knew it needed to accelerate a shift towards e-commerce to capture new customers and strengthen market share. Unfortunately, Matas also knew it faced several challenges when embarking on this project. These included internal issues such as slow and inefficient internal workflows and a fragmented tech ecosystem. These also included issues more specific to their vast product catalog of around 50,000 SKUs, such as slow and inefficient processes of product enrichment, a lack of product/variant structure, and the need to create high-quality product stories that were engaging and SEO optimized for digital channels. To meet these many demands, Matas turned to inriver.

Matas’ PIM journey with inriver  

Explore Matas’ journey to more effective data management for digital commerce: 

1. Understanding the challenges

Matas knew it faced significant challenges in its quest to elevate its e-commerce operations, both in terms of internal processes and the product data itself. Identifying a solution that helped meet the complete needs of Matas and its e-commerce strategy was essential.

2. Implementation success

Working with inriver solution partner Vertica, a dedicated digital agency focusing on e-commerce, Matas Group successfully implemented the PIM solution on time and within budget. The integration team at Vertica combined business understanding, user insights, technical development, and project management to deliver a seamless implementation to the Matas stakeholders.

3. More effective internal processes

The intuitive, user-friendly design of the inriver PIM system facilitates quick onboarding and collaboration across various departments within Matas. Thanks to intelligent workflows and data governance, the entire organization is now empowered with a centralized repository of market-ready product information.

“Before inriver, we had a handful of editors working with product data. Now, thanks to the inriver workflows and data governance capabilities, we have an entire organization of editors without compromising data quality.”

Katrine Goth

PIM Manager, Matas Group

4. Enhanced online product experiences

The inriver PIM has enabled Matas to create winning digital product experiences through enriched content, bundling options, and multimedia integration. With keyword optimization, Matas can also now be sure its products are findable and its product experiences memorable and ready to move the buying needle.

5. A fully scalable way of working

The fully adaptable nature of the inriver PIM solution has allowed for incremental enhancements and easy addition of new features or attributes. This meets a key need for Matas, which has an ever-evolving catalog of complex products and faces new regulations, like the European Digital Product Passport, which will continue to change over time.

6. Complete digital and physical integration

When starting this project, Matas wanted to provide digital consumers with the same successful experience available in their brick-and-mortar stores. Thanks to inriver, Matas now enjoys complete digital and physical integration and can ensure customers always get the great Matas experience whether shopping online or in-person.

“Implementing inriver has improved our time to market for new products significantly. Enrichment processes that used to take several workdays can now be completed within minutes. We have better product data in a shorter time.”

Katrine Goth

PIM Manager, Matas Group

inriver x Matas: The key takeaways

The partnership between inriver and Matas has significantly improved Matas’ ability to manage and enrich product information, leading to enhanced customer experiences both online and in-store. The scalable and intuitive nature of the inriver PIM solution has allowed Matas to continuously innovate and adapt, ensuring their digital commerce success and the results speak for themselves:

• Remarkable assortment growth, boasting approximately 50,000 active SKUs—an increase of 15,000 SKUs since the implementation. The company expanded its assortment into new product lines, transitioning from its traditional focus on cosmetics, skincare, and supplements to offering a broader range, including clothing, fitness equipment, and children’s items.
• Improved customer experience through relevant, enriched, and consistent product information and product, across online e-commerce and marketplaces and offline sales channels, becoming Denmark’s largest beauty, personal care, and health products retailer.
• Enhanced internal operations and processes with a better overview of product data, and a smooth enrichment process, resulting in a robust company-wide product data governance.
• A significant reduction in time-to-market, from 12-24 hours to an impressive 1-2 minutes.
• Streamlined product enrichment processes as changes were reflected on the website within minutes.
• Expansion to new markets, new languages, and geographies: the addition of three new languages and a substantial increase in attributes showcased the flexibility of the inriver data model.
• Streamlined internal and external collaboration: the e-commerce sales team, omni team, regulatory department, and master data team all found the system conducive to their specific needs. Notifications, work areas, and completeness rules made it easy to find products needing attention, while the user-friendly interface empowered different teams to contribute seamlessly.