Swiss home goods manufacturer Rotho needed an effective way to provide product listings and content to Amazon’s European sites. For more than 130 years, Rotho has been making innovative and eco-friendly household products.
The company relies on a small ecommerce team. Alexandra Kuture, ecommerce manager at Rotho, and Frank Holzweissig, head of ecommerce at Rotho, wanted to grow their international presence on Amazon in 2020.
How Rotho Launched on 4 New Marketplaces in 5 months
At the start of the year, the ecommerce team was managing 850 SKUs in one spreadsheet for Amazon.de and had a second spreadsheet for content going to Amazon.uk.
Without a centralized system to manage that content, there was a limit to how quickly they could expand their product catalogs to new markets. Most of their time was spent working with different Amazon category requirements to get new product listings live.
"The level of effort for item set up depends on the category, but the heaviest lift comes from determining the different flexible and required attributes and sourcing that information. Multiple people in one Excel sheet gets messy fast. Multiply that by each country; there's no way to do it efficiently without a system in place," Kuture says.
The Amazon Feed Specification (AFS) program allows brands to automatically and electronically submit product information without using Amazon flat files for bulk upload.
This program allows brands to streamline their process and get to market faster using a content provider. After seeing Salsify listed as an AFS content solution provider and getting a recommendation from a Salsify customer, the Rotho team began a platform trial in February 2020.
Managing Digital Transformation Amid COVID-19
Kuture and Holzweissig worked with Salsify in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak to centralize product content — including specifications, descriptions, and rich media for around 800 SKUs for Amazon.de. The company went live with updated content and 850 product listings in Amazon Germany in April 2020.
"This work with Salsify allowed us to be ready to meet the demands of the consumer at a difficult time," Kuture says. "We've got the system set up to work the way our business needs to, and it's allowed our teams to move forward with our goals to grow across Europe."
Since that time, Kuture and Holzweissig have expanded their assortment in the U.K. and go live in four more countries: France in June 2020, Spain in July 2020, Italy and the Netherlands in August 2020. The next markets Rotho plans to expand to are Poland and Sweden.
"Salsify has given us the flexibility to handle multilingual content in a very, very easy way," Kuture says. "We are happy with the easy [user experience] UX, and international content adjustments have become manageable."
In addition, because of Salsify's role on Amazon's Marketplace Developer Council, Kuture was able to provide direct feedback to Amazon's product teams about her team's needs and challenges with multi-marketplace listings and common Vendor Central Catalogue struggles.
A Winning Tech and Strategy Stack
The Rotho team is already seeing the impact of better product content and a faster go-to-market process for Amazon. The team has begun to invest more in A+ Content for Amazon, which is created and submitted through Salsify's platform.
By using Salsify Insights, the team can track content changes made by Amazon. Rotho has structured a winning tech and strategy stack to grow its Amazon business across new international markets.
"Daily business has become easier and more fun with Salsify. We always have immediate access to our content," Kuture says.
Watch the on-demand webinar, “Moving at the Speed of Commerce: Introduction of Salsify Commerce Experience Management,” to learn more about how your brand could evolve to meet modern demands.
