WALSER and crossbase – from 0 to 100

WALSER is the market leader in car interiors and has been producing high-quality accessories such as seat covers, child seats, floor mats and garage accessories since 1977. Its brands include CLIX, Aerotex and Tailormade. As a supplier to eight major retail chains in the self-service department store sector, WALSER sells products for all car brands as an aftermarket supplier. There area total of ten locations worldwide in Europe, Asia and the USA for sales, logistics and production.

A PIM, MAM and cross-media solution was implemented for WALSER on the basis of the crossbase standard software. Over 4,000 articles are continuously imported with basic, packaging and price data via the XML interface from proALPHA. In crossbase, the articles are supplemented with technical features, CAD data
and product relationships, for example for cross-selling.

A special feature is the Tecdoc interface, a format for cross-manufacturer classification and description of vehicles. The interface is used to regularly update the vehicle structure with over 40,000 vehicle models. Using a rule-based configurator, Walser is able to automatically assign articles to vehicle models. This is the basis for searching for suitable articles in the online store via the vehicle.

The integrated MAM is used to manage product photos, application photos, graphics, assembly photos and documents for download. The graphics converter automatically generates additional image formats. The effort for text maintenance and translations is kept to a minimum by reusing texts many times. The translation of technical terms and advertising texts is based on exports using the exact translation requirements.

In order to be able to use products for e-commerce in online stores and e-fulfilment (eBay, Amazon) in a market-specific manner, the products are referenced in the corresponding sales channels in a marketing-specific manner. For the online media, data is provided by crossbase via an XML interface. This concerns the online store for
end users and resellers (Shopware) as well as the eFulfilment platform (see www.efulfilment.de). This supplies various other online stores, third-party channels and branch stores with data and fully controls order processing. Internally, multilingual data sheets are created automatically using Word. Extensive Excel exports are also generated, such as the illustrated price list, which can be individually configured and created using the crossbase Excel configurator.