Introduction

Burnsco is a 100% Kiwi owned and managed business with a proud 130-year history. It is New Zealand’s largest boating, sailing, fishing, motorhome and outdoors gear and accessories retailer, with over 10,000 products in stock. Customers are supported through a 16 store network stretching from the Bay of Islands to Christchurch and the company’s e-store.

THE CHALLENGES

• Inability to leverage marketing opportunities in e-commerce through lacking PIM solution.
  
  
• With no PIM or Image management, catalogue production was costly and slow

• Lack of agility resulted in old product information being recycled

• No supporting systems for product information, compliancy become increasing challenging
  

THE RESULTS

• Improved product information management with a purpose-built solution for the category team

• Enabled product/information changes closer to deadline

• Supports more sophisticated e-commerce initiatives

• APIs enabling tight integration with e-commerce platform

• Streamlined production freed resources for marketing expansion

• Single source of truth for e-commerce website, POS, and marketing catalogues

• Provides a stable IT platform and trusted data sovereignty
  

Burnsco’s marketing schedule includes six catalogues a year ranging from 12-page tactical catalogues to 32-page seasonal offerings. Before deploying Helium in 2007, Burnsco built the catalogues in-house using a laborious manual method. Managing Director and business owner, Bruce Macleod says: “It was literally a ‘cut-and-paste’ process, with products and descriptions cut out of a previous catalogue’s artwork and pasted onto new pages – the process was just too slow to accommodate updates easily.” 

Head of Operations, Chris Raey, says that Helium arrived as a paradigm-shift. “Previously, we were regurgitating the content from previous catalogues instead of building value into our messaging. Now, we can devote effort to building messaging that resonates with consumers and genuinely highlight the Burnsco difference.”

Helium started by integrating all the visual assets and information, making it easier to manage, share and update, but that was just the start. Streamlined processes energised Burnsco’s approach to marketing; the technology empowered them to expect more from their communications and to push the boundaries. Chris explains how Helium’s integration of the full suite of marketing initiatives enabled a holistic approach that embraced all marketing elements as a unified package. “Through a single source of truth, we are driving cohesive and mutually supportive messaging via every channel. Helium brings instore POS, such a shelf talker, catalogues, EDMs and our website content into view, allowing us to orchestrate intelligent and compelling campaigns.

Interestingly, the valuable efficiencies gained haven’t resulted in shorter deadlines for key campaigns, rather, campaign managers are using the faster processes to respond to changes closer to deadline. This agility is seen as an essential tool in marketing strategy, particularly given the disruption to supply lines caused by COVID and the immediacy of online marketing.



In a departure from what Digital Arena is seeing with many of our clients, Burnsco isn’t looking at cost-saving going forward. Instead, the business will probably be bringing on more design staff as Burnsco looks to leverage the abilities of Helium. “The product has grown in capability,” Bruce says, “and the updates are helping us to transition seamlessly to an increasingly sophisticated e-commerce footprint. This means we can talk to different customers about the products they want, through well-designed and informative online communications. With Helium, we can concentrate on building messaging that resonates, because the system is doing the heavy lifting with regards to product information and visual asset management.”

When asked if adopting Helium was an easy process, both Bruce and Chris stated that the APIs supported a tight integration with their e-commerce platform, Magento, and other business systems. Bruce wrapped up the interview for this case study by stating: “If all our IT suppliers were like Helium, we would get our work done in half the time!”