Introduction

The James Pascoe Ltd Group of Companies is a privately owned New Zealand retail group with holdings across New Zealand and Australia. JPG owns and operates the chains: Pascoes the Jewellers, Stewart Dawsons, Angus & Cootes and Goldmark; department store, Farmers; homeware retailer, Stevens, and bookshop, Whitcoulls.

THE CHALLENGES

• No image library resource
  
  
• Multiple brands required segmented approach to product information management, and design
  
  
• Admin-heavy approach to managing marketing for businesses on both sides of the Tasman
  
  
• Outdated production procedures
  

THE RESULTS

• Enterprise-wide information via a single source of truth to support all e-commerce platforms
  
  
• Reduced photography costs due to more efficient image cataloguing
  
  
• Faster and easier catalogue production
  
  
• Robust online solution supports two separate studios and trans-Tasman operations
  
  
• Solution flexibility matches technology adoption level for different business groups
  
  
• Solution can scale up with operational requirements
  

When JPG retired their external agency marketing operations for the entire group were brought inhouse. A critical element in this transition was the adoption of an image library resource that would more efficiently manage the huge number of images generated by the different members of the group. Helium’s adoption in 2011 fulfilled this function and opened the door for further production efficiencies. Marketing Manager, Kathryn Frankland, affirms this saying: “Helium product management integrates across our end-to-end operations, while making the production of catalogues easy and.” While Studio Manager, Jude Wilds, who is tasked with managing a significant workflow says: “Managing the volume of imagery and product information coming through from multiple sources would be practically impossible without Helium to coordinate the flow.”

A particularly valuable aspect of the Helium platform is the ability for different members to choose the level of Helium adoption best suited to their appetite for technology adoption. Kathryn says: “Helium is used across the whole James Pascoes group but with variations depending on where the different teams are in their adoption process. It has been able to grow with us over time. For all group members, it’s a deeply integrated part of the workflow for e-commerce and catalogue production, but others have gone still further by fully utilising Helium’s capabilities.”

Kathryn is referring to Farmers, which operates its own dedicated studio. Farmers uses the full suite of Helium products with Product Manager and Campaign Manager integrated into marketing collateral production. In a second studio, which meets production requirements for the rest of the group, only Whitcoulls has moved onto utilising the features of Campaign Manager. 

Kathryn has seen CM provide significant additional benefits. “Farmers and Whitcoulls are using Helium at its most integrated. This greater integration is mainly from the point of view of catalogue and studio production allowing the placement of an image along with the metadata content behind associated images. So, when we are building campaigns it’s much more efficient from a merchandise and marketing perspective. The studio can download the image and the content simultaneously.”

“Integration with Campaign Manager elevates Helium beyond simply being a product manager and image bank. It’s a far more sophisticated product. Our goal is to have the other businesses moving to that level eventually.”

Talking to Jude illustrated how Helium, either as an image database or a fully integrated production package, brought significant benefits to studio production. “All of our brands are still very catalogue based,” she told us. “We do a catalogue a month for every brand. These are normally 8 pages, with 16 pages for events like Mother’s Day and 24 to 36 pages for Christmas catalogues. Multiply that across all the brands we look after and that’s a massive workload. Helium automates the entire database process – that’s a huge help.”

Inevitably, the image database across the group is massive too, with the Pascoes Diamond Section alone containing 41,679 images. Through Helium, this resource is efficiently catalogued so individual images or collections can be provided to different members of the studio team. 

Accurate identification of the right image is very important, particularly for the jewellery brands, where even the same item needs to be photographed differently depending on the brand that’s selling it. The studio uses two photographers in Australia and one in NZ to ensure specific brand attributes remain true across image portfolios. Helium uses a different naming convention for each brand to reinforce this separation. 

With three photographers in operation, photography charges have always been a significant contributor to overall production costs, but Jude tells us Helium is helping here too. “We are relying on Helium a lot now to drive photography efficiencies. Effective databasing of images means that we are shooting less and reducing our photography costs. Previously, the photographer shot all the images for a page in the catalogue at the same time. Now, many of the images may already exist in the database.”

Helium has also provided a broader funnel for uploading images from various sources, with the buyers and product managers uploading images and product information. “All images used to come through me,” Jude says, “but the protocols in place with Helium now facilitate uploading directly to the database. Generally, only those images that will require retouching come directly to me. This is a game-changer for production speed, especially for a brand like Whitcoulls where so much stuff is coming in. Helium is essential to facilitate and manage this because I couldn’t possibly maintain it on my own.”

Moving beyond the studio, both Jude and Kathryn have seen how Helium’s benefits resonate with other departments. Jude says: “Putting images where people can securely access them, rather than them coming into the studio and asking if I have a particular image saves time for everyone.”

Kathryn states: “Helium and Campaign Manager are the information source for product across the entire business: catalogues, POS, social media, and the websites. Our ecommerce partner, Black Pepper, benefits by having all our websites integrated into the system as are our internal intranet systems so the stores can access current product information. It’s the Hub for imagery and information!” 

According to Kathryn, “There are absolutely opportunities to build efficiencies into business processes beyond the studio for organisations that use Helium’s full capability-set.”

The accessibility of product information provided by Helium is also allowing the team to plan campaigns in advance, bringing in products and changing them without taking up studio time.

The benefit of Helium during a pandemic era is also an aspect that Both Kathryn and Jude attest to. Jude welcomed the integration with Dropbox to facilitate remote working while Kathryn says: “Without Helium it would be near impossible for studio to work remotely.”

Kathryn is also complimentary in her appraisal of Digital Arena saying: “DA are very much part of our business, not just with Helium, they are also our IT department for our whole studio. The DA team have been collaborative in making sure the solution works for us.”