Context and Challenge
WeSports Group runs 41 different sports equipment brands, each with its online store. As the company grew, they wanted to increase sales by allowing all these stores to sell each other’s products. But in practice, it wasn’t that simple.
Each webshop was running on its system, using different formats, tools, and rules for managing product data. There was no shared platform. If one store wanted to sell another store’s products, someone had to manually copy all the product info (names, images, sizes, prices) into their system. It was time-consuming and nearly impossible to scale.
Here were the main challenges that WeSports Group faced:
- Disconnected systems: No central hub for managing or sharing product data across stores.
- Duplicate products: The same item could look completely different on each site.
- Conflicting data: Descriptions, sizes, or even product names didn’t match between stores.
- Ownership confusion: No rules were defined on who could edit a product, which led to mistakes.
- Over 1 million products: It was difficult to handle massive amounts of data.
WeSports needed a smart, flexible tool that would let all shops team up without losing control over their data. That’s when they turned to Forbytes.
Client’s Objectives
WeSports Group needed a reliable and scalable solution to break down data silos and boost cross-store sales. Their goals were clear:
- Build one shared system where all stores can see and use each other’s products.
- Make product updates automatic so no one has to do it by hand or worry about mistakes.
- Protect product ownership so that only the store that added a product can change it.
- Keep product info consistent across all stores, but still allow changes like local prices or stock levels.
How We Approached the Project
To help WeSports Group reach their goals, we followed a clear and practical approach:
- Understanding the challenge: We learned how each store handled its product data and why sharing it across stores was difficult.
- Working closely with the client: We spoke with WeSports experts to understand their goals and rules, especially the need to keep product editing rights with the original store.
- Building a custom solution: We developed the Product Data Consolidator, a tool that gathers product data from all stores, cleans it up, and shares it back in a clear, consistent format.
- Designing for scale: The system was built to handle over a million products quickly and reliably.
- Maintaining control: We ensured each store could keep control over its products, even while others could list and sell them.
- Providing ongoing support: After launch, we stayed involved to keep everything running smoothly and help WeSports boost cross-store sales.
Solution Overview
To solve WeSports Group’s data-sharing problem, we built a custom tool called the Product Data Consolidator. It acts like a smart hub that collects, cleans, and shares product data across all their stores.
What the Product Data Consolidator Does:
- Brings all catalogs together: Each store sends its product list to the Product Data Consolidator.
- Finds and unifies duplicates: If different stores sell the same product, the system combines them into a single, clean master version.
- Keeps track of ownership: Only the original store can edit the main product information. Other stores can see and sell it, but can’t change it.
- Handles product variations: Color, size, and style differences from different stores are all merged into one accurate listing.
- Makes sharing easy: Any store can request a product feed from another store and receive a ready-to-use file or get it through an API.
- Works across channels: It connects with stores using different methods like files, APIs, or secure file transfers (SFTP).
How the Product Data Consolidator Works:
- Stores upload their product data to the Product Data Consolidator.
- The system scans and compares the data, identifying which products are the same and which store originally created each one.
- It creates a single source of truth for each product and stores everything in one central place.
- Stores can request shared catalogs from other brands, filtered by category or brand.
- The system delivers a clean file or API output, ready for import with no extra work.
Detailed Execution Timeline
We built the Product Data Consolidator for WeSports Group in about 480 hours over 3 months. Here’s how we structured the work:
- Planning & Architecture (120 hours)
- Core Development (220 hours)
- Testing, Integration & Support (140 hours)
Result and Impact
Qualitative results:
- Smooth data exchange: The Product Data Consolidator enabled seamless product sharing across 41 webshops without disrupting sales.
- Consistent product information: The system unified over 1 million product records, reducing duplicates and inconsistencies across shops.
- Stronger collaboration: Stores can now sell each other’s products while keeping control over their own catalogs, avoiding internal competition.
- Clear product ownership: Only the original store can edit its product data, protecting catalog integrity and preventing accidental overwrites.
- Ready for growth: The flexible architecture supports multiple data sources, formats, and integrations, making it easy to scale as WeSports adds new shops.
Key Takeaways and Lessons Learnt
Success factors:
- Strong understanding of ecommerce challenges: Our team quickly grasped the issues caused by disconnected product data across multiple webshops.
- Clear ownership rules: We built a system that respects product ownership, which helped avoid conflicts and data overwrites between stores.
- Close collaboration with WeSports: Regular communication with their team helped us align technical decisions with business goals.
- Flexible and scalable architecture: The Product Data Consolidator was designed to support millions of products and different integration methods from files to APIs.
Challenges overcome:
- Disconnected systems: Each store used a different format for product data, and there was no way to sync them. We built one central system that can read and combine all these formats.
- Duplicate and inconsistent products: The same product showed up differently in different stores. Our system cleans up the data and combines duplicates into one clear version.
- Ownership conflicts: Any store could edit any product, which was confusing. We added rules so that only the original store can update its products.
- Different ways of sharing data: Stores used files, APIs, and SFTP to share product info. We made sure our system works with all of them.
