Decathlon uses Wedia to deliver 15 billion assets in 60 different countries

Decathlon’s challenges and needs

Decathlon has approximately 1,700 stores and 93,000 employees across more than 60 countries, and creates content by following a “7-image buying decision guide” – the idea being that each product posted online requires seven different visuals to support any purchasing decision by a customer. 

In a period of exceptional growth, this northern French brand opened 84 new stores worldwide in 2020, and set up in three new countries: Ireland, Latvia and Kazakhstan. With a presence in multiple markets, Decathlon designs and sells products that reach more than 400 million sports users around the world. What’s more, the company generates nearly 20% of its total revenues through digital sales. 

A few years ago, Decathlon was looking for a platform capable of being integrated into a global information system and of interfacing with an ERP, a marketing PIM and more than thirty websites using various content management systems, including e-commerce sites. 

The Wedia solution

Decathlon needed a Digital Asset Management solution to meet all of its requirements and be able to supply its e-commerce sites. 

To meet Decathlon’s challenges, Wedia implemented a DAM solution now used by more than 67,000 people, both internal and external to the company and spread across all the branches of the group. The DAM tool has become the “Single Source Of Truth” for Decathlon employees, a reliable and unique database for the company’s 73 e-commerce sites distributing all digital content (photos, videos, 360°, etc.).

Previously, Decathlon’s teams operated in two stages: first, extraction of the product tree from the PIM (Product Information Management); then, importing this into ‘PixL’, the name given to their enterprise DAM (Digital Asset Management) platform. With this process, it was up to the user to fetch metadata from this tree structure to enrich the documentation of their media. Tedious and time-consuming. We therefore focused on creating a much smoother synchronisation between the PIM and DAM by using APIs. Now, the user just has to enter the code for the product model to automatically upload about fifteen metadata. The user then simply has to validate these suggestions. 

Decathlon very quickly noticed huge gains in terms of team productivity, metadata quality and a resulting adoption of PixL.

With Wedia and its Digital Asset Management solution, Decathlon can now take advantage of a single platform with simplified and standardised distribution of content across all communication channels and all geographic areas of the brand. 

In addition, Wedia allows PixL to connect to more than 30 different applications, thereby significantly accelerating the working processes of Decathlon’s teams. 

Take a look at our interview with Maxence Malak, former DAM project manager at Decathlon, who details the beginning of the collaboration between Wedia and the sporting goods company.

The benefits of the Wedia DAM

Thanks to the implementation of the Wedia Digital Asset Management solution, Decathlon now benefits from: 

• A single media center: Decathlon’s media library offers a Single Source of Truth for all the brand’s websites, with more than 20,000 pieces of new content uploaded every day.

• Simplified and standardised distribution: the solution’s 67,000 users can now easily manage and distribute more than 8.5 million media files around the world.

• A better user experience: Distribution of content is handled by a Content Delivery Network (CDN) built into the solution, while video publishing and adaptive distribution are supported by a cloud module.

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Complex times call for smart tools to meet new marketing challenges and ways of working. Wedia’s solutions include various features to help global players achieve their business objectives. 

Wedia provides a SaaS solution for both Digital Asset Management and Digital Experience Management. Our solutions focus on omni-channel media management and distribution, so businesses can deliver an enhanced and personalised experience to their customers across all communication channels.