Fashion company Lindex uses FotoWare to streamline their publication process, meeting market demand

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Fashion company Lindex uses FotoWare to streamline their publication process, meeting market demand.

Lindex, one of Europe’s leading fashion companies, has remained ahead of the recent surge in online retail, reporting stable full year results for 20201, thanks in part to the digital-first fashion brand recognising the importance of digital asset management in ensuring smooth communication across different software, increasing speed to market and ensuring a seamless online experience, with easily accessible and eye-catching imagery.

With around 4,000 employees, about 460 physical stores and a presence in 18 countries, Lindex has achieved global expansion in a progressively digital world.  

With imagery critical in the fashion sector, the retailer uses FotoWare’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution, integrated with its product information management (PIM), content management system (CMS), and production software.  

FotoWare’s DAM works with Lindex’s internal IT systems and infrastructure to enable files and corresponding file information to move seamlessly from one program to another. This secures the quality of the files but also streamlines efficiency when working with images, as whenever images are moved into the DAM, all other information for those assets, including metadata and tags, is also automatically retrieved, which saves time and ensures consistent naming of files across all platforms for Lindex’s global team. 

The fashion company uses FotoWare’s DAM to manage its vast number of images, enabling Lindex to automate several processes, and secure control of thousands of media files. As an essential part of Lindex's tech ecosystem, FotoWare’s DAM solution works alongside other tools to provide a seamless digital experience for all users.  Enabling them to automatically publish images once they are approved and revoking the permissions when the date for usage has passed. 

Josephine Cederborg Wennberg, Tech Business Analyst at Lindex, explained that: “Enabling integrations ensures speed-to-market, and it also ensures the data quality. It would be hopeless to do this manually, it would take so much time and would be so distressing. So, it's a must for us to have these processes automated."  

Lindex has recently increased the value of their digital ecosystem even further by setting up another archive in their DAM, this one dedicated to keeping track of their influencer images. This way, they can keep full control of all image-rights related to influencer marketing. 

The time saving and company-wide consistency benefits of using FotoWare for DAM is mirrored in Lindex also having integrated its use of the FotoWare solution with FotoStation, an image management tool that offers advanced metadata functionalities and can be used for post-photography work, such as image selection and comparison, and light photo editing.  

FotoStation allows users to view and compare images in great detail, which is key when working with pack shots, or images that show garments in greater detail. Getting assets such as pack shots moved from the photographer’s studio to Lindex’s website used to be a complex process too, due to the steps involved in ensuring the images were kept organised.  

But, using FotoWare’s DAM solution and FotoStation, all images uploaded to the production software are tagged with important information, such as which style it belongs to and its colour amongst other details. By implementing the FotoWare DAM solution and integrating that with its PIM, CMS and production software systems, the entire process has been automated, saving Lindex hours of manual work.  

All users have complete knowledge about each and every asset, including information about when the garment will arrive at the distribution center, what other colors are available for this particular garment, what other garments match its style, and so on.  

Lindex uses FotoWare’s DAM to ensure brand consistency and efficient collaboration across the entire company, as all images are routed into an archive where everyone in the organisation can find them with all the relevant information attached to them, for immediate use. By administering user groups in the DAM, Lindex enables different stakeholders to access the right files at the right time. For example, all the physical stores have access to a central archive in FotoWare where they can retrieve approved commercial images for their own purposes, they also have a shared archive where they can share inspiration and store photographs. 

Additionally, Lindex is cooperating with influencers and has implemented a scalable archive to collect all influencer images. This way, they are able to keep track of image rights and imageinformation related to these assets as well. 

Josephine Cederborg Wennberg, Tech Business Analyst at Lindex, continued: "When you upload an influencer marketing image, it's mandatory to add the usage, which is very important to maintain quality in our process with the influencer. That way, we can automate the process and we can also remove an asset which we no longer have any rights to use. From a technical perspective, working with the processes and the integration and all the data, flowing from one system to another, where [FotoWare] is the center, it works very well I think." 

FotoWare’s Product Director, Janniche Moe, concludes: “For retailers, speed-to-market is absolutely crucial to success, but so too is having a digital presence that can easily be accessed and used by customers across multiple channels, without images lagging, or bad quality products shots. Our FotoWare DAM is something that every retailer can use to remain successful. The FotoWare solutions allow retailers, and other companies, to easily automate processes, ensure internal and external collaboration, increase speed-to-market, and bring about full control of digital assets across the entire business.”