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How Rab and Lowe Alpine improved their retail partner experience using Canto

Key summary

    • Equip now has a central library for all product imagery, including lifestyle and studio images, brand logos, training tools and product text.
    • It has retail partners in over 40 countries, so there are countless people who need to download this content.
    • Equip makes a positive impression on retail partners by establishing an accessible space for them to easily find and download content.

Equip Outdoor Technologies is the driving force behind brands Rab and Lowe Alpine. The company, headquartered in Derbyshire, designs and manufactures quality clothing and equipment for outdoor enthusiasts. Their customers include rock climbers, skiers, mountain bikers, hikers and alpinists.

Goal: Simplicity and centrality for external partners

 

As a clothing and equipment manufacturer, Equip relies heavily on digital content to market its products and strengthen relationships with retail partners. It’s critical for the marketing team to ensure that their retail partners get the assets they need on time.

The team used to store digital assets on DVDs, which they would then send to their partners in the mail. This was too slow-moving for the fast-paced industry, so the team established a digital storage solution. They began using a product content network, but soon realised that it wasn’t as convenient as they expected.

Georgina Reed, Equip’s graphic designer who oversees the brands’ product images, as well as design for marketing and commercial projects, says, “It just wasn’t working for us. We were wasting a lot of time writing emails to people or talking to them on the phone explaining how to use it.”

Equip decided they needed a platform that enhanced their partners’ experiences with the Rab and Lowe Alpine brands. They began searching for an easy-to-use solution that worked for them, not against them. An easy-to-use platform that would make their lives easier.

Enter Canto: A solution everyone feels confident using

 

Equip now uses Canto as a central library for all product imagery, including lifestyle and studio images, brand logos, training tools and product text.

After photographers get the product shots they need, two internal admins, one for Rab and one for Lowe Alpine, upload the content to Canto. Equip has retail partners in over 40 countries, so there are countless people who need to download this content. Equip’s partners search Canto for assets to populate their own websites, design print-based catalogues and create shop displays.

Content delivery via Portals

 

The team adds new content to portals each season. They currently use one portal for each brand, Rab and Lowe Alpine. Canto portals allow them to not just separate seasonal and brand assets, but also to separate their internal content from their external content.

Georgina says, “When we set up new users we only give them access to the portals, so that anything in the main library can only be seen by the people we specifically give library access to, usually just our own staff members.”

The next step for the team with Canto is to set up an additional portal so they can make pre-season content available to specific retail partners who require information early.

Empowering internal and external stakeholders to self-serve

 

Equip chose Canto to ensure internal and external stakeholders can find, access and download digital assets with ease. With everything happening in one place, everybody is confident it’s the best place to find the images that they need.

What stands out the most for the team is the amount of time saved by utilising a system that’s quick and easy for everyone to use.

“The difference is the lack of emails or phone calls from our partners or employees struggling to use the system,” Georgina says. “The previous system was not very user-friendly and most days we had people asking how to login, how to find images or just not finding an image that we knew was there. Canto seems to work for all our partners. Everyone is able to use it with ease. It’s saving a huge amount of time not having to answer all those emails and questions.”

Results: Strengthening relationships with retailers

 

Canto helps Equip effectively disperse their Rab and Lowe Alpine product content by providing a central space and smooth search and download process. Their retail partners are finding it easy to use and that makes it easier to do business.

Equip’s marketing teams have also saved time by eliminating technical questions from partners. Georgina says, “Canto is saving us so much time, which in the end is saving us money because we’re not doing something that isn’t really the job we should be doing.”

To find out more about how Canto works with retailers and how you can take the same approach as Equip, click here.

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