Selling Reebok products across South America with Dash

Challenge: FashionFitness are the official distributor of Reebok in Latin America. Their previous file sharing system made it difficult to work with retail partners when promoting Reebok’s iconic sportswear across the continent. 

Solution: Dash means the FashionFitness team cut creative requests from partners by 80% each month. Now, partners can find the visuals they need themselves to launch Reebok campaigns across the continent. 💫

About FashionFitness

FashionFitness are the distributor of iconic sportswear brand Reebok in Latin America. From their HQ in Panama City, they market, distribute and sell Reebok products across almost all of the continent.

To do this, they work with a network of retail partners, wholesalers and distributors. As Miguel León Vigo, Regional Marketing Manager for Reebok, explains:

“We have direct operations in all the countries in Latin America, except Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. 

It’s my job to make sure our wholesalers have access to the content they need. I’ll get Rebook visuals from our agency, adapt these for our markets, and then share with our wholesalers.”

Managing these relationships across the continent is a key part in FashionFitness's success. Their retail partners need product shots and campaign graphics in order to sell Reebok products. Therefore, the systems they use to share visuals with their resellers is a critical part of that.

But the previous set-up they had was proving cumbersome and time-consuming.

The challenge 

Before opting for Dash, FashionFitness had to navigate different shared drives to collect content, and then share it with their partners. 

They’d first be sent creative from an agency via Aprimo, an enterprise digital asset management (DAM) system. Miguel would download the content, adapt it, then duplicate the same content across OneDrive and Google Drive (depending on what their resellers preferred) where it could then be downloaded for use. It meant that creative was scattered across three different systems, content was getting replicated, and it was difficult to find anything.

In Miguel’s words:

“Our previous system was not easy to use or search. We used to have folders named by season, and then within each folder would be more subfolders according to product SKUs. And then in each of those folders, we’d have 10 different pictures. It was very hard to search for content there.”

This set-up made it difficult for retail partners to find the creative they needed. This in turn meant Miguel’s team had to trawl through three different systems to find the specific file that their partner needed. 

In short, it wasn’t working the way the company wanted it to. It was time for a change.

Choosing between Bynder or Dash

When FashionFitness stopped working with their old agency, Miguel thought it was the perfect time to overhaul their visual content management system. 

During his research he came across Bynder, a digital asset management (DAM) system geared towards enterprises. 

And as Miguel discovered, enterprise DAMs come with enterprise price tags:

“Bynder isn’t bad - it's a platform that has good features we’d find helpful. But it was very expensive! We needed to store less than one terabyte and the cost that came back was around $20,000 per year.”

The Bynder team were also slow in getting back to him, which can be frustrating when you want to get going with a new system. 

“They didn't respond quickly. I think their response to our questions came two weeks later.” 

So what made Miguel settle on Dash?

“I was searching for the best digital asset management tools and came across Dash. I saw the other customers using Dash globally. Honestly it was cool to have that confidence to use a platform that already other similar brands were using.”

When Miguel started a free trial, he found the system simple to use and easy to get going with:

“I tested the free trial, and liked using it. We uploaded a lot of content and found it to be very easy to use and find assets. Plus, it’s affordable!”

And with that, Miguel made the decision to go with Dash!

The solution 

So what's been the impact since Miguel picked Dash over the competition?

Visual content can be found easily

From campaign photography to product shots, FashionFitness keep all of the content their partners need in Dash.

“Where we used to keep everything in Aprimo, we now have all the detailed imagery that we need in Dash instead. It's like using Instagram for digital managers, it's very easy to use!”

Miguel uses a mix of folders and custom fields to organise visuals in a way that’s easy for everyone else to find. Folders are used to separate the types of visual assets into their three broad categories - ‘product images’ for ecommerce stores, ‘campaign’ for seasonal campaigns, and then ‘brand’ for Reebok’s guidelines. 

Then they use custom fields to filter by product type, model gender, season, sport category and more. In Miguel’s woods:

“For product imagery, we use tags in, for example, a specific silhouette of shoe or sneaker. That means when you search for the shoe name, you can find it easily.”

This makes it easy for retail partners across Latin America to log in, search for the visual they need, and download it themselves.

Reducing repetitive tasks by 80%

Talking of which: remember when we said Miguel’s team used to have to spend time finding content for their partners? Since they moved to Dash, that’s no longer a thing.

When creative was kept across different systems, it was hard for their partners to find anything. Miguel estimates his team used to get about 60 requests a month from different retail partners asking for content they couldn’t find.

“Now the content is in Dash, our partners don’t need to contact us much. It means we’ve had an 80% reduction in requests that were previously coming to me and my team. We used to get 1 or 2 a day, whereas now we’ll get 1 or 2 in a whole month!”

It’s meant the team at FashionFitness have managed to spend that time doing other useful tasks, rather than hunting for files.

Keeping control of what partners can access

FashionFitness works on a large scale. For starters, the retail network they manage spans almost the entirety of South and Central America. Within their network, they have distinct categories of partners all needing different types of creative. We’re talking:

• Ecommerce stores
• Commercial distributors
• Reebok stores in Ecuador and Venezuela
• Brick and mortar stores which stock multiple brands, of which Reebok is one
• Third-party distributors in countries like Mexico

It’s important for Miguel and his team to control what each can access. This means they don’t swamp their partner with content they don’t need, and they can also keep tabs on who can download what.

Trying to do that using Google Drive and Dropbox is tricky, to say the least. It’s one of the key reasons FashionFitness went with Dash.

Now, Miguel’s using a mix of portals and collections to make sure everyone has the appropriate access rights.

“Dash gives us a lot of efficiency in time, but also a lot more control over what we’re sharing. Dash has given me a level of control that Google Drive never did, and I’m also able to see metrics on how content is being used.”

How Dash helps FashionFitness achieve their goals

With satisfied retail partners and repetitive requests reduced by 80%, Miguel’s happy he made the decision to pick Dash.

The company is growing, and they’re about to start exclusive distribution rights for another major sportswear brand. Dash will be key in helping them continue with their success. 

In Miguel’s words:

“Dash is a key platform for us. I don't see a future where we won’t be without Dash. It solves all of the problems I had with creative asset management.