Special Feature
Online listings at the click of a button with With the ongoing importance of eCommerce, Sam Giltrow speaks to René Rozendal, director of Toys & Entertainment at Icecat, about how retailers and brands can benefit from working with the company.
T
he pandemic undoubtedly changed the way people shopped, as retailers were forced to close their doors and an increasing number of purchases were made online. Many smaller retailers reorganized to quickly set up web shops to ensure that customers could still place orders. The toy
industry was no exception, with many toy shops updating their business models to enable them to showcase their products virtually. Everyone was challenged with how best to convey toys and games when they couldn’t be seen in the flesh. Icecat, founded in 1999, is an independent global syndicator of eCommerce product content. It provides a digital catalogue on which brands can share product content. This can include specifications, marketing text, images and videos related to their products. Retailers can easily connect to the Icecat catalogue and automatically download the available brand product content to their web shops. The company’s director of Toys and Entertainment, René Rozendal, says the service has proved invaluable for brands and retailers. “Icecat is a digital product catalogue,” he explains. “Brands can automate their product listings for retailers. In addition, retailers using Icecat can automate the import of standardised product content to enrich their product pages - and reduce their workload. For brands, it replaces Excel listing templates, reduces manual work due to the automation and makes the time-to-market shorter. As a result of this simplification, the adoption of the content is higher.” “The digital shopping experience is key as most people first go online before buying a product,” says René. “Icecat supports a wide variety of digital assets to inform the online shopper. For example, we have launched Enhanced Product Stories; a product page with a custom layout of multimedia and messaging assets, which gives the best product experience to an online shopper. We recently proved to Disney that Enhanced Product Stories boosts the online conversion rate by +11%. The Icecat catalogue hosts, in total, 26,000+ brands and thousands of users that make use of the product content. The Icecat user network consists of a wide range of outlets, from independent stores to major retailers like Amazon. The content in the catalogue is translated and made available in over 60 different languages. When a brand sponsors the product content in Icecat, it is freely available for the users.
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Many major toy brands already work with Icecat, such as Lego, Hasbro, Mattel, Smart Games and Spin Master. Retailers’ web shops are hosted on different eCommerce platforms, but René explains that Icecat has various plug-ins available to retrieve content from the Icecat catalogue which can be used with a host of common platforms such as Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce and Pimcore. Icecat can also offer a live streaming solution, which means retailers are able to integrate the content, hosted by Icecat, on their product pages. Sustainability is a topic of growing importance, so the Icecat catalogue provides information on each listing’s sustainable criteria and invites brands to share more information on the sustainability of their products. Icecat says it is proud to be the leading service provider in Europe, with the biggest market share, but wants to expand further and connect all toy brands and retailers to bring greater efficiency to the online toy industry. René tells us that Lego recently joined the Icecat network in the UK, and Hasbro, Mattel and Lego have signed up in the Nordics. “We have proven to these brands that the adoption of Icecat product content is low barrier,” explains René. “A country manager for each territory supports brands and retailers locally. Overall, we are an all-in-one platform for content and syndication,” he concludes. Icecat will be present at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in February 2023 to visit its partners and explore the opportunities to exhibit as a content service provider. Companies interested in working with the Icecat team can find out more on the company website: www.icecat.com, where they can also register as a user for free.
