Telescope has been Branded Garden Products' trusted marketing and print partner for nearly three decades, now using PIM and DAM to keep its catalogues accurate and its team efficient.
INTRODUCTION
Some supplier relationships last a year or two. A rare few last a career. Telescope has worked with Branded Garden Products (BGP), the group behind household gardening names Suttons, Thompson & Morgan and Dobies, for close to 30 years, through changes of ownership, changes of leadership and every shift the industry has thrown at it.
A relationship of that length is built on a simple thing: a client who can pick up the phone, describe a requirement, and know that it will just be handled and well, every time. For BGP, Telescope has become the partner of choice for the work that matters, and, increasingly, the also people keeping their product information accurate and their team free to do more.
Nearly 30 years. Three household brands. One trusted partner.
A RELATIONSHIP MEASURED IN DECADES
Telescope’s connection with BGP stretches back nearly three decades, and it has held firm through four different companies and several generations of the client’s own leadership. People who joined BGP early in their career have risen to run it, and Telescope has been alongside them the whole way.
A relationship like that is built on service and trust rather than any single contract. BGP knows the work will be right and knows the people doing it understand the business inside out. For a household-name group operating across multiple brands, that continuity counts for a great deal.
THE PARTNER OF CHOICE, ACROSS THE BOARD
Over the years, Telescope has produced a huge spread of work for BGP: catalogues, direct mail, point of sale, leaflets, seed packets and more. Direct mail has long been the mainstay, and the scale of it is considerable, having run to around six million individual mailing pieces a year across the group, drawing on some 4,000 product lines and a library of around 57,000 product images. Managing detail at that volume, accurately and on brand, is exactly the kind of work Telescope has built its reputation on.
BGP treats Telescope as the partner it turns to across its marketing and print, the first call when something needs producing, solving or improving. That is a position a supplier earns only by being reliable, capable and genuinely easy to work with, year after year.
THE SECRET TO A LONG RELATIONSHIP: EVOLUTION AND HONESTY – WITH PIM AND DAM
A relationship this long only endures if it keeps moving forward, and this is where Telescope’s product information management and digital asset management, our PIM and DAM, has made the real difference in recent years.
For a group producing detailed catalogues across several brands, keeping product data accurate is a significant undertaking. Prices, specifications, descriptions and imagery all have to be 100 per cent accurate, every time, across thousands of lines. Telescope’s PIM and DAM give BGP a single source of truth for all of it, where information is entered once and linked everywhere it is needed, so a change made in one place flows through automatically.
BGP feels the benefit in two clear ways. Errors fall away, because there is a single point of entry rather than the same detail being keyed in by hand again and again, and getting product information right first time protects both the bottom line and the brand, since a wrong price or specification is costly to unpick and frustrating for customers
The team’s time is freed up too, as the system takes the manual grind out of catalogue production, so the people who once spent hours checking and re-checking data can put that time into more valuable work.
The preparation time has nearly halved as PIM makes this stage so much more efficient rather than trying to find products and information from other files, also speeds up the end process when finalised info and prices are added at the end of the design process, which reduces potential errors. All of this then allows team more time to design the pages needed.
WHAT IT DELIVERS FOR BGP
A partner that knows the business as well as the business knows itself, after nearly three decades together. One trusted point of contact across catalogues, direct mail, point of sale and more. And a modern product information system that keeps every catalogue accurate, cuts errors and frees the team to focus on what matters. It is a relationship that has stayed valuable precisely because it has never stood still.
IN THEIR WORDS
"Telescope has been our partner for longer than most of us can remember, and they know our business inside out. What has really made the difference lately is the product information system they put in place. Everything is entered once and stays consistent across every catalogue, which has taken out so much of the manual checking and the errors that used to come with it. I honestly can't imagine going back to the old way of doing things."
Chloe Farmer, design & print manager, Branded Garden Products
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT FOR CATALOGUE PRODUCERS
What does a PIM and DAM system do for a catalogue business?
What does a PIM and DAM system do for a catalogue business?
It holds all product data and imagery in one place, a single source of truth, so information is entered once and used everywhere. For BGP, that means prices, specifications and images stay consistent across thousands of lines and multiple brands, with far less manual work.
How does it reduce errors?
Because there is a single point of entry, the same detail is not keyed in by hand over and over. Enter it once and it links through to everywhere it is needed, so there is far less chance of a wrong price or specification slipping into a catalogue.
Can it work across several brands at once?
Yes. BGP produces catalogues across its brands, and the system manages them all from the same source, keeping everything consistent while letting each brand keep its own identity.