How Talkoot saves adidas $1M in production costs every year

$1M

savings

in production costs

99%

on-time

delivery rates

14%

faster

copy completion

26%

more 

efficient process

In 2016, adidas was seeing robust ecommerce growth in their two largest markets, North America and Europe. In other regions, online revenue was lagging due to an uneven patchwork of ecommerce experiences and product availability. Seeing the opportunity for global ecommerce expansion, adidas needed to consolidate and professionalize their ecommerce content production.

“Because of the pressing need for content, lots of brands are just going with sub-par content. But that can be worse than no content, bringing down your SEO score, lowering conversion and negatively affecting customer perceptions of your brand.”

—Brian Hennessy, CEO, Talkoot

The Challenge

Missing product descriptions meant lost revenue

Products missing copy couldn’t be sold. As a result, millions of dollars’ worth of product languished in distribution centers, unable to be listed online until it had a product description.

Bad copy is worse
than no copy

adidas knew they needed to improve the consumer experience through more complete, consumer-centric product descriptions, but doing so required more than just hiring additional writers—it required a rethinking of entire processes and systems.

Working in
spreadsheets didn’t
work

Prior to Talkoot, adidas used a combination of Excel and cloud storage solutions to share information with their writing agency. No one had a way of seeing which products had descriptions and which didn’t. The lack of visibility was a constant strain and source of duplicate conversations, missed errors and general confusion. Even worse, it led to people rewriting descriptions that already existed, simply because they couldn’t find them. In addition to wasting resources, each rewrite introduced new inconsistencies and errors.

“We simply couldn’t produce the volume, speed and quality of product content our business demands without Talkoot.”

—Marcus Linek, Sr Dir Brand Assets Creation, adidas

The Solution

Increased visibility
improved creativity
and quality of content

Today, 200+ adidas product managers log into Talkoot every season to work directly with their agency writers, editors and researchers. This access and visibility keeps everyone on track and creates an environment for cross-pollination of ideas and concepts. The result is that the quality of product copy has improved dramatically.

With a 215% increase in volume, copy was completed 14% faster, resulting in an overall process that was 26% more efficient.

Reusing and
repurposing existing content saved time
and money

adidas saved $1M a year by using UK copy as a base and localizing it for US. On-time copy deliveries went from 80% to 99%.

Now instead of rewriting copy that already exists because they can’t access it, teams can automatically carry over previously approved copy and refresh it for new seasons or markets. This keeps language and details consistent, while dramatically cutting down production time.

Better product copy increased sales

In 2014, the adidas Group had online sales of $466M. After implementing Talkoot in 2016, sales were more than $1B. Today, in 2022, online sales have topped $4.8B and are still rising.

There are many factors to adidas’s astounding rise over the past few years, but the company’s overall strategy of brand consistency required strong processes and strong systems. Because of Talkoot, adidas now produces high-converting product descriptions for 31 markets globally — 16 more than they’d originally targeted to produce using Talkoot.

​Learn how Talkoot can help your business. Schedule time with us.

Talkoot pays for itself many times over

OUR CUSTOMERS EXPERIENCE:

4x greater efficiency
40%+ savings on content production
3x reduction in errors
10%+ conversion rate increases
99% on-time copy deliveries
A happy team & more loyal customers

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