Saddleback: Scaling E-commerce Without Drowning in Data

🔍 The Problem

Saddleback is a specialist in elite performance cycling — high-end bikes, components, and gear. They were growing fast, but their product data management wasn't keeping up.

The symptoms were familiar:

🗺️ Data everywhere, truth nowhere. Product information scattered across systems with no single authoritative source.

🛒 Multiple Shopify stores, manual updates. B2C site, B2B site, different languages, different currencies. Every product change meant updating multiple places manually.

📊 Volume overwhelming the team. Cycling products are specification-heavy. Thousands of SKUs, each with dozens of attributes. The data load was becoming unmanageable.

Anne-Laure Vercollier, eCommerce Data Product Administrator at Saddleback, put it simply:

"Before working with OneTimePIM, the sheer amount of data we dealt with on a daily basis became so large it was extremely difficult to handle."

They needed a single source of truth — and a way to push that truth to their sales channels without manual re-entry.

🛠️ What We Did

✓ Custom attribute structure. Cycling products have specific data requirements — frame sizes, groupset compatibility, weight ratings, discipline categories. We built an attribute and family system tailored to how Saddleback actually categorises their products.

✓ Shopify integration. Connected OneTimePIM directly to their Shopify stores. Product updates, new additions, price changes — all flow through automatically.

✓ ERP connection. Their ERP holds inventory and pricing. We established data flow between systems so the PIM reflects real stock and commercial data.

✓ Multi-channel configuration. Different sites need different views of the same products — different languages, currencies, and sometimes different product selections. We set up channels to manage this from one central point.

Anne-Laure on the implementation:

"It's never felt as though it was a one-size-fits-all approach. The team customised a service to fit our business model, which has been a key aspect of why the relationship has been so successful."

📈 The Results

🎯 Single source of truth. All product data managed in one place. No more conflicting information across systems.

➕ Fast product additions. New products go live on B2C and B2B Shopify sites without manual duplication. What used to take hours now takes minutes.

🌐 Multi-channel under control. Languages, currencies, product selections — all managed through OneTimePIM's channels feature rather than maintaining separate data sets.

🔧 Metafield editing at scale. Shopify metafields are notoriously painful to edit in bulk. Saddleback now manages metafields for thousands of SKUs directly from the PIM — a task that was previously impractical.

💬 What's Next

Saddleback isn't standing still. Anne-Laure on their plans:

"At Saddleback, we have ambitious plans to become one of the top players in elite performance cycling. OneTimePIM's software will be instrumental in helping us to achieve this goal."

The foundation is in place. As they add products, enter new markets, and launch new channels, the data infrastructure scales with them.

🔁 The Pattern

Saddleback's situation is common in specialist retail:

• Complex products with deep technical specifications
• Multiple sales channels (B2B, B2C, marketplaces)
• High SKU counts with frequent additions
• Shopify as the commerce platform, but Shopify's native data tools not built for this scale

The answer is usually the same: centralise the data, connect the channels, stop doing manually what software should handle.

Running into similar challenges? Book a demo — we'll tell you honestly whether OneTimePIM fits your situation.