LeMieux, the premium equestrian brand, has improved product experiences through the creation of a single source of data in partnership with Akeneo, the Product Experience (PX) company and global leader in Product Information Management (PIM).
Founded in 2006, LeMieux is a brand with equestrianism at its heart, selling products made for riders created by riders. LeMieux’s products are globally recognised for their quality, durability, technical performance, and design. Originally known for its saddle pads, the brand has since expanded its range into most areas of equestrian equipment, as well as premium rider wear and accessories, creating a signature LeMieux look and colour story. In addition to its direct-to-consumer (DTC) website, its products are sold by more than 500 online and brick-and-mortar outlets, including Selfridges and John Lewis, in more than 69 countries globally.
In 2022, LeMieux was ranked 66th in the Sunday Times 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies in the UK with sales totalling more than £35m in that year. Today the business employs more than 140 staff at its Hampshire Headquarters.
Historically, LeMieux had no single source of product data across its sales or marketing channels. Data sets were stored on spreadsheets that needed manual input at each stage of the product lifecycle by multiple teams in the business. This was impacting data quality and consistency of the product information available to internal teams, 3rd parties, and customers, resulting in a subpar product experience. Additionally, the process of enriching product data was operationally inefficient because of the manual processes of multiple teams checking and entering data.
As a fast-growing business, LeMieux understood the impact that data has on success and how it can act as the foundation for future growth. The equine product brand wanted to unify and enrich its product data into a single platform. They aimed to provide a foundation of accurate and up-to-date product information to improve the customer experience and make both its core range and seasonal collections more shoppable. The brand also wanted to ensure that the product experiences it delivered to its trade partners were not only consistent and information-rich but would also uphold the brand’s identity and values when merchandised on third-party retailers’ websites.
Having conducted a thorough review of the PIM market, LeMieux selected Akeneo because of the usability and accessible user interface of the solution, as well as Akeneo’s open-API infrastructure and MACH architecture. This composable configuration will allow LeMieux to effectively scale at pace, integrate Akeneo PIM within the tech stack with ease, and connect new technologies in the long term as the business evolves.
Within one month of going live, LeMieux has more than 4,500 products, which comprise over 13,000 SKUs categorised in Akeneo PIM. With each team feeding into the product journey, from product development to ecommerce and marketing, and contributing towards product data enrichment, accuracy and consistency of its product record has improved. LeMieux believes this will benefit the business by reducing returns and streamlining customer service enquiries. Additionally, the time to access and provide product information to trade partners has also significantly reduced.
Dan Mahoney, LeMieux managing director, commented: “As a brand, LeMieux is synonymous with quality and our partnership with Akeneo is central to ensuring the quality of not only our product data but also our shopper experiences, regardless of where our customers engage with our brand.”
James Barlow, Director UK&I at Akeneo, commented: “Product experience is the keystone for commerce and foundational for creating meaningful customer experiences that build long-term connections with shoppers to drive conversions and loyalty. We’re proud to have partnered with LeMieux to future-proof its product experience strategy for growth and further success.”
