runstyle

A l most two years ago, a group of running specialty industry leaders approached the Running Industry Association (RIA) to explore a solution to a growing problem in the industry: securing and formatting consistent brand product data for retailers to use in third-party platforms necessary for store operations. Data management is time consuming and costly for retailers, and distributing data store by store is not efficient for brands. "We saw the opportunity for something better, and felt that the RIA was the perfect organization to provide democratized access for all," said RIA Executive Director Terry Schalow. Since research showed that the average retailer spends as much as $30,000 annually to secure and manage brand product data, the need for a universally accessible tool became readily apparent. Thus, the RIA Product Data Collaborative, or PDC, began to take shape. "While the project represents a significant investment of both time and financial resources, the benefits to our members will easily outweigh the costs," Schalow explained. "In short, PDC will help all levels of the industry save a boatload of time and money!" Additional benefits of the PDC will include a significant reduction in data corruption due to manual management. And perhaps even better, when everyone is accessing the same clean product data, the new database will foster dramatically improved transactional efficiencies across third party platforms. A PRODUCT DATA MANAGEMENT REVOLUTION FOR RUN SPECIALTY STORES RIA's Product Data Collaborative will maximize sales efficiency at running stores nationwide. SPECIAL REPORT RIA Executive Director Terry Schalow. runningindustry.org/pdc

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