Vaimo & Moomin Team Up to Embrace Unified Commerce

Since the 1940s, the Moomin characters have lept from the books and comic strips to capture the hearts of many. With their increased popularity, Moomin has become more than just a brand, but rather an empire with a theme park and a vast array of products and memorabilia adorning their lovable trolls.

The renowned Moomin brand has accelerated its global expansion since the early 2000s, with eCommerce serving as one of its major channels. For the last eight years, the official Moomin eCommerce store has run alongside their brick-and-mortar stores to provide a multichannel commerce experience. But with the increasing relevance of digital commerce and its interconnectivity with physical stores, Moomin has recently taken their customer experience a step further by merging their eCommerce and brick-and-mortar stores into a single unified experience.

This decision to unite digital and physical came from Moomin’s desire for a more in-depth, intuitive, and connected experience for Moomin fans and customers. Whether a customer goes to a Moomin pop-up store to make a purchase or browses their eCommerce website at 1:00 AM, Moomin wants to make the experience unified and seamless. In taking this step forward, Moomin needed to form new partnerships and adopt new technology to transform their IT architecture.

Let’s take a look at Moomin’s new partners and their new product information management (PIM), loyalty, and POS systems that are helping them to embrace unified commerce.

Vaimo Integrates Moomin’s PIM Solution

Moomin has partnered with Vaimo to integrate its PIM solution, Sitoo’s cloud-based checkout system, and Voyado as a CRM provider. All three systems integrate seamlessly to provide a unique customer experience for countless Moomin admirers.

Moomin also wanted to create a basic solution for the rapid and efficient expansion of its business into new sales and marketing channels globally. To move away from silo product management in multiple Shopify Plus and POS systems, they wanted a centralised solution for product information management. Vaimo brought in Akeneo PIM as a solution to this problem.

Marko Rytkönen, Country Manager of Vaimo Finland, states: “All of the product information is now managed in one centralised PIM system, from which the information can be published to all sales and marketing channels. The transition from silos and inefficient product data management to a enrich once, publish everywhere approach will help Moomin operate its product data management effectively, expand its business rapidly into new global sales and marketing channels, and increase sales.”

The Reasons Behind Moomin’s Move

This innovative step towards unified commerce is something further highlighted by Jonas Forth, Head of Digital, Moomin Character and Manager Director, All Things Commerce, “As a brand, it’s very important for us to manage our own retail business because it creates a physical place for fans to interact with the brand, and we want them to have a similar experience whether they shop online or in our official stores.”

Jonas then went on to state: “We create one entity that serves fans and customers as well as possible. Our old retail systems acted as silos for data and product delivery. With the new configuration, we bring everything together, so we have one unified feed that brings the data to all systems (Shopify, Bind and Voyado) and anywhere else we need it. This will help simplify work in stores and create a better experience for Moomin fans.”

Moomin chose the best systems with strong interfaces, plug-and-play features and easy scalability. Moomin wants to move to a hybrid pop-up and eCommerce model to support their existing physical stores, and they need solutions that grow with their business, are flexible, and quick and easy to implement.

The reason for the move to Vaimo, Sitoo, and Voyado was to take a step away from solutions that were inflexible and unable to scale with Moomin’s ambition. Jonas said, “In the past, we worked with simple and heavy systems that had weak interfaces and didn’t work well with each other. In addition, they were PC-based, did not provide transparency in operation, and had poor support. We now have solutions that are easy to install and use. They allow store managers and partners to walk into stores and connect with customers in different ways—and they are no longer connected to a cash register.”

The Collaborative Effort Behind Moomin’s Step Forward

To ensure their future success, Moomin also partnered with Sitoo and Voyado. When customers come to Moomin’s eCommerce store, Voyado provides the customer insight that will increase their loyalty to your brand.

Mattias Eriksson, VP of Strategic Accounts, Voyado, says: “We are proud to be accelerating the global journey of this fantastic brand. Who hasn’t grown up with this white troll? It is particularly exciting to harness the company’s huge potential by focusing on the customer path and making it personalised at all points of contact with the best infrastructure.”

Today’s shoppers expect online and in-store experiences to be the same. Moomin chose Sitoo for exactly this reason. The Sitoo cloud-native platform with its retail POS makes unified commerce easy. With real-time data across multiple channels, retailers can sell, fulfil, and handle returns from anywhere and everywhere. Sitoo Co-founder and CEO Jens Levin adds: “Moomin took on a very ambitious project, and their approach is definitely right. Storytelling is at the heart of their stores, where the fan experience is everything. By enhancing the unity of trading, they can now create the same experience for the customer at all points of contact. We are happy to be on this journey with them.”

How Vaimo Can Help With Your Product Information Needs

Having partnered with both inRiver and Akeneo, we can provide merchants with the best PIM solution depending on their needs, preferences and budget—whether it’s the open-source Akeneo platform or inRiver Marketing Cloud enterprise platform. And since we have in-house experience with various eCommerce platforms and other backend systems, we can also take on PIM projects with merchants with eCommerce platforms like Demandware, Shopify Plus, Oracle ATM, IBM Websphere, etc. We want to help merchants implement PIM solutions in a way that makes them a perfect fit for your eCommerce. To learn more about how Vaimo can streamline your product information, get in touch with our team today.