Media Markt and Saturn integrate ICEcat in their Product Information System

Media Markt and Saturn integrate ICEcat in their Product Information System

Utrecht (NL) /Ingolstadt (DE), December 18, 2009: The Media-Saturn Group will integrate the product content of ICEcat, an independent worldwide publisher of product catalogs in its Product Information Management (PIM) system.

By connecting ICEcat to the PIM system the Media-Saturn Group will automatically have access to the 700,000 product data-sheets for their cross-medial communication, e.g. web-shops, of more than 4000 brands that are currently actively supported by ICEcat. Further, ICEcat will take care of the complete coverage of selected IT, Consumer Electronics and Telecom categories. ICEcat provides an open system for Media-Saturn’s suppliers to add their product. This creates opportunities for the suppliers in investing in the quality of their product content to provide the best possible information to Media Markt’s and Saturn’s customers.

ICEcat is today already sponsored by more than 200 major brands (see the list of Open ICEcat sponsors: http://www.openicecat.com/en/menu/partners/index.htm). Co-operating with ICEcat reduces the ecommerce costs for the channel, especially necessary in the current time of economical recovery, and enables the channel to better inform customers about products and compatible options. In a joint effort with the Media-Saturn Group, key manufacturers that are not yet involved in the quality process of Open ICEcat are approached to join. Martijn Hoogeveen, CEO of ICEcat adds: "Open ICEcat has become a channel standard, and most manufacturers understand quickly the benefits for their channel partners in improving content quality, reducing transaction costs, and increasing the online visibility of its products to generate more sales. For Media Markt and Saturn this means to strengthen their service orientation for their customers."

About Media Saturn Holding
With a net revenue of 19 billion euros and a headcount of more than 60.000 in 2008, Media Markt and Saturn are Germany and Europe’s Number One consumer electronics retailers. The success enjoyed by the two retail brands, which are housed under the roof of Media-Saturn-Holding GmbH, is based on a unique selection of lowpriced brand-name products, competent staff, excellent service, a distinctive advertising presence and a decentralized organizational structure. Each general manager is a shareholder in his own store and is thus responsible for the products offered, as well as for pricing, personnel and marketing. The Media Markt and Saturn brands are managed independently of one another and are competing retail brands.
The Media-Saturn Corporate Group, in which METRO AG has a majority shareholding, currently has over 800 stores in 16 European countries.

Positive sentiment turns into old-fashioned end-of-year rally

Good news is that the AEX (NL stock market) reached its highest point of this year (328,61), yesterday. Finally, the financial heavy weight ING has recapitalized itself by a successful claim emission of 7.5 billion euro. Thanks to this, ING is able to repay 5 billion eur of its government bailout, earlier this year.

The positive sentiment is based on the market's impression that this is the last major step towards full recovery of the financial sector in NL, while similar steps are taken elsewhere in the world, and the general economy's accelerating recovery.
A perfect based for an old-fashioned end-of-year stock market rally.

Open source PDM in the making

The ICEcat editor backoffice as a Product Data Management (PDM) system... that's a new challenge that we are pursuing. It is stress-tested by our own internal large-scale PDM activity in the worldwide IT, CE, Telecom and Stationary sectors. It can handle millions of product entries, and 10s of simultaneous editors. It is able to import data (xml) from multiple sources, and export in a standardized multilingual xml format.

We regularly get requests for help with setting up a PDM, and have finalized a few external projects. So, it is clear that there is demand.

As we are dedicated to the Open Source philosophy, we will publish our PDM under the GNU GPL open source license.

What are the steps to take?
1) Solving a few minor user interface (layout) issues
2) Copy the latest version of our PDM and cleanup the database
3) Zip it and publish it on sourceforge.com

We expect to be ready to publish in January 2010.