Ian Brown
We invested in Bombiix because we recognised the strength of its PLM offer and the impending EU requirement for Digital Product Passports.
With decades of experience investing in SMEs – from starting at 3i, to opening the Bahrain Development Bank and now co-owning Anticus – I’ve seen the challenges businesses face and the opportunities that come with them. Our role is to be a supportive investor, guiding Lucy in growing Bombiix and in future fundraising.
Sue Page
With experience across manufacturing, financial services, SaaS, e-commerce, and retail, I help Bombiix navigate growth while keeping a close eye on cash flow, performance and strategic alignment.
From the first time I met Lucy, I knew I wanted to work with her – she’s a breath of fresh air and the passion that fills her is infectious. It’s a pleasure to complement her skills in delivering the vision of Bombiix.
Zowaid Rauf
I make sure our software meets your needs, spotting areas for improvement and helping your team streamline and grow.
Having worked in hospitality, manufacturing, supply chain and agriculture, I bring a wealth of experience when it comes in creating digital solutions that tackle real-world challenges.
Neil Weaver
I joined Bombiix after being a customer – it’s hugely refreshing to see a platform that focuses on the needs of product people. After managing many global teams across multiple industries, including pharmaceuticals, FMCG, toiletries and cosmetics, sporting goods and apparel and fashion, I can see real potential in Bombiix, and I’m excited to lead the business and achieve it.
Lucy Blackley
I created Bombiix because I was an exhausted, frustrated Head of Product who knew there had to be a better way to work
My experience is in garment technology, pattern cutting, product development and technical design and I understand the everyday struggles our customers face – the chaotic workflows, confusing email threads and out of date spreadsheets. So I created Bombiix to change all of that.
Why Bombiix?
The concept for Bombiix was born from one product developer’s frustrations with outdated legacy PLMs. So, when we say we get it, we really do. Whether you’re a growing start up or experienced enterprise, our team is with you every step of the way with personalised onboarding and ongoing support. My experience is in garment technology, pattern cutting, product development and technical design and I understand the everyday struggles our customers face – the chaotic workflows, confusing email threads and out of date spreadsheets. So I created Bombiix to change all of that.
Manage your entire product lifecycle, from initial concept and design through to development, manufacturing and bringing it to shelves.
Automate your Digital Product Passports in a way that’s affordable, scalable and removes the need for multiple complex systems.
Unify all your product information with an automated PIM that ensures consistency and accuracy while reducing workload and manual data entry.
Organise, store and access all your digital assets into a single, easy-to-use hub so you can effortlessly find, share and use content whenever you need to.
A PIM (Product Information Management) solution is a centralised software “hub” used by product, marketing, and e-commerce teams to collect, manage, and distribute all the data related to their products. It can be used to turn raw data into a compelling product story, and helps to create a Single Source of Truth, ensuring that everyone in the company is looking at the same, most up-to-date information.
As brands grow, their product data can get stuck in different spreadsheets, email threads, and various different departments. This leads to the data becoming more and more messy. By trying to manage thousands of SKUs using legacy systems such as email and spreadsheets, a business can end up with a product information chaos problem.
Product information chaos can easily lead to errors, delays and team frustration for a number of different reasons.
Multiple versions of the ‘truth’
Most legacy approaches have an issue where each department has its own ‘master’ file. This means that there can be multiple versions of a single piece of information that all need updating whenever a change occurs.
For example, if a product price changes it will need to be updated in the ‘master’ file of every department. This opens the door for a great deal of human error. If the price info is not shared with all of the required team members, it is highly possible that there will be multiple different prices, assigned to the single item, across the business. These multiple versions of the ‘truth’ can cause confusion, frustration and disagreement within the team. Resulting in wasted time and effort that could have been avoided.
Spreadsheet limited functionality
Spreadsheets are designed to deal with numbers and data. They are not able to deal with high resolution images or videos, and are incapable of processing complex product relationships that aren’t covered by built-in formulas.
For example, if a product has multiple colour options it will need to be entered into a spreadsheet multiple times. This leads to teams wasting time on manual tasks that could be avoided such as searching for files, resizing images, and copy-pasting text between cells. It is simply not an efficient way to handle product data effectively.
The risks of human error
Manually typing information into multiple places can be very risky because it invites human error. It only takes a single typing error to cause a number of problems.
For example, if a product weight is entered incorrectly it can quite easily result in shipping errors, warehouse rejection, or customer returns. Not only does this cause an issue within the supply chain. It can also be very difficult to find out exactly where the error was made in order to rectify it.
Communication bottlenecks
If a product lifecycle management (PLM) software and PIM are not connected directly, the handover process can be very messy. It can literally be a case of sharing thousands of files and emails. This kind of approach can easily lead to delays in a product’s launch.
For example, the marketing team may be stuck waiting for the final specifications of a product that can only be found in the inbox of a designer. This results in extra time spent on finding the file and cross-team communication that adds time to a product launch and causes friction.
Regulatory inefficiencies
With the need for DPP (Digital Product Passports) becoming mandatory in the coming years, there is a greater need for products to include a lot more information. Brands will need to track every material, factory, and certification.
Using a spreadsheet to track “Tier 4” sustainability data is virtually impossible. Using legacy systems will inevitably open brands up to legal and reputational risk.
PIM systems work by collecting raw data from internal and external sources, enriching it into consumer-ready content, and distributing it to all sales channels. They act as a product information manager.
A complete PIM product information profile is created by pulling in data from multiple silos that usually don’t talk to each other, allowing your team to add enriching data within a secure platform, and pushing approved product data out to the world via APIs, marketplace feeds, and data exports.
A PIM creates a central ‘product profile’ that is populated with information from connected systems such as PLM, DAM, and DPPs. It ensures that there is a full product profile that can be used across multiple sales channels, without the need for recreation of content for different market places. This allows your product material compositions, high-res marketing images, and sustainability certifications for a single product to live in one centralised place. What is the difference between PIM and DAM?
If a product profile is not complete within a PIM, it can update a connected PLM to flag this. The PLM can then use automated triggers to update everyone’s workflow.
For example, if a photography image is delayed the timeline can be updated to reflect the change automatically. This ensures that everyone is aware of the delay and is notified of the new expected timeline. This can help to free up a good proportion of your product team’s time.
A PIM can automatically create unique IDs for products and samples which saves a lot of time. It allows you to generate hundreds of colorway and size variants in seconds rather than manually entering data for each one when creating a range of product variants.
All of these workflow automation capabilities help to reduce time spent on administrative busy work.
Implementing a PIM Product Information Management system transforms product management from a manual, reactive process into a strategic, automated workflow. This allows you to take a highly efficient approach to product management with product teams saving time, the number of errors being greatly reduced, and relationships with all parties from manufacture to sales being highly collaborative.
By removing bottlenecks from the supply chain, a PIM can accelerate your time-to-market. It increases the efficiency of your workflow by centralising information, with every team member across a product’s lifecycle using the same data simultaneously. There is no more waiting for marketing copy to be sent, as the PIM updates everything in real-time.
This allows for data to be pushed to multiple sales channels at once. Data is automatically formatted for each platform, ensuring that you never miss a sales window.
Enhanced data accuracy and consistency is driven by a PIM through its centralised data management. This results in consistent product information across channels and further reduces the amount of errors that occur.
Mandatory fields and data validation rules ensure that a product cannot be published if it’s missing a description, weight, or image. The PIM catches errors and prevents incomplete data from being sent to sales channels.
There is no risk of version conflict, as a PIM syncs product data across every touchpoint each time a change is made. All connected channels show the same information at all times.
| Features | Spreadsheets & Manual Processes | PIM Software |
|---|---|---|
| Where is data stored? | Multiple places (Excel, Email, etc.) | Within the PIM |
| How accurate is the data? | Risk of errors due to manual entry | Highly accurate data due to automated validation rules |
| Scaling potential | Performance will lag when scaling with potential crashes | Boundless configuration and growth |
| Ease of collaboration | Numerous versions of the same file. High friction. | Real-time multi user workspace. No friction. |
PIM systems are needed most by businesses that have data that can no longer be managed by “human memory” or spreadsheets. If you work in a fast-paced product team, a PIM could radically improve your product management capabilities.
If your team is experiencing any of the following pain points, it’s a good sign that you are most likely in need of PIM software:
Choosing the right PIM solution is a case of looking beyond a list of features and focusing on how the tool fits your workflow.
The biggest issue you can face when introducing a new PIM software is a lack of user adoption from your team. This can be because a PIM is too rigid or technically confusing. At Bombiix, we take a ‘workflow first’ approach to onboarding. This ensures that your team is comfortable with our software and that they see it as the best option.
How a PIM integrates with other platforms should be a big consideration too. You don’t want to be waiting on a long winded development implementation that enables 2 platforms to communicate effectively or rely on manually downloading and uploading data via spreadsheets every time some product information needs changing. Our solution integrates directly with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and DAM systems to enable automatic data flow.
How future-proof a platform is should be considered. Especially if you expect your company to experience a great deal of growth. You don’t want to be dealing with bottlenecks in expanding your business due to a limited PIM system that requires a developer every time you add a new attribute. Our PIM software has boundless configuration that is capable of keeping up with any level of growth.
There are many other things that you will need to consider too. However, we have provided 4 big questions to ask when choosing a PIM for your business:
For all of these questions, the answer for our PIM software is a resounding yes!
Switching to PLM brought big changes, but our team embraced it because Bombiix provided solutions that fit our processes - and most importantly, they wanted to use it.
The unexpected element I've experienced using Bombiix is my own personal pre-knowledge of PLM systems and how they can be quite restrictive. Bombiix shows that you can have a PLM that is adaptable and flexible.
Bombiix has been a game-changer for Fimex, it just works with us. In a fast-paced environment where things can get hectic, Bombiix is always there, and a reliable single source of truth for our business.
Bombiix feels fresh, modern and intuitive. Unlike outdated, complex PLMs, it is built by people who understand product teams. It is easy to use, highly efficient and helps us get the job done.
Bombiix makes managing multiple clients and suppliers far simpler. It is the first system we have found that combines everything we need with genuine ease of use. The team understands our industry, responds quickly, and adapts the platform to how we work.
Working with Bombiix has been highly positive. Their collaborative team understood our needs, challenged our thinking and delivered meaningful solutions. The platform now gives us greater visibility, consistency and confidence in our decisions.
Contact us to learn more about our products and features or anything else. Let’s transform your product data together!
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Bombiix empowers product teams with cutting-edge, affordable technology that simplifies processes, reduces admin, and enables smarter, more ethical decisions.
