ObjectiveMost replatforming projects freeze the catalog, lift it across as it stands, and promise to clean it up later. Proteinbolaget ruled that out early. Years of product copy written by different people in different ways had left the catalog inconsistent, and the fields that matter most to customers were the hardest to keep accurate by hand. The goal was a catalog with one consistent thread running through it, not a tidier version of the old one.
That ambition ran straight into a fixed go-live date. The new platform also required the product structure itself to be rebuilt rather than mapped across, which is exactly the kind of work that pushes a launch into the next season. Proteinbolaget needed a way to raise data quality and hit the deadline at the same time, and a sustainable way of working afterwards: product data in one place, with a clear structure, that could scale with the assortment rather than depend on one person remembering the routine.
SolutionEmfas served as the transitional PIM solution but is now the product operations layer. Product data was exported from Askås, enriched in Emfas and then landed in Shopify via integration, with the trickier pieces of any migration handled along the way: remapping a category tree that lived in a different format, and matching thousands of images to the right products automatically rather than by hand.
Emfas onboarding team was early on involved in setting up a close collaboration to ensure that tight project deadline could be reached. This helped Proteinbolaget resolve challenges in the moment rather than as a support errand.
“Sitting down and running the imports together made it much easier. If something didn't work, they were there at every step of the way. The alternative was being handed a manual, solving it ourselves, and maybe still not getting it right.”
Sanne Kristensen, Online Merchandiser, Proteinbolaget
On the enrichment side, Emfas removed the work that used to consume the most time. Short descriptions, product USPs and long-form copy are now generated from the same underlying product information, so all three are accurately set on every product. Meta fields that used to depend on someone knowing the answer, such as allergen and free-from labelling, are derived from the product's own data instead. As the team saw how much Emfas could take over, they kept handing it more. The catalog ended up richer than the one they left behind, carrying meta fields that would never have survived manual upkeep in the old platform, including the attributes that make products filterable and comparable on site.
ResultsProteinbolaget successfully launched on Shopify on schedule with their agency partner Panagora, in spring rather than autumn. The catalog could always have been imported as it was, but that would have meant carrying the old data quality onto the new platform. Doing it properly by hand, in the time available, was not realistic. The team's own assessment is that without Emfas the launch would likely have slipped by a season.
Product data quality improved across the board. The same thread runs through every product, and the human error that comes with manual work at scale has largely gone. Confidence in the output is high enough that the team now spot-checks and publishes rather than reviewing every text line by line, reflected in an 86% acceptance rate. That trust came from getting the prompts right early and testing new generations on a handful of products before running them broadly.
The catalog also became something the team can operate rather than maintain. Updating a field across every product used to mean setting aside a full day. It now takes minutes, which lowers the threshold for keeping data current instead of letting it drift. Day to day, a new product goes live in about 10 minutes rather than 40, which matters in a category where supplier material often arrives close to deadline and being first to market is worth something.
Advice for brands facing a replatformingProteinbolaget's advice is to treat the platform move as the moment to fix product data rather than postpone it, and to put a PIM in place before the migration rather than after. The import can always be done as it stands. What you get on the other side is the product catalogue in a shape you always wanted.
“We could have imported it exactly as it was, but the product data wouldn't have been anywhere near as good. It would just have been what we had in the old platform. Emfas was effortless to work with: fast answers, a solution-oriented attitude, and real knowledge of their own product.”
Cassandra Bäckman, E-commerce Manager, Proteinbolaget
