Waldhausen Reitsport takes positive stock after one year of EasyCatalog: Effort almost halved

Since the introduction of EasyCatalog, the effort for catalogue creation at Waldhausen Reitsport has decreased massively and has almost halved. Especially the creation of further language versions of the popular catalogue has decreased drastically.

Waldhausen GmbH und Co. KG from Cologne is one of the largest European dealers in equestrian sports and exports more than 12,000 articles to over 60 countries, since 2000 also to the USA via a specially founded sales company. An important sales channel for this is the approx. 350-page catalogue, which is published twice a year. The five-person team was stretched to the limit, especially by the different language versions for the European region.

With the help of Rheinwork, the workflow was switched to the InDesign plug-in EasyCatalog from the beginning of 2012. Through training and support, the system was ready for use in spring 2012. This made it possible to automatically replace the language levels in the EDP system in InDesign, i.e. to "switch" languages at the push of a button. A massive advantage when producing and printing catalogues in several languages.

After more than a year of use and the production of three catalogue lines, the conclusion is clear: "We save about two-thirds of the time in creating the other language versions" says Ms. Borgmann, head of the catalogue unit at Waldhausen. About 50% of the time is saved by EasyCatalog's ability to update linked content in InDesign directly from the database. A process that used to cost a lot of effort and nerves and, above all, was very error-prone. With the resources freed up, more emphasis can now be placed on the creative aspect of catalogue design again, Ms Borgmann is pleased to say. The repetitive work steps of manual updating and correction that are common in such an extensive production are clearly relegated to the background thanks to the software-based support.

Overall, the implementation of the EasyCatalog tool for generating and automating the various catalogue levels was a complete success and brought about a significant increase in efficiency in the catalogue workflow. Speed increased, while the susceptibility to errors and frequency of correction cycles decreased massively. "The programme takes over exactly what used to be so time-consuming", Ms Borgmann sums up, "I can no longer imagine working without EasyCatalog".