CAINZ Co., Ltd. adopts the AI solution “Lazuli PDP for Retail” for the retail industry
Press Release
Lazuli Inc. (Head office: Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Seigen Hagiwara; hereinafter referred to as Lazuli), which develops and provides the AI-powered SaaS cloud product master “Lazuli PDP,” has been adopted by CAINZ Co., Ltd. (Head office: Honjo City, Saitama Prefecture; President and CEO: Masayuki Takaya; hereinafter CAINZ) as an AI solution for utilizing product information in digital initiatives, and full-scale operation will begin in April 2022.
CAINZ is a home improvement chain with 228 stores in 28 prefectures, mainly in the Kanto region. Under the concept of “realizing IT retail,” the company is promoting digital initiatives and achieved the top sales in Japan's home improvement center industry in fiscal 2019. Amid the rapid digitalization of customer purchasing behavior due to the spread of COVID-19, CAINZ aims to provide a new shopping experience that seamlessly connects digital and physical channels. To do so, it is necessary to organize all data, including product names, specifications, and raw materials, so that it can be used both in physical stores and on e-commerce sites, but conventional labor-intensive methods would result in enormous time and cost. To solve this challenge and build it quickly and at low cost, the adoption of “Lazuli PDP for Retail” was essential.
Since November 2021, CAINZ has been working with Lazuli to verify the automation of organizing the information needed for its e-commerce site using “Lazuli PDP for Retail.” E-commerce sites require more detailed product information than physical stores, as well as recommendations tailored to each customer. With “Lazuli PDP for Retail,” it is possible to collect and organize product information, as well as format it to optimize it for e-commerce sites. This makes it possible to improve customers' product searchability and discoverability and enhance the UX of the entire site. With the prospect of moving to production established after the verification, full-scale operation will now begin.
With this solution, CAINZ can significantly reduce the man-hours required for data preparation while building a foundation that allows product information to be integrated with other systems and tools and put to use. In addition, by collecting, organizing, and enriching product information, it becomes possible to accelerate customer data analysis, represented by POS data, as well as e-commerce and AI utilization. While the domestic home improvement center market remains flat, CAINZ aims to use product information organized and enriched with Lazuli PDP for Retail in digital initiatives to increase sales and profits through deeper customer understanding and improved customer experience value. Going forward, Lazuli plans to promote the organization and use of product information with CAINZ and work on further product development.
What is Lazuli PDP?
Lazuli's “Lazuli PDP” centrally manages product information scattered across multiple external databases and is a PDP for organizing and enriching data into an easy-to-use format. It uses AI to deduplicate diverse product master data held by manufacturers, retailers, pharmaceutical companies, and others, and performs meta-tagging and linking based on efficacy and product features. This information is stored in “NINJA DB” and provided to users as “Lazuli PDP”.
＜About CAINZ＞
CAINZ Co., Ltd. is a home improvement chain operating 228 stores in 28 prefectures. With “For everyday life, la la la.” as its promise to customers, it strives to propose lifestyles that are close to everyday life and to create products and stores with an emphasis on total coordination of living spaces. It offers products that enrich everyday life at low prices every day through the development of original products and the use of its unique procurement and logistics systems.
＜About Lazuli＞
Lazuli is a startup founded in July 2020. By leveraging advanced AI technology and the cloud, it is developing and providing SaaS that allows anyone involved in business to use product information from around the world as an AI product master. As products are manufactured, distributed, and sold, product-related data is not smoothly synchronized between companies or even within a company. We believe this is one of the major factors hindering DX. To solve this, Lazuli develops and provides the SaaS-based cloud product master Lazuli PDP, which makes product information easily accessible to people involved in business.
https://corporate.lazuli.ninja/
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