Founded by Josef Schmidt in Bludenz (Austria) in 1887, the company is one of the oldest and most successful hardware wholesalers in Europe. It is a full-range supplier of construction, civil engineering products, fittings, tools, machinery, factory equipment, chemical and technical products, workwear, fastening technology, gardening and power tools. SCHMIDT'S employs around 720 people at 14 Austrian locations and is 100% family-owned.

SCHMIDT'S Handelsgesellschaft mbH emerged from the companies Schmidt's Erben and Weyland/Steiner. As both companies were working with different PIM systems, it was decided to introduce a new joint PIM system and implement it with crossbase.

The focus of the design was on the ability to enter data quickly and easily. This was a particular challenge, as several thousand articles per supplier often have to be updated and synchronized in the retail sector.

Currently, over 200,000 articles are continuously imported from the ERP system to the crossbase solution via the XML interface, where they are structured, enriched with additional content and prepared for output in print and online. Most product information is maintained at master product level. For this reason, the inheritance concept is used. This inherits defined content to the subordinate levels and thus minimizes the maintenance effort. In addition, some of the data maintained in crossbase is returned to the ERP system via the API interface so that the data is always identical.

Another important criterion was print media production. This needed to be simple and fast. This was achieved with the crossbase solution, despite a demanding layout in which, for example, the placement of images had to be mirrored depending on the page (left or right page). In addition to the regularly produced catalogs and brochures, special customer catalogs with an individual scope and separate prices are produced for larger customers.

Data is delivered to "Shopify" and the Weyland/Steiner online store via an API interface. This guarantees that the content is always up to date.