This document discusses strategies for speeding up time to market, including: - Setting corporate ROI goals and making significant cuts to timelines to incentivize change - Starting planning earlier in the process with a "master SKU" approach - Planning across departments to streamline schedules - Reducing photography time by taking fewer shots per item, outsourcing redundant tasks, and setting standards - Implementing a DAM system to more easily share photos, video, and copy across teams - Writing web copy first to streamline production and prioritizing digital proofing cycles

1. Speed!
Get to market
faster. Go!!

2. What’s a Production Summit?

3. Past trending topics
• Best practices across all functionality
• DAM systems
• All inclusive DAM systems
• Copy that doesn’t work in a database
• New technology – tracking, photography
• Staffing across web and print

4. New this year: Speed to market

5. Why?
• Consumers are demanding new and fresh across all media
• Get more product on the web, faster – Flash Sites
• We need to finish a season before planning that same season for the
following year
• Amazon is creating their own challenges

6. How?

7. Set corporate ROI goals for change
• Make cuts significant enough to give everyone incentive to overcome
the pain of change – take out weeks, not days.
• “Just say no.” Getting key execs on board with what has to go away to
get to market faster
• “Keep the train moving” – trust that everyone is doing their job

8. Start planning higher up in the process
• Work with a “Master SKU” mentality – product life-cycle that starts
when an SKU is “born”
• Hold a merch line review meeting at the start of the season to help
set the photo schedule
• Outline print and web merch needs
• Set up a creative meeting to discuss overall business strategy before
anything is turned over
• Hold editorial meetings by category

9. Plan across departments
• Meet in cross-functional groups to review schedules – from merch
selection right to the warehouse.
• Look for steps that were added to the schedule based on a one-time
occurrence
• Get buy-in across teams for where cuts in time will be made
• Meet monthly to stay on track
• Make sure everyone knows the consequences if changes are not
made – who is accountable?
• Set objectives for all major milestone steps in the process – merch to
finish

10. NOTE: Scheduling across departments is ideal
– but not easy
• Schedules vary by department – what’s in them, who works on them,
and how they are created
• Many use Basecamp to share/track
• Some work in Google docs to share/track
• Use SmartSheets as a simple solution to share info across groups
• Some are sharing documents in SharePoint
• A few are using licensed software like Integrated Media Planner (IMP)
for all departments to schedule and track by project, media, etc.

11. Reduce the amount of information by product
• Reduce the number of shots you take of each item
• Make copy less complex
• If something doesn’t have an impact on sales – cut it

12. Triage product for photography based on
exposure and anticipated sales
• Use more pick-up photos, copy, spreads
• Rank photos A-B-C
• A gets your full attention – covers, features, web features
• C is a vendor shot – get more of these – though they require vendor
management for branding/quality issues
• B is the rest – take fewer shots for print and web and spend less time styling
and propping.
• All shots are not art; all shots are not created equal

13. Reduce the amount of time you spend on
photography
• Meet regularly with your photo team to let them know what sold and
what did not sell
• Track color mark-ups and discuss regular “fixes” you are making to
shots in Photoshop. Is there something that can be done to avoid on-
going fixes?
• Review the “base” needs of most shots – production, not art
• Review best sellers – learn from your own shots about what sells well
– and what doesn’t
• Use automated programs to keep large photo files clean and moved
off of your server

14. • Shoot for the web; set web standards so your website doesn’t have a
mish-mash of looks
• Take fewer shots of each item to help speed up shoot and editing
time. Train staff to know “when they have the shot”
• Spend more time on lifestyle shots
• Use scheduling software to help keep track of samples, what’s been
shot.
• Do some editing while on the shoot – take out the bad stuff at the
start so editors don’t look at all raw files

15. • Shoot with more background so you don’t have to go back in to
create it for web shots or feature shots
• Set up SOPs and best practices for shooting – and use them
• Outsource redundant tasks like silos for Amazon and the web

16. Use a DAM system for photos, video, copy
• Give photo access to groups outside of Creative – share!
• Large systems, like Comosoft’s Lago, or Media Compass are great –
but are expensive
• Smaller systems, like Filemaker Pro and Cumulus are more limited,
but are functional
• Your pre-press provider or printer may have a system they can share
with you as part of your pre-press contract

17. Write for the web
• Write web copy first – it’s longest and can hold all of the details
• Cut and paste into InDesign
• Start copy before you have layouts
• Standardize your copy points to make the web easily to shop from by
category, product type
• Note: Copy is not easily integrated with photos in a DAM system

18. Shorten proofing cycles; proof digitally
• Circulate less in print, more digitally – Adobe Acrobat, Proof HQ
• Use SharePoint for low res proofs
• Proof copy early in the cycle
• Proof fewer times – even just ONCE (this is new!)
• Set proofing standards so everyone doesn’t feel responsible for
proofing the same stuff
• Proof the web!

19. Soft proof color
• Proof fewer products at random stage
• Soft proofing adds incredible flexibility to the end of the schedule
• Many who soft proof internally are still proofing to Epson’s on press
• Use LAB colors to proof; then convert to RGB or CMYK to get the most
accurate color
• Note: Few are attending press checks with soft proof or hard proof

20. Keep email planning fluid, flexible
• Start with a base plan, but don’t get to the details too early, or you
spend too much time re-doing
• Email is more a marketing function now than a merchandising
function
• Your email team needs access to photos and approved copy

21. Issues to solve
• Many production groups set deadlines for print, then shift to web; this
takes away the current structure, deadlines, shoot schedules
• Increased need for flexibility in the production process
• Need for more photography for the web and for Amazon
• Mac v. PC is still an issue with many for sharing content info, schedules
• There is not much cross-over between creative teams– web v. print
• Merchandising for print is different than merchandising for the web – so
the process needs don’t always line up for cross-planning
• As an industry, we need to shoot more video – and have little time for this
• Maintaining brand as volumes increase and as more of us sell on Amazon
and now Pinterest. Is anyone at your company proofing for brand?

22. Thoughts? Questions?
What’s working for you?
Janie Downey
Co-founder Catalog University
jdowney@cataloguniversity.com
207-233-3339