Why Off-the-Shelf PIMs Fail
And what to do next...
There’s a reason your shiny new Product Information Management system (PIM) never quite gets adopted.
It’s not that the tech’s bad. It’s that it’s not yours.
You went through the demo calls. You got buy-in. You signed the contract. Everyone nodded along during onboarding. The integration "went live”.
But six months later, the merchandising team isn’t using the new system. They’ve gone back to managing product content manually in spreadsheets, because the new tool doesn’t fit how they actually work.
The buying team is still double-checking product copy with Ecommerce in Slack. Product launches come down to a WhatsApp thread, a shared drive link, and someone manually uploading dozens of images late on a Friday.
Sound familiar?
You’re not alone. We’ve seen this story unfold over and over. And the root cause is almost always the same.
Why Off-the-Shelf Doesn’t Fit
Most mid-market PIMs are built around a “typical” business. The problem? Your business is unique - and far from standard.
You’re growing fast. You’ve adapted tools and built processes that work with the resources you have. Your teams have made the most of shared docs, informal comms, and quick fixes to keep things moving.
So when you introduce a rigid, off-the-shelf system - built around someone else’s idea of how retail should run - it doesn’t quite fit. It ends up working against the way your team already operates.
Why?
The new PIM demands a new product taxonomy, new training, and new approval flows.
It asks merch to think like developers and the buying team to rely on rigid forms instead of using their experience.
The workflows you actually use get sidelined in favour of “best practices” that aren’t yours - and that no one has the time or energy to adopt.
And the only person who really understood how it all fits together? Just left to join a competitor. Or got promoted and hasn’t touched the system since.
You don’t need a tool that ticks boxes. You need one that supports how you already work right now. One that smooths out the rough edges without creating friction.
When the tool doesn’t fit, people stop trusting it. They find workarounds that only make things messier.
What Happens Instead
The promise was: a single source of truth.
The reality? You end up with a fragmented mess of shadow systems.
One team’s using the PIM.
One team’s ignoring it.
And one team’s keeping a mirror spreadsheet just in case.
On paper, you’ve “implemented” a PIM. In practice, you’ve just created more silos, added friction, and made collaboration harder.
The whole point of a PIM is to simplify cross-functional work. When it fails, teams go straight back to what they know, and rely on it more than ever.
And any appetite for future change? It has quietly disappeared.
The next time a new tool is proposed, everyone’s already sceptical before they’ve even seen the demo.
What Actually Works (Even if it’s Not Sexy)
Here’s the thing: the best systems aren’t always the most sophisticated or powerful. They’re the ones that actually get used.
What we’ve seen work again and again:
Start simple. Airtable, Notion, Google Sheets - whatever works.
Build the logic around your workflows, not someone else’s vision of what “good” looks like. Your best practices.
Build clear, user-friendly interfaces that guide people through the work, so they don’t have to fight the system to get things done. Merch and buying can do what they need, without second-guessing. It prevents errors and reduces the need for training.
Automate the repetitive elements (e.g. image resizing, slug generation, field validation).
Only upgrade and add complexity when your current setup starts holding you back or is costing you money.
What you’re building isn’t just a system. You’re building easy adoption. That’s the real value.
What to Build Instead
A good internal system isn’t just a tech upgrade. It quietly transforms how your team works without getting in the way.
Here’s what actually makes the difference:
Keep people away from raw data. People shouldn’t be editing tables unless they absolutely need to.
Guide the inputs. Help teams enter the right info, in the right format, first time - using smart defaults, field validations, dropdowns, and clear labels.
Speed up what’s already working. Don’t just fix worst-case scenarios, make your best-case flows even faster and smoother.
Make it maintainable. If routine updates need a systems person, something has gone wrong.
And most importantly?
It needs to work the way your teams already do.
You can’t ask merchandising to think like developers. Or the buying team to learn a new system just to tweak a product name. The tools should feel familiar, reduce friction, and quietly make the everyday things less painful.
The best tools don’t change behaviours. They support them, then quietly improve them behind the scenes.
The Real Reason Your PIM Failed?
The problem wasn’t the tool.
It was the belief that software alone could fix a process that hadn’t been properly agreed on.
Without alignment, even the best system gathers dust. And without buy-in, the process never gets fully adopted.
Our takeaways?
Start small.
Test in the real world.
Build just enough interface to keep things clean.
And involve the people doing the work in the design right from the start.
When teams help shape a new tool, they’re far more likely to trust it, use it, and take ownership. Because if it doesn’t reflect how they already operate, they’ll quietly find ways to bypass it instead.
So here’s a simple framework that works again and again:
Interfaces – to guide the work and reduce friction.
Automation – to remove repetition and prevent error.
Rules – to make doing the wrong thing hard, and getting it right easy.
Not because it’s clever.
Because it gets used.