Case study · Luxury lighting
How a leading luxury lighting brand is on track to launch 6 months faster and more than doubled first-pass quality
A 17-month launch cycle is on track for 11 months. A 6-person product data team replaced seasonal spreadsheets of 200+ new products and 400+ attributes with vendor direct entry, AI-drafted change requests and change tracking from sample to first production.
The challenge
Every season, about every six months, the brand launched 200+ new products, each described by 400+ attributes. Vendors sent that data in spreadsheets full of inconsistent formatting and spelling errors. A team of six corrected it cell by cell, validated it, and keyed it into the ERP and PIM. Specs changed constantly during sampling, change requests lived in email, and nobody could easily answer the question that mattered most: are we ready to launch?
The solution
- Vendors enter data directly in validated fields that prevent spelling and formatting errors at the source.
- PD validates instead of re-typing, leaving comments for small changes that vendors see in their own view.
- AI-generated product change requests capture major spec changes, followed through to the first production part received.
- Every change is recorded with who and when, so AI can show where development slows down.
- Spreadsheets are eliminated from the product data process.
The results
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Launch cycle | 17 months | 11 months, on track: 6 months faster |
| First-pass quality at first production | 40% | 85%, more than doubled |
| Hours on data correction and re-entry | 70+ hours a week across 6 people | 53% less |
| Vendor data correction | Fixed cell by cell | 81% less, errors prevented at entry |
| Data errors reaching ERP or PIM | Found after launch | Zero; data transfers the instant all functional pages are approved |
| PD time searching Dropbox folders | Baseline | 37% less |
| Time per spec sheet | 3 hours | 1 hour |
| Leadership focus | Figuring out launch readiness | Fixing true bottlenecks |
Launch cycle results combine completed launches with projections from current gate times. Other results are measured against the brand's own baseline.
"Launching products used to be a nightmare. We were constantly trying to figure out whether we were ready to launch. Now, with AccelerateNPI, we focus on finding and fixing the real bottlenecks."
President, a leading luxury lighting brand