KatanaPIM announces a new Managing Director

Dutch IT company Katana BV (previously Tritac) announces a new managing director, Luc Smeets, and a vision for KatanaPIM that will carry the platform to international success.

A sneak peek into the past

In the last decade, the market had a huge shift from brick-and-mortar stores to multistore and multichannel, where many companies started an online direct-to-consumer strategy.

Tritac, Katana’s former name, originated a couple of decades ago with an agency perspective, helping business owners, brands and wholesalers start and grow their online journeys through the creation of customized and project-based webshops.

“Around 5 years ago we started noticing a lack of flexible and affordable solutions for companies shifting to multichannel strategies, especially considering the big amount of product information needed for the multiple sales channels and the lack of proper management.

Raoul Straathof | KatanaPIM’s Product manager

By noticing this gap in the online market, a new solution was created: KatanaPIM. As of today, the in-house developed product information management system has helped many companies centralize their product information and create a scalable and strong business infrastructure, essential for the current competition in the digital world.

“Because of the multilingual and multichannel features, we have the right functionalities to fit the needs of the current-day brands, wholesalers, and retailers and to help them grow and be successful online.”

Raoul Straathof | KatanaPIM’s Product manager

With the development of this Saas solution, Tritac left the agency wave behind, to focus on a scalable and ever-improving tool.

“We have come a long way since we first started on KatanaPIM and set out to deliver our vision of what a product information management system should be. With a hardworking team, we have done our best and succeeded in putting our name out there in the market.”

Shair Mir | KatanaPIM’s Product Owner

The e-commerce surge

As we all know, the results of the pandemic for online commerce were extraordinary; due to lockdowns, people had to buy even essential goods online, resulting in a 55% growth in sales for e-commerce. This increased the need for shops to adapt to their customers’ demands: larger stocks, faster shipping, multichannel presence and so on. And of course, also the customer journey changed significantly. Instead of walking into a shop and being able to see, compare and try products, the shoppers found themselves making their purchase decisions in front of a screen. This is why Saas solutions came to the rescue of sellers, helping them automate their selling processes and making their work easier, to let them focus on taking care of their own customers.

During and after the pandemic the KatanaPIM team noticed that online sellers were experiencing many challenges regarding their product information management and therefore, they didn’t stop improving their product, creating new features and growing their partners’ network to give their clients the best solutions to improve their business.

New management, new plans

2022 brought some great news to the company. The official end of lockdowns and the return to normal life made it possible for the team to reunite after several months of remote working. Also, a new managing director came into play.

“I have known Tritac for several years and a few months ago I came across KatanaPIM. I was immediately enthusiastic. In addition to my new role as managing director, it is also my intention that I, together with my partner Jan, will invest in the necessary growth capital for these plans.

The objective is to make plans and take KatanaPIM to the next level together with the team.”

Luc Smeets | Managing director at KatanaPIM

Reuniting and Refocusing the Team:

Since day one, the new managing director is committed to driving the team toward its goals.

After-lockdown reunions and meetups made it possible for the team to get back together and get in line with their main dreams and goals: realizing a product that helps all users (from small to large enterprises) grow their digital business.

Being able to work together again and redefine the goals and dreams of the team was necessary to take further steps forward. After deep client analysis, the team at Katana is keeping on improving the product according to the market needs.

“Managing product information can be a boring and time-consuming task. As a product designer, it’s my challenge to keep things simple and enjoyable to use. Every interface change and feature that will be released will be user-centered designed. This means that we thrive to build the best possible solution for our users. That we know who our users are, and what they do, that we listen to their daily struggles and make things as pleasant as possible for them.”

Remco Dobronyi | KatanaPIM’s Product Designer

New marketing, sales, and partnership plans have been redefined and implemented as well as a new vision and strategy. KatanaPIM has already developed and implemented new features and the plans anticipate even more advanced characteristics to help customers achieve success in the digital commerce age, in an easy and fun way.

A new name for the company and the international partnerships

In order to completely match the vision and mission of KatanaPIM, Luc Smeets also changed the company name to Katana BV. By doing so, the company and the team bring all their attention to focusing on the Katana product and providing market-required solutions and necessary features.

By also entering into new partnerships and developing essential integrations with leading companies in Europe and in the United States (such as Brandfolder, Adobe Commerce, and ChannelEngine), Katana’s team is acquiring even more knowledge of the developing international e-commerce market. Partnerships and integrations of this type make it possible for the team to give clients useful insights on how to grow their business even further and provide them with best-of-breed solutions.

Thanks to all these plans and innovation, Katana has now the solid foundations to take the next step by acquiring clients abroad and realizing its international goals (and the ones of its customers!).

About KatanaPIM

KatanaPIM is the single source of truth for product information that helps brands, wholesalers, and retailers easily collect and enrich their product data and efficiently distribute correct and consistent information to their different sales channels, marketplaces, resellers, partners, and catalogs. Implementing a PIM tool allows companies to streamline and automate internal processes and makes product information management and product launches quick & easy.