ASICS CASE STUDY

The Effortless Execution of a High-Performing Digital Asset Management (or 

DAM – or DAMMMNNNNN) Platform for Asics, a Leading Athletic Shoe & Apparel
Provider That You May Have Heard Of If You Are Alive.

To the surprise of exactly no one, it was the splendid folk at 3|SHARE, experts
at all things Adobe and partners to their tip-top Digital Marketing customers, who
did Asics right by implementing for them a world-class Adobe Experience Man-
ager-based DAM system in an effort to support their rapid growth.

ASICS needed a brand new big-boy system to store and manage its digital assets
because of how fast the company has grown over the years (and that’s very,
very fast). Their old system used arcane manual processes that had become
unnecessary in 2015, now that Adobe Experience Manager exists and people
have free will to use it.

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CONTENTS
3 10

CUSTOMER PROFILE SOLUTIONS

11 Consulting
12 Training
4

CHALLENGES 13

BENEFITS
6

SITUATION 16

7 ABOUT 3|SHARE

BUSINESS IMPACT 17

8 ABOUT ASICS

OBJECTIVES

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CUSTOMER PROFILE:
ASICS. ALL CAPS FTW

Industry: Sports shoes, apparel and equipment. And the very best of all three.

Location: While the company is headquartered in lovely Kobe, Japan, where you
should absolutely vacation at some point in your life, ASICS America is in Irvine,
CA, which is also a very nice to visit and frolic. But there are 53 consolidated ASICS
subsidiaries and affiliates around the world. We’re talking the whole globe, here. 

Customer Profile: ASICS speaks for itself (not literally): It’s a top athletic equipment
company, producing footwear and apparel for all of the sports (not literally (but almost)).
Because of their ubiquity, they sell through thousands of retail partners around the
world and it isn’t even a thing to them.

Employees: More than 6,000 worldwide, or enough to fill an average-sized Division

1 college basketball arena.

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CHALLENGES
• Like a man and his beloved childhood jacket,
ASICS outgrew its legacy DAM system. This system
required extremely manual processes because it’s
old and didn’t know any better.

• ASICS isn’t amateur hour. We’re talking a bare

minimum of 40,000 assets, which increase with
each retail season and new product launch. The
big time.

• Because the world was once a stodgy and sad

place, said assets were often located within various
company locations, which meant they couldn’t be
found, which meant expensive duplications. Yuck.

• Folks (like, say, retail partners) who needed assets

had to wait for access to them, which meant time
to market lagged. I know, this sounds like the old
west or something.

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The Obvious Solution:
The shining beacon of light that is 3|SHARE: friend, lover, Adobe Premier Level
Solution Partner. 3|SHARE swiftly implemented an Adobe Experience Manager
Digital Asset Management system for ASICS, along with providing Training
and Remote Operations Management (ROM) professional services, and all of
a sudden ASICS was like, “Oh, hi 21st Century. Nice to meet you, finally.”

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SITUATION
Hard To Find Assets If – heaven forbid – a requesting party was
(or, if you prefer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)  (gasp!) new, well, it had to wait. And wait.
The following digital assets were kept in individ- And wait. Because permissions were as-
ual folders on ASICS’ shared drives (preface: signed on an individual basis. Something else. 
yikes): images and photos; print material; textual
assets, like descriptions of products and prices; Little Insight Into Their Business
nuclear codes; and videos. And even though one Worse, those assets that were filed manually
of those was made up, it was still a big problem. and left at random places to chill forever were
never used for planning marketing campaigns.
Because of this, employees at various ASICS
offices either couldn’t find said assets or didn’t And why, you ask? Well silly, because ASICS’s
believe they were ever invented, so they just legacy system did not provide detailed reporting
made the same thing again. Twinsies! Not good. that would have allowed the company to know fun
stuff like “how the assets were being used” and
“who was using them” and “what the most popular
Retailers, in turn, were in the same boat.
assets were” and other unimportant stuff like that.
Clueless as to how to find the appropriate assets.
Whoops.
You may have guessed: ASICS’s legacy DAM
system adversely affected the company’s business.
Slow Manual Processes
If that wasn’t already super obvious.
Of the 40,000+ digital assets for both internal
and external retailer partners, exactly 40,000+
of them needed to be manually categorized with
the previous system, then sent individually to
the parties who requested them. With that sort
of system, you may as well shoot an 80s info-
mercial starring several men with giant glasses
and mustaches. 

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BUSINESS IMPACT
Increased Costs
No one knew where anything was. That meant
costs went up because of duplications -- studio
time, professional photographers, taking out
$100 bills and lighting them on fire with a
match, etc.

Flying Blind
There was no such thing as quickly reacting to
marketing trends in order to improve the ASICS
business. The old system would read that sentence
and quite literally LOL, somehow.

Decreased Productivity And Revenue

Assuming you haven’t skipped ahead for spoilers,
it should feel needless to say at this point that
the labor intensiveness of the previous system
meant that everything was slowed down to a mo-
lasses-like crawl. Retailers couldn’t access assets.
Employees couldn’t do their, you know, actual work.
Nightmare city.

Can you count to 40,000? ASICS can. (And prob-

ably past that, we’re guessing.) ASICS has 40,000
digital assets, assets for both internal and external
retailer partners, which frequently change. Hard-
core.

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Objectives of ASICS’ New
DAM Platform:

Sure, ASICS needed an update -- desperately -- to their digital asset management

platform, to both easily categorize, manage, and distribute its valuable branded content,
and to avoid being “throw your laptop through a glass window”-level frustrated at all
times throughout the day.

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OBJECTIVES
• EXHALE: The centralization of ASICS digital 3|SHARE did the smart thing, implementing
assets, meaning -- that’s right -- they could easily an Adobe Experience Manager Digital Asset
be found by people. No more duplication. And there Management (DAM) system, employee training,
was much rejoicing. and ongoing Remote Operations Management.

• Make the like-minded assets become friends

-- or, if you prefer, automate them by attributes And they all lived happily ever
-- for faster processing rates. Seems obvious in after, the end.
hindsight, right?

• Self-serve! Why rely on other humans? Ugh. Re-

tailers serve themselves in the new system, making
things easier for everyone. Yesssss.

• Branded content in front of faces. Faster. In front

of faces.

• Audiences don’t care about everything,

right? The appropriate assets needed distri-
bution to the appropriate crowds. Specificity
is both “key” and “a fun word to say out loud.”

• Centralizing digital assets. Zero duplications.

Those are just two of the hundred billion (roughly)
objectives for ASICS’ new DAM system.

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SOLUTIONS

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CONSULTING
3|SHARE specially customized (some would say
EXTRA-specially customized) ASICS’s AEM DAM
It’s all in the details!
so that they could share assets with retailers. Isn’t
that a nice thing to do? I think that’s a nice thing At least, that’s what 3|SHARE believes. That’s why
to do. they created additional meta data fields, filters, and
tags for the ASICS assets. Better segmentation,
easier automation of the distribution process, ev-
They created a self-service process for ASICS
eryone is happier and has nicer lunch breaks and
retailers. That meant retailers could log in, search,
weekends, etc.
view digital assets, and download them without
anyone else’s help, assuming that person had
used the internet before. Asset categorization: also automated. The com-
puters are taking over. Let them. It feels so good.

Because of 3|SHARE, similarly-attributed retailers

could now share assets themselves. Easy. Easy All of the information. All of it. Literally. All of the
peasy. Easy peasy weasy. I’ll stop now. information on products, styles, regions sold,
SKU numbers, mother’s maiden name, it was
all added.
Retailer registration was now automated. No more
waiting for Gladys in Customer Service to manu-
Now any time a duplicate was made, an automated
ally get back to retailers. I mean, Gladys is a nice
process would CATCH it! What is this 21st century
person with a family who loves her, but come on.
madness?

“Forgot username/password” was also automat-

3|SHARE has a C-3PO-like grasp on languag-
ed now. Imagine doing that manually. As your
es, so it improved ASICS’s translation process of
actual job.
product data for global offices. Call it a delicious
cherry on top.

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TRAINING
Only the big-brained 3|SHARE-ians could During the great AEM unveil in Japan, 3|SHARE
provide the specific training necessary to un- was also sneakily updating the U.S. version to AEM
derstand the specific AEM solution for ASICS. 6.0, which is the latest update and as far as AEM
updates go, sexy as hell, quite frankly. What? It
Obviously, ASICS employees needed to first learn is. This ensured that all systems were performing
how to use the customized system. No curveballs efficiently across the universe, but most importantly,
there. on Earth.

Likewise, 3|SHARE taught the IT crowd how to

install, configure, maintain and troubleshoot, and
speak nicely on the work phone when called upon.
(No promises were made.)

Remote Operations Management (ROM)

There ain’t nothing like ROM (Remote Asset
Management, something decidedly less fun than
simply “ROM”). ROM means round-the clock
remote monitoring of their AEM environment.
No breaks. No plays off. Japan and the U.S. are
on opposite sides of the world from each other.

There is no downtime.
Which is cool. 3|SHARE
hates downtime, in a fun way.

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Benefits of the new
Adobe Experience
Manager DAM platform
implemented by 3|SHARE

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BENEFITS:

Speedier time to market Reduced Costs

• Retailers get assets to their websites at warp • Another 200 employee hours saved on uploading
speed now. That’s because of 3|SHARE.  assets and catching duplicates. That means 200
whole hours to literally do anything else. At all. In
• Self-serve. It can’t be said enough. End users can the world.
now serve themselves, and not have to wait for
assets to be manually sent to them. Even typing • Now that digital assets are finally centralized and
the sentence is like a shoulder massage. therefore easy to find, get this: fewer duplications!
Get out your party hats and blast the Kanye!
• Quick wait for new retailers. 

Better Insights
Everything is awesome.  • Automated reports for ASICS business im-
Everyone is happier.  provements. Like it’s 2015 or something. 

• Another 200 hours saved by not manually creat-

Increased Productivity
ing reports. We’re up to approximately 1.5 billion
• Assets get grouped into large, like-mind- saved hours now.  
ed batches who hang out and enjoy the same
things for automatic assignment of meta data
Voila, more effective marketing campaigns. It all
and tags. Makes so much sense, doesn’t it? 
works hand in hand.

• Manual categorization and distribution of assets

takes about 1/1,000,000th the amount of time
now. Thank all deities. Every one of them.

• 200 employee hours a year: saved by cutting

down on manually managing user accounts and
requests, and the end user experience. 200 em-
ployee hours, and countless employee brains.

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CONSULTING, TRAINING AND
REMOTE OPERATIONS
(ROM, or C,T & ROM if you’re a perfectionist) professional
services provided:

Consulting (of course) Professional Services

Consulting and implementation services for Jean- It would have been one thing for 3|SHARE to say,
Claude AEM DAM, but not just ANY consulting “Okay, your new system has been implemented
and implementation services -- consulting and and we’ve trained you to use it, good luck to you
implementation services to fit the specific needs guys!” and be on their merry way.
of ASICS. It smells so sweet.

But they went the extra few miles and provided

If a thing could be described as “it just makes ev- ASICS with Remote Operations Management
erything better,” than its ASICS’ new DAM platform, (ROM) services, which only meant administration
which helps ASICS easily locate digital assets, of ASICS’s complete AEM environment, sporting a
eliminate duplicated efforts, and get assets to re- 99.999% uptime SLA. Throwing straight fastballs
tailers as quickly as possible. Really, it’s just better. with a smile. Or at least a smirk.

Training All that time spent on the manual categorization of

It would have been one thing for 3|SHARE to assets? Or distribution of the correct assets to the
say, “Okay, your new system has been imple- right retailers? Kiss it goodbye, wet and sloppily.
mented, good luck to you guys!” and be on their
merry way. But they trained ASICS employees in
the Japanese art of Adobe Experience Manager
DAM platforms, passing on knowledge gleaned
over generations from ancient scribbles on
cave walls.  

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ABOUT 3|SHARE:

3|SHARE is a delightful business that could brag that they are a Premier Level Adobe
Systems Solution Partner, leading service provider of AEM, and member of Adobe’s Partner
Advisory Board, but they are also very polite and wouldn’t dream of actually doing so.

Focused with razor-sharp meticulousness on the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite alone,
3|SHARE sets itself apart from other wannabe firms by its highly skilled consultants,
innovative tools, use of the Oxford comma, and unparalleled commitment to client
success. Headquartered in Carlsbad, CA, 3|SHARE specializes in knowing how to
party, but also Consulting, Training, and Remote Operations Management (ROM) for
clients throughout North America. www.3sharecorp.com.

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ABOUT ASICS:

Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, meaning “A Sound Mind in a Sound Body,” is an old
Latin phrase from which ASICS is derived and the fundamental platform on which the
brand still stands, in addition to a really good idea for a neck tattoo. The company
was founded more than 60 years ago by Kihachiro Onitsuka, possessor of the world’s
greatest all-time name, and is now a leading designer and manufacturer of running
shoes, as well as other athletic footwear, apparel, and accessories.

ASICS has subsidiaries across the globe including North and South America, Europe,
Africa and Asia. They everywhere. In 2014, ASICS experienced a 21% increase in
sales over the previous year, with record profits. Just don’t ask them to borrow money.
For more information, visit www.asics.com.

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THANK YOU

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