Bicycle industry

Up to 75% better time-to-market – ZEG relies on TESSA DAM

ZEG Zweirad-Einkaufs-Genossenschaft eG

www.zeg.de

Customized enterprise digital asset management
Perfect integration between PIM (Akeneo) and DAM (TESSA)
Self-service portals via TESSA BrandHub

Company profile

ZEG: Moving into the future of bicycle retail — together

The Zweirad-Einkaufs-Genossenschaft, or ZEG for short, headquartered in Cologne, is one of the largest purchasing cooperatives in the European bicycle trade. With a network of over 1,000 independent specialist bicycle retailers, a 60,000 m² central warehouse, and more than 140 employees, ZEG stands for purchasing power, personal advice, and the highest level of service quality for its affiliated retailers.

The product range covers more than 100,000 items across over 55 own brands — from everyday bikes to high-end models. Managing this breadth of products, along with thousands of product images and technical documents, was one of the central challenges that EIKONA Media solved with TESSA DAM and Akeneo PIM.

Products 100K+
Retailer stores 150+
Brands 55+
Brand stores 12+

Mission

Modernizing PIM and integrating DAM for the first time

ZEG set out to replace its outdated, custom-built PIM tool with a future-proof standard solution — one that still allowed sufficient room for customization. At the same time, the company wanted to introduce a fully-featured digital asset management solution to handle its product imagery for the first time.

The choice fell on Akeneo Serenity Edition, and — based on its proven integration — on TESSA DAM. The brief to EIKONA Media: connect both systems seamlessly, map ZEG's complex data model, and build a retailer self-service portal.

Challenge

Complex system landscape and individual retailer requirements

One of the biggest challenges in the project was integrating the new PIM and DAM solution into ZEG's existing system landscape — a highly complex environment due to the many interconnected systems and processes.

Particularly demanding was the data model: each of the 150+ affiliated retailers may require its own product descriptions and copy, tailored to their positioning and target audience. This model had to be carefully mapped in Akeneo without increasing the maintenance burden for the ZEG central team.

Solution

TESSA DAM + Akeneo PIM: the Perfect Match

EIKONA Media implemented Akeneo Enterprise on-premises as the new PIM system, connected to TESSA DAM via the Asset Integration Tool (AIT). The certified connector ensures that product images from TESSA are visible directly on the Akeneo product record — and conversely, that product data remains accessible within the DAM context. Both systems share a single data foundation: no manual reconciliation, no media breaks.

Retailer self-service with TESSA BrandHub

Through TESSA BrandHub, affiliated retailers gain access to their own self-service portal — current product images, catalogs, and marketing materials always available in the required format, always reflecting the latest content from ZEG headquarters. This significantly reduces the volume of individual requests the central team has to handle.

Daniel Hülsmeyer

Chief Innovation Officer

ZEG IT-Service GmbH

The Asset Integration Tool is an invaluable aid

The TESSA DAM with the Asset Integration Tool (AIT) is an invaluable tool for ZEG's e-commerce. With AIT, we can efficiently integrate and manage our extensive image material from various sources and automatically link it to the right products. This means higher quality website content, more sales and happier employees. A real win-win situation!

Conclusion

The consistent connection of PIM and DAM has delivered measurable results at ZEG. New models reach retailers faster, image quality has improved, and the retailer network is largely self-sufficient — with minimal effort required from headquarters.