“We went from chaos to control.” That’s how Chris Teer, Director of E-commerce, Marketing & AI Technologies at Stanley Black & Decker, described their transformation during a recent webinar with Syndigo and Cloudinary.
The session explored how the company addressed the growing complexity of managing product assets at scale across brands, regions, and channels by integrating Syndigo’s Product Information Management (PIM) with Cloudinary Assets, our API-first DAM.
The result? Consistent, trustworthy product data aligned with automatically optimized product assets that meet the requirements of e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, and resellers.
“Connecting Syndigo’s PIM with Cloudinary Assets, Stanley Black & Decker dramatically improved how their teams find, publish, and optimize product content.”
Stanley Black & Decker is one of the largest tool and hardware companies in the world, managing over 50 brands and thousands of SKUs in 60+ countries. Operating at such a grand scale brings with it an avalanche of product images, videos, 360-degree spinsets, 3D renders, and PDFs, each with its own requirements for formats, platforms, and metadata.
“We had content scattered across cloud drives, SharePoint, even plugged-in USBs,” Teer said. “It was legacy DAMs, siloed PIMs, nothing was organized or connected, and there was very little metadata to tie it all together.”
This resulted in the chaos Teer mentioned. Long lead times for even simple asset updates, a dependency on graphic design teams for every variant, and frequent issues with publishing accurate, optimized content across platforms like Amazon, Google, and their e-commerce sites.
Stanley Black & Decker’s transformation began with a broader PIM initiative led by Syndigo. That effort opened the door to integrating Cloudinary as their advanced DAM, a move that simplified asset management and automated several key tasks that had previously required manual effort.
“We initially moved to Syndigo to have an enterprise-wide PIM,” said Teer. “During our conversations, they shared that they were partnering with Cloudinary on an advanced DAM integration. That’s when everything clicked for us.”
With Cloudinary handling asset storage, metadata tagging, and AI-powered transformations (e.g., background removal, cropping, resizing, etc.) and Syndigo managing product data and syndication, the new system allowed assets to flow from upload to live product pages in minutes.
“Now, if someone updates a tag in Cloudinary, that triggers Syndigo’s flows and the asset shows up in the product catalog automatically,” Teer explained. “It’s all connected. You don’t have to wait for someone to manually move it between tools.”
The integration works by using structured metadata and file naming conventions to automate asset association and optimization. For example, using a specific filename like DEWALT_XR_impactdriver_front.jpg allows the system to parse out the brand, product, and view type without manual input. Those rules inform Cloudinary’s transformations and Syndigo’s product mapping.
“We built rules and flows that transform assets to the exact format we need for the web,” Teer said. “We don’t have to keep going back and forth with designers like we used to. It’s fast, and it’s consistent.”
Dom Rotundo, Senior Solutions Engineer at Cloudinary, emphasized that automation is the key to it all: “Whether it’s based on SKU, UPC, or a custom identifier, we use webhooks and structured metadata to sync updates instantly across platforms. It’s all listening and reacting in real time.”
The results:
- Tasks that took days or weeks, like cropping and syndicating product images now take minutes.
- Manual errors in asset assignment were virtually eliminated.
- Teams can now self-serve most image and video needs without waiting on design or development.
Technology alone wasn’t the full story. Change management played a critical role in adoption and success.
“It always starts with listening,” said Teer. “You have to understand what’s frustrating your users before you roll out a new system. And then you have to make sure it’s intuitive or they won’t use it.”
Chris Teer, Director of E-commerce, Marketing & AI Technologies at Stanley Black & Decker
Instead of throwing users into a new tool and hoping they’d adapt, Stanley Black & Decker involved stakeholders early, used prototyping, and focused on streamlining everyday workflows. “The worst thing you can do is hand someone a system that looks great on paper but is impossible to use in practice,” Teer warned. “Once trust is lost, people will go around the system and the value disappears.”
What makes this relationship unique is the clarity of purpose and measurable impact delivered by the partnership between Syndigo, Cloudinary, and Stanley Black & Decker.
Together, they’ve eliminated bottlenecks across the entire content supply chain. By linking Syndigo’s structured PIM with Cloudinary’s intelligent DAM, Stanley Black & Decker reduced asset publishing time from days or weeks to just minutes. Assets now flow from upload to live product pages automatically, optimized, tagged, and matched to the correct SKUs with minimal manual effort.
Graphic designers no longer need to manually crop or format files. Cloudinary automatically generates the right variants, removing hours of repeatable design work. As Teer put it, “We don’t go back and forth with the design team anymore. Once it’s in Cloudinary and tagged, it just works.”
Stanley Black & Decker now manages millions of assets across thousands of SKUs and 50+ brands and operates with far less manual intervention, thanks to preset rules, naming conventions, and seamless syncing between Syndigo and Cloudinary. Updated assets appear on product detail pages automatically, ensuring customers always see the most current, high-quality content.
As Teer summed up: “We love the results. And if I had one piece of advice, it’s this: Listen closely to the pain points, then design around solving those, not around what’s technically cool.”
Full webinar available here.
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