Remington Offers Self-Service Access to All Brand Assets Using Widen Digital Asset Management (DAM)

MADISON, WI--(Marketwired - Oct 2, 2013) - Remington Arms Company, LLC ("Remington") America's oldest gunmaker, has chosen the Widen Media Collective for its digital asset management (DAM) needs. By offering role-based access to brand assets, Remington will give employees, advertisers, sales partners and journalists the ability to download brand-approved product photos, sales sheets, video advertisements and press releases on a self-service basis.

Previously, Remington's marketing department was responsible for handling all brand asset requests from internal departments and external partners. The marketing team was inundated with these requests. By the beginning of 2013, the drain on time and resources and the inefficiency of delivering assets on a request-by-request basis had motivated the organization to find a better solution.

"The system was simply taking up too much time," said Terry Wessling, digital marketing manager at Remington. "We needed more of a self-search solution."

Remington determined that a digital asset management solution would solve their dilemma. After reviewing a number of systems, Remington chose the Widen Media Collective.

"We wanted the self-service convenience of DAM, but we also needed to control what images, videos and documents each user could see," explained Wessling. "Some assets needed to remain internal, and Widen Media Collective was the only system that offered role-based access that met our needs."

Widen DAM allowed Remington to choose which materials would be available to external users such as advertisers, buying agents, wholesalers, retailers and members of the press. This would not only protect information, but also ensure that Remington's external network used finalized and approved images, videos, product information and press releases.

Remington was also drawn to Widen DAM because of its search and metadata capabilities. For each product photo, the Marketing department could create custom metadata fields that include the correct product title, description, technical specifications and marketing language. Photos with accurate metadata could be quickly searched by keyword in the DAM system. This ensured brand consistency across all of Remington's marketing and sales channels -- especially in foreign countries, where access to brand-approved language is crucial for accurate translations.

The user base of Remington's DAM system will include everyone in the organization and a wide range of external users that work with the company's marketing and sales teams. The DAM system will store logos, product photos, sales sheets, PowerPoint presentations, video ads, magazine ads, research reports and press releases. Remington will also use Widen's API to integrate the DAM system with SAP, their main business management software platform.

"A global brand like Remington with multiple established distribution channels has asset management challenges that are not well addressed by many solutions," said Chris Rewey, sales manager at Widen. "Ease of use, granular role and permission structures, and advanced metadata capabilities like faceted searching and unlimited custom fields were key to deploying the right DAM service. Remington was looking for these and other differentiators such as high security, guaranteed uptime, a responsive implementation and support team, frequent feature enhancements, and they found them all with Widen. We're excited to have been selected from a wide field of candidate providers for all these reasons, and more."

About Remington Arms Company, LLC
Remington Arms Company, LLC, ("Remington") headquartered in Madison, N.C., designs, produces and sells sporting goods products for the hunting and shooting sports markets, as well as solutions to the military, government and law enforcement markets. Founded in 1816 in upstate New York, the Company is one of the nation's oldest continuously operating manufacturers. Remington is the only U.S. manufacturer of both firearms and ammunition products and one of the largest domestic producers of shotguns and rifles. The Company distributes its products throughout the U.S. and in over 55 foreign countries. More information about the Company can be found at www.remington.com.

About Widen Enterprises, Inc.
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Widen has honed its more than 60 years of experience in premedia services and color management specifically for assisting customers with building brand equity and supporting consistent brand representation across print and Web communications. Through its inventive suite of Web-based digital asset management applications, Widen software services provide marketing networks with real-time, Web-based access to clients' digital asset libraries, subsequently eliminating manual search and file preparation time, costs related to replacing images and videos that cannot be located, and added costs for hardware, software and upgrades. For more information, visit: http://www.widen.com.