Performance Health: catalog and sales-sheet automation with Pagination

Founded in 1918, Performance Health is a global manufacturer and distributor of medical and physical therapy supplies. It has manufacturing locations across the U.S. and distributes its products to more than 100 countries through 500 partners.

The company offers a wide selection of over 20,000 products for hospitals, long-term care facilities, rehabilitation centers, athletic programs, and retail and e-commerce channels.

In a quickly changing marketplace, Performance Health identified the need to streamline the production of marketing collaterals. Therefore, Performance Health turned to Pagination database publisher to automate the production of catalogs and product sales sheets. Their solution strengthened the connection between print and e-commerce, providing customers with an enriched sales experience.

The challenge: streamlining catalog and sell-sheet production

Performance Health faced a key challenge:

• Streamlining multi-version catalog and sell-sheet production: With more than 20,000 SKUs and frequent assortment changes, catalogs were assembled manually. This manual process was time-consuming, especially when it came to keeping the documents aligned with the e-commerce platform. Performance Health needed a catalog maker that could automate these tasks and improve efficiency.

Pagination’s solution: catalog and product sheet automation

Pagination addressed Performance Health’s challenges with a comprehensive solution that combined automated catalog production and sell-sheet generation. By integrating structured data with flexible InDesign templates, the system gave Performance Health full control over content, layout, and distribution – without the repetitive manual work.

Automated catalog creation

Performance Health now generates its 800+ pages catalogs directly from structured data. The process begins with an export from NetSuite that is then enriched with an additional file dedicated to product categorization. This second file enables marketers to define the precise order of categories and subcategories for each catalog edition. Meanwhile, the NetSuite dataset remains the “single source of truth” for product information. Thus, the company can maintain consistency across all materials while retaining the flexibility to adapt catalog navigation to the needs of different channels or customer groups.

Pagination manages this complexity by enabling catalogs to be saved as separate cloud-based projects. Each project can include customized front and back covers, a category-ordering file tailored to the target audience, and specific settings for indices and pagination.

When product data changes, the team simply refreshes the datasets and regenerates the document in minutes – no need to rebuild the InDesign template or manually adjust layouts. This approach provides Performance Health with a fast, reliable, and scalable method for maintaining multiple catalog versions across its distribution network.

Key features of the catalog automation process include:

• Two catalog layouts for different needs: The company can choose between a regular layout and a compact one that reduces page count while maintaining readability. Both rely on the same design system, ensuring consistency.
• Dynamic index: Pagination automatically generates a category index and, if desired, an alphabetical index at the end of the book listing all products with page numbers.
• Auto break for flexible pagination: Users can decide whether each new category should start on a fresh page for clarity, or flow continuously to minimize the overall size of the catalog.
• Data-driven product layout: Each product is displayed with SKU, color options, and description. Icons- automatically colored or greyed out based on product data – indicate product status, such as new, out of stock, or highlighted features.
• Automatic image integration: Product images are pulled directly from the website through links in the dataset. This avoids manual image placement and ensures catalogs always use the latest visuals.
  

As a result, Performance Health can now produce multiple catalog versions tailored to distributors, retail partners, or clinical buyers.

Automated sell-sheet generation

Alongside catalogs, Performance Health needed a fast way to create professional product sell sheets that could be shared with distributors, buyers, and healthcare providers. Pagination delivered a parallel workflow dedicated to this need.

A separate dataset feeds into predefined templates, producing one PDF per product automatically. Marketers only need to choose the template style – single-image or multi-image- while Pagination handles the rest.

Each sell sheet includes:

• Brand identity and product description: Clear messaging about the product and its positioning.
• Key features and benefits: Highlighted in a consistent design to make technical information easy to understand.
• Detailed specifications: A structured table with SKUs, attributes, and variations.
• Automated QR codes: Each sheet features a QR code generated automatically. When scanned, it takes buyers to the corresponding e-commerce page for pricing, stock availability, and related products.

This process not only saves time but also strengthens the connection between offline and online channels. Sales teams can share sell sheets knowing that customers are only a scan away from the live product page, where they can complete their purchase or request more information.

Together, these two workflows allow Performance Health to maintain consistency across thousands of SKUs, ensure perfect alignment with the e-commerce platform, and significantly reduce production effort. The company now has a scalable, data-driven publishing system that keeps pace with its complex, global product portfolio.

Results and benefits

Partnering with Pagination brought a major transformation to Performance Health’s catalog and sell-sheet production workflow. The automation capabilities provided by Pagination’s catalog software addressed the company’s need for speed and consistency – critical in a healthcare and consumer market where product updates, availability, and compliance information must always be up to date.

• Responding to market dynamics with speed and precision: By automating catalog creation with Pagination’s data-driven workflow and flexible InDesign templates, Performance Health reduced the time required to produce and update these essential documents. Updates to SKUs, images, and product attributes flow directly from NetSuite exports into layouts, allowing the team to generate new editions in minutes. 

• Empowering the team: The user-friendly system simplified catalog production, reducing reliance on manual InDesign work and specialized design expertise. Marketing and sales staff can now create and manage projects directly in the Pagination platform, saving customized versions for distributors, healthcare providers, or retail partners. 

• Eliminating errors and enhancing customer trust: With Pagination’s automated system, the risk of human error in catalog and sell-sheet production has been minimized. Product information is drawn directly from NetSuite and enriched with controlled ordering files, ensuring data consistency and accuracy across every edition. 

• Elevating the customer journey: The ability to automatically generate QR codes on sell sheets and link them directly to the corresponding online product pages significantly improves the buying journey. Customers move seamlessly from print to web, where they can explore detailed product information, confirm availability, and place orders. consistent, reliable access to information wherever they engage.

Key takeaways: the impact of catalog automation in healthcare and consumer markets

Performance Health’s success with Pagination highlights how catalog automation can transform operations in complex industries with large, constantly changing product assortments. By automating the production of catalogs and sell sheets, healthcare and consumer product companies can:

• Increase efficiency by drastically reducing production time and freeing resources for higher-value activities.
• Improve accuracy through data-driven workflows that eliminate manual errors.
• Strengthen customer trust with consistently reliable product and pricing information.
• Enhance the customer journey by connecting print documents directly to e-commerce platforms.

For organizations looking to modernize their publishing workflows, Pagination offers a complete InDesign automation solution. Whether you need a catalog maker  to handle thousands of SKUs or guidance on how to make a catalog more effectively, our platform provides the tools to create professional, data-driven documents at scale.

Ready to unlock the benefits of automation for your catalogs and sell sheets? Contact Pagination today or watch our demo to learn more.