Anyone who loves anime knows Crunchyroll, the most popular anime streaming service globally.
Beyond streaming, Crunchyroll runs a fast-moving ecommerce business selling licensed anime merchandise, from figures to apparel. To meet demand, new product drops arrive every week, with fresh SKUs constantly being added to the catalog.
Challenge: Launching hundreds of products each week with accurate, SEO-optimized content
Crunchyroll onboards hundreds of new products every week, with up to 40% arriving with no usable product data or copy. Their audience is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about anime, meaning what they put on their site has to be correct.
At this scale, the challenge wasn’t just volume or writing descriptions. The team didn’t have enough capacity to consistently launch products with complete, accurate information across data, content, SEO, and images.
This created a costly dilemma. Launch products with missing content, and they’d struggle to rank or convert. Delay launches, and products would sit idle, further driving down revenue.
Before any product could be published properly, the team first needed accurate and consistent product data, contextual knowledge about the franchise or character, and researched SEO keywords. Only then could high-quality product descriptions and images be created.
This work was entirely manual. Crunchyroll’s Lead Ecommerce Copywriter, Michael, sometimes spent up to 20 minutes per SKU manually researching SEO keywords, checking for accurate and consistent character naming, and writing descriptions largely from personal knowledge when product details were missing or scattered across systems.
Given the level of domain knowledge and precision required, it was hard to delegate or outsource any of this work.
This effort multiplied across every region Crunchyroll operated in, including France, Germany, and the UK, with each locale adding another layer of work and complexity.
An operational nightmare: Messy spreadsheets and disconnected tools
The team tried building a prioritization tracker to flag which SKUs were urgent and which could wait. In practice, the tracker quickly became a bottleneck. The sheet grew unwieldy and introduced yet another system that needed constant updating.
This sat on top of an already fragmented workflow. Product data lived across NetSuite, email, multiple Google Drives, and Slack. Descriptions had to be written separately, then copied and pasted into Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) for publishing.
Images followed a similar pattern. Though they could be bulk uploaded, if images were missing or low quality, there was little opportunity to fix them. What came in from buyers was what went live. As a result, products were often published with placeholders or no copy at all.
Traditional PIMs were too clunky. Existing AI tools lacked accuracy.
The team explored a range of solutions, from traditional PIMs to generic AI tools.
Traditional PIMs appeared too clunky and complex for their operations. The setup, additional systems, and ongoing maintenance required would have added more complexity rather than reduced manual work.
They team also experimented with AI tools like ChatGPT to generate product descriptions. But as Michael shared, “I couldn’t even entertain the idea of using it because it was so inaccurate. It would even invent details.”
For niche anime merchandise, that level of inaccuracy wasn’t acceptable. Anime fans notice even small mistakes, and publishing incorrect information would directly put Crunchyroll’s credibility and brand reputation at risk.
Solution: Hypotenuse AI — A single, unified AI platform for product data, SEO content and images
With product volume increasing week after week, Crunchyroll knew the problem would only compound. They needed a solution that could support rapid launches while maintaining accuracy, quality, and SEO.
Their goals were clear:
- Launch products faster without sacrificing quality or SEO
- Replace fragmented workflows with a single, reliable system
- Ensure complete, accurate product data across regions and channels
- Scale content and image production without losing editorial control
- Reduce manual effort across teams involved in launches
All of these goals pointed to one requirement: A single platform that could centralize and manage product data, content, SEO, and images at scale. That led Crunchyroll to Hypotenuse AI, fundamentally changing how products are prepared and published.
AI powering product readiness from prioritization to approval
On Hypotenuse AI, products are automatically prioritized and surfaced based on what needs review, completion, or approval.
The team can clearly see what requires attention. From a single platform, they prepare products for launch by generating SEO keywords and SEO-ready content in bulk, reviewing every item for accuracy, and publishing approved listings without switching between tools.
Product visuals are no longer a bottleneck. Hypotenuse AI standardizes and upgrades product imagery by cleaning up backgrounds, generating lifestyle visuals, and improving image quality, so products go live with visuals that clearly communicate what’s being sold and give shoppers confidence to buy.
As a result, every product now goes live complete and polished from day one.
“A lot of tools promise to boost productivity, but Hypotenuse AI has literally tripled our team's output, and with better quality! We were onboarding hundreds of products a week with little to no usable information, and filling in the gaps manually just wasn’t sustainable. Hypotenuse took a process we were drowning in and turned it into a scalable workflow where every PDP goes live with complete, accurate, and AEO/SEO‑ready content that drives stronger conversion performance.”
Michael, Lead Ecommerce Copywriter, Crunchyroll
Results: Faster and higher-quality launches, stronger SEO visibility, and a 46% YoY increase in conversion
With Hypotenuse AI in place, Crunchyroll was able to move from a reactive, capacity-constrained workflow to a scalable product launch operation.
- Product launches are no longer a trade-off between speed and quality. Every product goes live 3 times faster, with complete and accurate information.
- SEO keyword rankings improved by an average of 6 positions across 250 million impressions, reflecting a significant lift in organic visibility from more complete product content.
- An overall year-on-year increase in conversion rate of 46%. Clearer, more complete product pages supported stronger revenue performance.
- Operational clarity and confidence: Michael retains editorial control and reviews every product before it goes live, knowing exactly what needs to be updated and what’s pending.
Michael highlighted:
“The Hypotenuse AI team is super responsive, and the onboarding experience is better than most I’ve seen. Rather than just slideshows, the team focused on personalized, hands-on demonstrations to ensure Crunchyroll could use the platform effectively from day one.”
With day-to-day execution no longer consuming all available capacity, the team could finally step back, cut even more unnecessary work, and focus on initiatives that drove business growth.
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