Sports apparel producer deploying fashion industry-specific solution from Intentia to reduce inventory, operating costs
Mesa, AZ — Mesa, AZ — Sports apparel company Mizuno Shanghai is set to deploy a fashion industry solution from Intentia across its entire operations in China in a bid to increase visibility into its distribution network and reduce inventory and overall operating costs.
Mizuno is a leading Japanese producer of sports gear and apparel, and its products cater to a range of sporting activities. The company is particularly well known for its house brand of sports shoes.
Mizuno's Shanghai division owns three manufacturing plants that produce sports apparel, baseball accessories and golf clubs. The office in Shanghai also is responsible for marketing and domestic sales activities in China. It currently has 300 concept outlets in China and plans to expand its operations to a total of 500 new outlets by next year.
With competition in the sporting gear and apparel industry intensifying, Mizuno Shanghai realized that to stay ahead of the competition, it had to make a technology shift. Only when it had a 360-degree view of its entire operations would the company be able to invest time, energy and capital into branding, research and development.
Under the latest deal, Mizuno will see Intentia's Movex Fashion solution deployed on the IBM iSeries platform with an eye toward streamlining key business processes in the areas of business performance measurement, supply chain management and customer relationship management across Shanghai Mizuno's operations in China.
Prior to Movex, the company had invested in a point-of-sales (POS) system that was unable to cope with the increase in sales and the company's diverse stock-keeping units. Mizuno was thus looking to invest in an integrated solution that had industry-specific functionality.
Lin Xihe, general manager of Mizuno Shanghai, said that the company sought a collaborative solution that would form the backbone of its IT infrastructure and support its need for consolidated information and plans for aggressive expansion.
"The solution should be able to evaluate our current business processes, and in turn come up with a list of improvements that need to take effect, thus enabling us to achieve our ultimate goal of expansion," Lin said, adding, "Movex was able to offer us just that."
Mizuno Shanghai embarked on a stringent evaluation process before deciding to partner with Intentia. "It was imperative that we have transparency throughout our entire distribution channel," Lin said. "We have faith that Intentia's Movex will be able to help us meet our objectives. We firmly believe this partnership will give our company the edge that we need to stay leaders in the market."
The project is scheduled to go live in November 2004.
David Hope, managing director of Intentia Asia Pacific, noted that Mizuno was joining the solution provider's existing list of customers in the region, including The TAP Group, Diadora Hong Kong, Wuxi Liutan, Wonderful Garments and Nien Hsing Textiles.
