Los Gatos, CA—August 4, 2015—Boden, a British fashion brand, selected Centric Software, Inc. to provide its product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. The London-based company will implement Centric 8 PLM, developed especially for apparel, retail, footwear, luxury and consumer goods companies, to support the growth of its international online and mail-order business, according to Neil Barley, Boden’s director of merchandising, systems and planning. Boden, founded in 1991 in the back of Johnny Boden’s flat, is known for its quintessential British style; it is still, 24 years later, extremely product-focused. The company will deploy the solution, including mobile apps, across design, development, sourcing and merchandising teams, as well as suppliers.
“Being online has given us huge flexibility in how and where we grow and, over the years, the business has evolved considerably,” said Barley. The need for new tools was in the making for several years in order to protect the company’s strong product focus, while also catering to the needs of the local markets it now serves.
“The markets we trade in are vastly different from one another; consumer tastes and seasonality vary from one region to another, which means that our product offering had to be adapted accordingly. Because we now offer more product lines, styles and sizes, our overall development process has changed. For example, merchandise and assortment planning have become more complex,” continued Barley. “This is all while maintaining our high design and quality standards, our ethical sourcing policy, our focus on product. The additional workload and complexity has led to the need for different tools.”
Teams were thus faced with the challenge of how to manage it all. Everyone was relying on spreadsheets among various other pieces of technology. It became a cumbersome way of working, and a burden to keep up with the pace of business and the flow of information.
Centric 8 PLM’s user interface, functionality and flexibility, as well as Centric’s Agile Deployment approach to getting up and running quickly, factored heavily into convincing Boden to move forward. “We look to our project to improve efficiency, give more visibility into products and better control our overall process,” Barley stated. “Our teams were impressed with Centric 8 PLM due to the user interface, flexibility and functionality. Mobility is key. Overall, we feel that it is a modern solution that will suit a modern way of working.”
