28 July, 2015

Boden Chooses Centric 8 Product Lifecycle Management

LOS GATOS, Calif., July 28, 2015—Boden, the British fashion brand, has 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.

“Boden is experiencing tremendous growth. Being online has given us huge flexibility in how and where we grow and over the years, the business has evolved considerably,” says Barley. The need for new tools has been 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 has 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,” continues 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 lead to the need for different tools.”

Teams were thus faced with the challenge of how to manage it all. Everyone had been relying on spreadsheets among various other pieces of technology. It had become 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 DeploymentSM 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 states. “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.”

“We are thrilled to work with Boden,” says Chris Groves, president and CEO at Centric. “The team and the brand are a great fit for Centric and we share many of the same values, including a focus on product and innovation. We are very honored that Boden put its trust in us, and look forward to a great project.”

Centric Software, Inc. (www.centricsoftware.com)
Centric Software is a leading provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software for retail, apparel, footwear, luxury and consumer goods companies. The Centric 8 PLM suite delivers easy-to-use functionality to manage critical, inseparable business processes, including merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, business planning, quality management and collection management. Centric 8 implements and delivers value rapidly using an Agile DeploymentSM methodology. Centric received the Frost & Sullivan 2012 Global Product Differentiation Excellence Award in Retail, Fashion and Apparel Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Red Herring named Centric to its North America and Global Top 100 lists for 2013. WhichPLM recognized Centric as the overall PLM market leader for fashion in its 2012-2013 Annual Review.

Media Contacts:
North America: Mary Nowak, Talking Points Professionals, 970-416-8877, mnowak@talkingpointspro.com
Europe: Mariateresa Rubino, Simply MOD, +39 389 457 3163, mariateresarubino@simplymod.it

Centric is a registered trademark of Centric Software. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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