20 November, 2024

Boot Barn Steps into Centric PLM and Centric Visual Boards to Boost Efficiency

Country-western retailer adds modern PLM and visual assortment boards to replace manual merchandising methods

CAMPBELL, Calif., November 21, 2024 – Centric Software® is pleased to announce that Boot Barn has selected Centric PLM™ and Centric Visual Boards™ to drive efficiency and enable rapid growth. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, footwear, home and related goods like cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Founded in 1978 and based in Irvine, California, Boot Barn is the largest country western and work wear retailer in the US, with over 425 retail stores in 46 states. The chain is growing, buoyed by their 12 private label brands. The goal is to continue its 15% annual increase of new store openings and to have a presence in every state.

Rapid growth is one of the compelling reasons that Boot Barn sought a PLM solution. Its private label/exclusive brands (EB) business burgeoned to over $600 million — 38% of total revenue — in a relatively short time period.

Julie Ting, VP of Information Technology at Boot Barn notes that the company used to carry almost all third-party or national brands. They then started up their EB division. “As you can imagine, when you have only a handful of styles and a couple million dollars of sales, everything can be maintained manually as far as designing, tech packs and communication with vendors. We were very old-school: emails and sending spreadsheet files back and forth. But as our EB business continued to grow, then ultimately explode, it became too arduous to operate that way at scale. Now with thousands of styles and millions of units of inventory, it’s much more difficult to do that.”

Boot Barn launched a search for a PLM platform over the course of a few years. They evaluated the main players; what the product offer was, the profile in the market, what clients those vendors had and who could support the complexity of Boot Barn’s business. Ting had experienced Centric PLM in a different role 10 years prior. She makes an interesting observation “Experiencing Centric PLM 10 years ago has given me a front row seat to witness its remarkable evolution and ongoing innovation”.

Another addition since the early years is Centric Visual Boards. Ting describes the current state of assortment planning. “Our design, merchandising and buying teams are very visual. We currently do assortment planning through Excel spreadsheets but try to layer in the visual element and it’s really cumbersome. It is an old-school paper doll model. But there is also the KPI-driven element that the teams must consider.

“Centric Visual Assortment Boards is an eloquent easy-to-use solution that is integrated to PLM. It’s intuitive. To be able to slice and dice how the product is being offered, you can see how it could roll! Centric Visual Boards meets the teams where they are in their process. They are very excited about how dynamic and user-friendly the platform is.”

Because Boot Barn product assortments consist of clothing and footwear for workwear, there are UL certifications and testing that must be met and maintained. Government departments that oversee imported leathers must also be satisfied. Ting shares, “The certifications and licensing have to follow the product and the POs from the manufacturing locations into the US to ensure everything is in order. They need to be available readily. Right now managing and tracking all of that is very manual for our expanding exclusive brands business, so we are eager to manage that function in PLM.”

Centric PLM will also add granularity to costing to alleviate some tariff pressure. Ting shares, “We use thousands of spreadsheets and emails so we can’t easily see costs. Having visibility into the details of our BOMs with Centric PLM will result in better costing since we’ll be able to source particular components across our hundreds of global vendors.”

“Using Centric PLM and Centric Visual Boards together will be a lot more efficient and productive. There will be a reduction in the number of interactions and emails across the board.” Ting continues, “We signed an extended contract because we really believe in the product, the organization and in the long-term relationship with Centric.”

Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software says, “We are thrilled that Boot Barn has placed their trust in us. Our industry experts will impart best practices to increase productivity in this exciting phase of growth. We know the merchandising, sourcing and planning teams will be delighted with the unique, visual decision-making power that Centric Visual Boards bring to the table.”

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