18 September, 2018

PLM Supports Conscious Fashion: ARMEDANGELS and Centric Design a Sustainable Future

Campbell, Calif., Sept 18, 2018 – Centric Software is delighted to announce the release of a success story about its customer, ARMEDANGELS.

ARMEDANGELS was founded in 2007 in Cologne, Germany. The clothing label’s philosophy focuses on promoting fair working conditions and using sustainable materials in its supply chain. With a mission to produce ‘fair fashion instead of fast fashion’, ARMEDANGELS sells a variety of apparel online for men and women, as well as through major retail stores and boutiques in six countries.

ARMEDANGELS started out making T-shirts but has considerably expanded and diversified its product collection, now releasing 4 collections per year for both their MEN and WOMEN departments. As Martin Höfeler, CEO at ARMEDANGELS says, the company needed to reappraise workflows and operations in order to keep up with the demands of success.

“In the early days, we used transparent paper for commenting on fit and measurements after fitting the products ourselves,” says Höfeler. “Employing technical product developers and designers brought a more professional and structural approach to the business.”

“However, we still had limited resources. We created structured stylesheets in Excel to promote a more organized way of working with styles, while keeping the flexibility and openness required by designers. While this gave us better structure, it also introduced additional problems.”

Höfeler also explains that ARMEDANGELS’ commitment to fair trade practices and sustainable, organic materials added another layer of complex data to its product lifecycle.

The conclusion was clear: in order to handle an expanding product range and a corresponding amount of data, ARMEDANGELS needed to invest in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution.

After careful consideration, ARMEDANGELS chose to implement Centric Software’s flagship PLM solution, Centric 8. Even from the early stages of their Centric PLM journey, ARMEDANGELS began to see results.

“Data quality has been improved significantly resulting in close to zero data mismatches while time spent updating product information across styles and seasons has been reduced by roughly 50%.” Wirtz also comments on Centric PLM’s View Definition model, “This function allows us to collect actionable insights within minutes, even our designers enjoy using it to gather overviews and this saves valuable time for everyone when preparing for meetings.”

Read the full story to learn more.

ARMEDANGELS (www.armedangels.de)

For the past 10 years, the Cologne-based label ARMEDANGELS has been proving that fashion can be done differently: ECO & FAIR. No slave wages, no chemical madness, no cheap mass production. The simple idea to print T-Shirts and gather money for charity projects by selling them turned into an enterprise that today is one of the biggest Eco & Fair fashion labels in Europe. With a team of 80 and four collections a year, ARMEDANGELS shows that sustainability and great product design do not rule each other out.

Centric Software, Inc. (www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley and offices in trend capitals around the world, Centric Software builds technologies for the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury and consumer goods. Its flagship product lifecycle management (PLM) platform, Centric 8, delivers enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, business planning, quality and collection management functionality tailored for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric Cloud packages extended PLM including innovative technology and key industry learnings tailored for small businesses.

Centric Software has received multiple industry awards, including the Frost & Sullivan Global Product Differentiation Excellence Award in Retail, Fashion and Apparel PLM. Red Herring named Centric to its Top 100 Global list in 2013 and 2015.

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