20 November, 2023

Design Studio Vies for Visibility with Centric PLM

Sri Lankan fashion apparel manufacturer adopts PLM to digitalize core business processes.

CAMPBELL, Calif., November 21, 2023 – Centric Software®, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, is pleased to announce that Design Studio, a Sri Lankan fashion apparel manufacturer predominantly catering to UK, European & US high fashion brands has chosen Centric PLM™ to drive efficiency and growth. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, price and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home décor, consumer electronics, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Established in 2002, Design Studio originated as an apparel sourcing hub based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Today, the company has grown to be one of the leading fashion manufacturers, catering to womenswear brands on the British, European and American high streets. The family-owned company now boasts in-house production capabilities across 7 facilities spanning 3 continents and a workforce of 3,700 individuals.

Navidu Samarakkodi, Director for Technology, Strategy & Transformation at Design Studio narrates how they came around adopting PLM. “We find it’s the perfect time when the economy is a bit slow, to divert our attention towards optimizing the way we work and getting the right tools in place to digitally transform the business. We started by redefining a business capability model for Design Studio, then looked at industry peers to see what tools they’re using. We soon realized PLM is definitely one of the tools we need, going beyond your traditional ERP.”

The company struggled with information scattered across different applications such as emails, spreadsheets and chat groups. There was also a lot of time wasted on manual processes that could be digitalized, such as sampling – or even generating reports directly at a style level, regardless of the various color, size, destination and fit combinations that make up the SKUs for that style. After a thorough RFP process, Design Studio identified Centric PLM as the ideal solution to provide a single source of truth. Having a universal platform for all product-related data provides visibility to their core business processes such as managing complex product assortments and styles, creating multi-variant Bill of Materials (BOMs), managing end-to-end sampling processes and staying on top of all costings.

Navidu cites the reasons why they chose Centric, “The team demonstrated a clear understanding of our requirements and worked closely with us to determine the modules required to achieve our commercialization goals. Their experience and know-how in complex system integration with our other business platforms were crucial. Centric’s successful track record in implementing PLM for the fashion manufacturing industry, combined with its Agile Deployment approach, were key considerations. Our users have access to the PLM system from day one, with continuous refinement throughout the project sprints. This means the implementation truly aligns with our needs, rather than having to wait many months before we can use the system.”

The company’s Sales & Marketing teams, Merchandisers, Sampling & Garment Technology teams, Industrial Engineers, Technical teams and Leadership teams are all set to use Centric PLM. However, its impact goes far beyond. “The product data generated within PLM like style specifications, gradings & measurements, fabric & trim requirements, critical path information, supplier quotes and upcharges also concern our back-end users. Ultimately, our Manufacturing, Warehousing, Logistics and Finance teams end up becoming secondary consumers of the PLM data through ERP integration – it really has a company-wide impact,” shares Navidu.

Chamila Samarakkodi, Founder and Managing Director at Design Studio says, “We want to achieve greater end-to-end visibility, cut down wastages and optimize profitability—things that we expect by digitalizing our operations. We believe Centric can make that a reality, and the implementation team has been fantastic to work with so far. They demonstrate a deep understanding of the industry, which helps us see eye-to-eye and expedite project delivery.”

President of Centric Software, Fabrice Canonge says, “We are honored that Design Studio, a family-owned fashion manufacturer cementing their legacy in the industry, has chosen Centric PLM to amplify their digital transformation. We’re eager to witness the collaboration’s remarkable value for their company and customers.”

Learn more about Centric solutions.

See Centric solutions in action at NRF 2024, Booth #6257

Request a demo

Design Studio (https://designstudiolk.com/) Design Studio are a leading family-owned fashion manufacturer headquartered in Sri Lanka, with in-house production capabilities spanning 7 facilities across 3 continents. Our experience dates back over two decades to when we first began as an apparel sourcing hub based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2002, with a little over three employees. Since then, our business has continued to evolve through innovation, learning, and increased exposure to multiple markets and product segments. Today, we are proud to offer an end-to-end service along every part of the product lifecycle, as the supplier of choice for high-end ladieswear, with a strength of over 3,700 skilled members in our family. We continue to be the magic behind bestselling pieces for numerous much-loved global brands, producing dresses, jackets, blouses, trousers, and more. Our approach is founded on continuous investment in our business and teams, the value we place on strategic assets and partnerships across the value chain, and our quintessentially Sri Lankan sense of resilience no matter the challenge—giving us a strong culture of adaptability and flexibility. This is all underpinned by robust financial management, up-to-date policies and procedures, and fit-for-purpose technology enablement. We are passionate about delivering sustainably manufactured clothing following the highest ethical & compliance standards, with exceptional levels of client satisfaction.