September 13th, 2023

Centric Software Acquires AI-Powered Predictive Pricing Solution, aifora

Best-in-class solution empowers brands and retailers to substantially increase revenues and margins while dramatically reducing discounting

CAMPBELL, Calif., September 14, 2023 – Centric Software®, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, is excited to announce the acquisition of aifora™, the AI-powered price and inventory optimization solution. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, price and sell products such as apparel, fashion, home, footwear, sporting goods, consumer electronics, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Founded in Düsseldorf, Germany in 2017 by Thomas Jesewski and David Krings, aifora is an AI-driven, best-in-class predictive pricing retail automation platform that enables brands and retailers to achieve continuous growth and profitability improvement through data-driven pricing, inventory management and allocation practices.

As changing consumer demand as well as economic and market conditions force retail to adapt, retailers globally are turning to artificial intelligence and predictive pricing to optimize their pricing strategies, maximize margins, increase revenues, and improve competitiveness. Although predictive pricing is an emerging concept, it has already demonstrated its value, by potentially increasing revenues 6-18%, improving margins 4-15% and reducing discounting up to 60%.

“Retailers are unable to respond effectively to today’s data-driven world by using spreadsheets and manual methods to optimize initial price, promotions and markdowns – especially when they have to do it across multiple channels and countries for thousands of SKUs,” explains David Krings, CTO & Cofounder of aifora. “That’s where aifora comes in, giving retailers interactive insights and guidance to predict future demand and replenishment needs so that they can price more profitably.”

Focused on the needs of trend-driven, highly seasonal goods such as fashion, apparel, footwear and home, aifora’s easily configured, easy to use SaaS platform offers predictive algorithms and machine learning models to interactively optimize pricing across various stages of the retail lifecycle. aifora’s solutions also enhance inventory allocation and replenishment, enabling businesses to optimize supply chains and reduce overstock or stockouts to align with sustainability initiatives.

German fashion brand and retailer Wöhrl has been an aifora customer since 2021.

Thomas Rothe, COO of WÖHRL, says, “aifora has enabled us to predict consumer demand more accurately so that we can produce the right amount of inventory and price competitively to improve the rate of sell-through at full price. With the power of AI, we can make better decisions and understand our pricing in a way that would be impossible using manual methods.”

Like Centric Software, aifora has developed solutions based on rich industry experience and best practices. aifora complements the Centric family of solutions, including flagship solution Centric PLM^TM, Centric Planning^TM, Centric Market Intelligence^TM and the innovative visual collaboration platform, Centric Visual Boards^TM. Centric Software will seamlessly integrate aifora with existing solutions to provide significant improvements in revenue, product margin and inventory management for brands and retailers.

“Centric Software and aifora both deeply understand the needs of brands and retailers, and we highly attuned to the challenges faced by the industry,” says Thomas Jesewski, CEO and Co-Founder of aifora. “With Centric solutions and aifora combined, brands and retailers will have access to an unprecedented suite of powerful tools to make informed decisions, leverage actionable insights and improve profitability.”

“We would like to warmly welcome aifora to the Centric family as we combine forces to meet the needs of consumer goods companies,“ says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “Together, we will drive innovation and continue to lead the way in delivering cutting-edge solutions. aifora and Centric share the same innovation vision and the same customer-focused culture. We look forward to innovating together and integrating our solutions to continue to delight and add exceptional value to our customers.”

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aifora (www.aifora.com/)

The aifora retail automation platform enables you to predict how much your customers will buy, when, where and at what price. With a variety of AI-based solutions for pricing and inventory management, you are able to comprehensively optimize your merchandise management and automate all underlying processes. Moreover, we believe in the data sharing economy and strive to make data available and actionable for all brands and retailers so that they can take informed business decisions, create outstanding consumer experiences, improve profitability, and grow faster. Are you ready to transform shared data into powerful insights? Our SaaS services are easy to integrate, highly customizable, deliver quick return on investment and can be used independently or jointly. We serve international brands and retailers of all sizes on all channels.

Centric Software® (www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a product concept to launch platform for consumer goods such as fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor, consumer electronics, cosmetics & personal care and food & beverage. Centric Software’s flagship Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Centric PLM™, delivers enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, quality and product portfolio optimization innovations specifically for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric Visual Boards™ offer highly visual, touch-screen experiences for collaboration and decision-making. Centric Planning™ is an innovative, cloud-native, augmented-intelligence solution delivering end-to-end retail planning to maximize retail and wholesale business performance.  Centric Market Intelligence™, is an AI-driven market insight platform for data-informed decision-making on pricing and product assortments to maximize revenue and margins. Among many other market-driven innovations, Centric Software is widely known for its connectivity to dozens of other enterprise systems, including ERP, DAM, PIM, e-com and more, in addition to creative tools such as Adobe® Illustrator, a host of 3D CAD connectors and sustainability tools, such as HIGG. Centric Software has the highest user adoption rate, customer satisfaction rate and fastest time to value in the industry.

Centric Software is a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions.

Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition, including being named by Red Herring to its Top 100 Global list several times. Centric Software also received five excellence awards from Frost & Sullivan over the past decade and 4 excellence awards from Just Style.

Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software, Inc. in the US and other countries. Centric PLM, Centric Planning, Centric Market Intelligence and Centric Visual Boards are trademarks of Centric Software, Inc. All third-party trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. 