March 4th, 2019

BOGNER Hits the Slopes with Centric PLM

CAMPBELL, Calif., March 5, 2019 – BOGNER, the leading German skiwear and outerwear company, has successfully gone live with Centric Software’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to fashion, retail, footwear, outdoor, luxury and consumer goods companies to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

BOGNER was founded in 1932 by champion skier Willy Bogner Sr. and his wife Maria. The Munich-based ski apparel company was successful from its early days, outfitting the German ski team in the 1936 Winter Olympics. Bogner’s son, Willy Bogner Jr., followed in his father’s footsteps as a competitive skier and took over at BOGNER in 1977. Today, BOGNER is renowned for its high-tech skiwear for professional and leisure skiers as well as luxury winter apparel lines.

As Stephanie Eibich, Brand Intelligence at BOGNER explains, BOGNER’s growth and expansion into new product categories over the years generated unmanageable amounts of data, and it became difficult to get a clear picture of what was happening with products in development.

“We didn’t have a PLM or PDM system before, so our processes lacked transparency,” she says. “Product information was scattered between our ERP system, emails and Word or Excel documents. It wasn’t efficient or user-friendly, because people didn’t know where to find information and the product development team couldn’t collaborate effectively.”

BOGNER assessed several PLM vendors with the help of an external consultant before choosing Centric Software.

As Eibich says, “We finally decided on Centric PLM because it has out-of-the-box functionality and can connect and standardize our operations across a variety of areas, including design, merchandising, materials management, sourcing and sales. It’s a modern, web-based system. As our designers use Adobe Illustrator, the Adobe Connect function in Centric is very important.”

A large number of BOGNER’s employees in Germany now use Centric PLM in their day-to-day work. Just four weeks after the implementation, the company was seeing results.

“We’ve had very enthusiastic feedback and everyone is saying work is so much easier with Centric,” says Eibich. “People across the development teams from designers to pattern-makers are comfortable working with the system and tell us how much it suits them. It’s so much more transparent and efficient and it’s also bringing people closer together in the company as they collaborate within the system.”

“Our first goal was to have more time for the product. Since we are a luxury and outdoor company making high-end products, we need to ensure that they are good quality. We are regaining time that people spent looking for information. We’re communicating faster and connecting the whole development of a style worldwide.”

As Eibich concludes, “We had a big team from Centric working with us on this project, as we decided to deploy all modules at once and we have a great relationship. They are always available to answer questions. There’s a vision in BOGNER of how we want to build the company and the team from Centric has worked with us to configure a PLM solution that supports our future.”

“We are delighted that BOGNER’s Centric PLM project is already reporting significant benefits,” says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. “BOGNER is a legendary German skiwear and luxury brand, renowned for its quality and heritage. It is a pleasure to work with the BOGNER team and partner with them on their digital transformation.”

BOGNER (www.bogner.com)

A passion for sport and fashion, comfortable elegance and an extremely refined feel for quality – this is the formula that has been ensuring the success of the Bogner brand for more than 85 years. The long-established German company is considered the inventor of sporty fashion. The brand was born as a small production facility in a Munich city center backyard in 1932; over the course of the decades it has evolved from its humble but ambitious beginnings into the international label with the capital signature B and is now synonymous with luxury sports fashion. The company was founded by Willy Bogner, Sen., and his wife Maria; today it is owned by Willy Bogner, Jun., and managed by CEO Andreas Baumgärtner. Thanks to the close synergy between its legendary heritage and its use of pioneering, functional high-tech materials Bogner is well on the way to becoming an international market leader in the sports fashion segment.

Centric Software (www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley and offices in trend capitals around the world, Centric Software provides a Digital Transformation Platform for the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor and consumer goods. Centric Visual Innovation Platform (VIP) is a visual, fully digital collection of boards for touch-based devices like iPad, iPhone and large-scale, touch-screen televisions. Centric VIP transforms decision making and automates execution to truly collapse time to market and distance to trend. Centric’s 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 SMB 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 in 2018 and Frost & Sullivan’s Global Retail, Fashion, and Apparel PLM Product Differentiation Excellence Award in 2016 and 2012. Red Herring named Centric to its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015, and 2016.

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