October 18th, 2023

Free Country Eliminates Process Chaos with Centric PLM

Outdoor apparel company taps Centric PLM for a single source of truth to streamline product development

CAMPBELL, Calif., October 19, 2023 – Centric Software®, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, is pleased to announce that Free Country, the outdoor apparel company has selected 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.

Founded in 1990 and based in New York City, Free Country is all about the outdoors. Their mission is to provide amazing products at an incredible value. The men’s and women’s styles are designed with performance fabrics, functionality, versatility and comfort for every day, from walking the dog to hiking some trails or skiing the slopes.

Senior Director Production & Technical at Free Country, Kimberly Fornari, describes the state of the company with respect to product development and production. “We had the information, but we didn’t have it all in one place; it started to become very time consuming for the teams to obtain the information fast and consistently. The more we grew as a company, the more we realized we really need to have a central location for our tech packs and libraries to improve accuracy and efficiency.”

“Having to sift through data causes second guessing and you want to be able to have your style information in one place. It is a challenge with over 100 styles,“ Fornari says. “Now all product details for a style can be in one place and as our style count grows and the company grows—we have a great template and a great reference to work with.” She continues, “You’re only as good as the information you pass to a factory and we needed to do a better job of that.”

There were a number of reasons that Free Country chose Centric Software. Fornari says, “Centric PLM was the most user friendly. It is web based. It is geared toward both production and design. In my previous life, I worked on many PLM systems that were predominantly geared towards tech but weren’t really user friendly for production or design. We found from evaluating other companies that Centric was the one where we could have a happy medium of both.”

Fornari likens their business to a seasonless company. “We don’t have cut off dates the way other companies do. Bulk buys can run for four to five months a season and we would not refuse an order, we just make it happen. So we’re constantly moving all the time; if we had to back track, double check product details, we wanted to be able to do that faster and trust how we house the information. There was just no good way to keep our history. That was really the icing on the cake to decide to go with Centric PLM. Being able to have one centralized place to go for data whether it is current or historical—we wanted to work smarter, not harder.”

Free Country is looking forward to having all product data in a single repository as well as organized material libraries, with fabrics and trim together and accessible. Another plus is that sustainable materials can be tagged in the system. Says Fornari, “The attribute libraries are going to be really cool for us—we can make sure that whatever fabric or style has special attributes/features, the history of what we decided will be there and act as a reminder.”

Fabrice Canonge, President of Centric Software says, “We are delighted that Free Country, a respected outdoor company that produces high quality, affordable clothing for outside adventures, has chosen Centric PLM. It enables design through to production, streamlining their business and setting them up for the future.”

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Free Country (www.freecountry.com)

Ira Schwartz, Founder & CEO of Free Country, had the idea for our brand in the Colorado Rockies and it came to life in New York City in 1990. Active and outdoor looks is in our DNA, it’s what inspired and started this company more than 30 years ago, long before the word “athleisure” existed and before the outdoors became trendy. Our story doesn’t need to be reinvented to hit a new trend; it is who we are.

The outdoors belongs to all of us. We want to give everyone the freedom to belong outside, no matter where adventure takes them. It doesn’t cost anything to walk or hike a beautiful trail and the apparel to do this regardless of the weather should not cost a fortune. That is why it is our mission to provide amazing products at an incredible value.

Our styles are designed with performance fabrics, functionality, versatility, and comfort to be used every day! Whether it’s walking the dog, hiking some trails, or skiing the slopes, discover your Free Country your way! #OutsideIsOurs