Centric Planning Bolsters REPLAY’s Growth & Data Visibility

“Our Centric Planning implementation is part of a global digital transformation, and we are thrilled with the visibility and data management that we now have,” says Paolo Pietrobon, CIO at REPLAY. “We needed to streamline digital solutions and business processes for our global teams to support strategic decision-making, campaign analysis and in-season reactivity to identify, and take advantage of opportunities for our wholesale clients.”

Since adopting Centric Planning™ in 2019, REPLAY has achieved phenomenal results with a unified vision of data across the company. They have reinvented their sales planning, management and forecasting activities. Time spent on sales analysis has decreased by 10%, budget preparation time has been cut in half, and time to market has been reduced by one to two weeks. Centric Planning has also bolstered REPLAY’s double-digit sales growth.

Prior to finding Centric Planning, REPLAY had been looking for a digital solution to empower their sales teams to grow the wholesale business globally, while maintaining their strong positions in Europe and Italy.

Familiar with the lightning-fast pace of the fashion industry after 40 years as an iconic denim brand, REPLAY knew they needed to speed time to market. Valuable time was being lost because teams did not have access to real-time data and they were using tools like email and Excel to share information, analyze performance, plan sales campaigns and track budgets. Data reliability was also an enormous challenge as it was being collected and filtered through disparate tools.

“Fashion is a fast-moving industry and to better anticipate our wholesale customer needs, speed time to market and drive growth, we needed to streamline systems and processes,” says Monica Frattin, Business Strategy Director at REPLAY. “With Centric Planning, we have the tools we need for our sales team and partners to be more efficient, to support rapid strategic decision-making, and to have full visibility of seasonal performance and budgets. Having the same tools available for our teams is critical when you are expanding into new markets.”

Italian Heritage, International Style

Established in 1981, Fashion Box S.p.A. is a leading international company in the denim sector. The Italian Group, which is based in Asolo (Treviso) creates, promotes and distributes men’s, women’s and children’s casual wear, accessories and footwear. It trades under the brands REPLAY, REPLAY & SONS and WE ARE REPLAY.

REPLAY is an Italian denim and smart casual-wear brand that has developed and evolved along this theme since its debut, taking the best of the past and giving it a contemporary twist.

The company’s mission has always been to offer the best in innovative style, characteristic Italian design and superior quality products. Currently, REPLAY distributes 70% of its products in Europe, 10% in Italy and 20% in the Middle East, the Americas and Africa. 70% of their business is wholesale distribution, with customers including multi-brand department stores, independent boutiques and distribution networks. The remaining 30% of their business is through outlets and E-commerce.

“Our goal is to maintain our strong positions in Europe and Italy while increasing our market share globally,” shares Frattin. “To achieve that, we need to be prepared, to be current and have access to real-time information.”

Streamlined Planning Solution Equals Powerful Analytics and Business Growth

The REPLAY team is vast including a corporate team, country managers and local sales managers who deal directly with wholesale customers from department stores to boutiques. Centric Planning is the collaborative solution connecting all teams and is used for pre-season analysis, seasonal budgeting, pricing, revenue forecasting and customer strategies.

Top line priorities for REPLAY were to speed planning and in-season sales campaign management in order to achieve budget goals.

“Before Centric Planning, everything was stored and shared in Excel and email and it wasn’t efficient,” says Pietrobon.

Centric Planning has empowered REPLAY to take advantage of automated suggestions based on historical wholesale customer data and easily compare scenarios for more effective decision-making. Sales teams can help customers forecast real demand to optimize inventory, crunch numbers to plan accurately, get the right product to the right place at the right time, and take collective data-driven decisions to speed time to market.

“Centric Planning is so simple for our sales team to use, and the analytics are powerful,” explains Pietrobon. “Our teams have the ability to see customers’ order history and performance, analyze and steer sales campaigns strategically, and react quickly with real-time data.”

Because everything is updated in real-time, sales orders and planning can be changed on a dime to respond to market opportunities and risks. The sales teams are empowered to do what they do best, resulting in massive time savings and contributing to increased sales and growth.

An Innovation-Driven Strategic Partnership

REPLAY selected Centric for its reliability, ease of use and integration, personalised approach and deep fashion industry expertise. Because REPLAY has a continuously evolving sales team, high user adoption rates and an intuitive interface were essential.

“We found that the Centric team was open to configuring a solution suitable for our specific needs,” explains Pietrobon. “The most important deciding factor for us in choosing a partner was the people you work with and their capability and drive to find solutions to solve your particular issues.”

REPLAY’s Centric Planning implementation was successfully rolled out in six months – on time, on scope and on budget – and the entire REPLAY global sales team is using the system. The Centric team worked closely with REPLAY on the implementation using an iterative, agile approach. “We went through the process step by step and evolved the system to meet our needs,” says Pietrobon. “The Centric team examined all aspects of our business, the structure of data, functionality and hierarchy of need for specific information.”

Centric Planning has added significant bench strength when it comes to REPLAY’s analytics. “Centric Planning is integrated with Power BI and enables us to control and monitor our wholesale customer’s needs,” says Frattin. “With real-time data and analytics, we can easily see order histories and identify gaps and opportunities. Centric has dramatically improved our ability to manage product sourcing and pricing and solidified our partnerships with customers.”

Rossano Cosci, General Manager at REPLAY adds, “With Centric Planning, we are able to strategically plan our sales campaigns and to efficiently steer sales execution. This is key to capture all market opportunities and to ensure brand consistency.”

With 100 team members at REPLAY now working fully in Centric Planning and ‘speaking the same language’, the brand is looking forward to achieving global growth goals. Centric’s flexibility and scalability is an asset to REPLAY’s strategy, and they know they have a long-term partnership with Centric.

“The Centric team was always available to resolve issues during the agile implementation and were proactive in exploring features that would get us closer to our business goals,” shares Pietrobon. “It is not common to find partners that are so responsive and available to collaborate. It is a great relationship, and we can always count on Centric.”