BY JORDAN K. SPEER, JESSICA BINNS,
DEENA M. AMATO-MCCOY & SARAH ROBBINS
Windblown but not bothered in Columbia Sportswear's Triteca
Softshell, featuring Omni-Wind Block, a technically advanced membrane that provides ultrabreathable wind protection -— the wind chill is kept from coming in but perspiration is allowed to escape.
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“ VF Corporation is a low-risk company,” says Terry Brown, the apparel enterprise’s director of common systems.
“We like to take risk out of the process.”
And yet Vans — an action sports-oriented apparel and footwear brand that joined the VF family in 2007 — caters to one of the most high-risk demographics out there: high-flying, fate-tempting, thrillseeking skateboarders, surfers, BMX bikers and snowboarders. Still, even these daredevils appreciate a bit of certainty when they’re shopping for their favorite Vans kicks, tees, boardshorts and more.
In recent years, Vans has grown from a U.S. brand that dominated mostly the western half of the country into a truly global brand with a burgeoning presence in Asia,
Europe and Latin America. Indeed, its newly launched partner stores in Hong Kong and
Montreal marked Vans’ first forays into Asia and Canada in 2011. Vans also opened branded stores in Chile, Mexico, Australia and India last year, and eight additional stores are planned for Brazil, Chile and Mexico by year’s end.
Clearly, the brand is keeping pace with its fast-moving customers.
In the midst of all of this growth, Vans needed to ensure it could seamlessly fulfill demand from the U.S. retail stores that account for 50 percent of its business. VF sought to improve the brand’s supply chain and accomplished this by expanding Vans’ dedicated fulfillment center from 317,000 square feet to 530,000 square feet. It also worked with Manhattan Associates to deploy warehouse management and labor management solutions, a “disruptive innovation” that has achieved notable results, says Brown.
“Vans are a high-demand product,” explains Brown. “The brand survived low accuracy and low shipping rates. But retail customers got frustrated; they were trying to fill their stores with products consumers wanted. So Vans got a lot more pushback to be more dead on with their shipping.”
Because VF was expanding its operations and significantly changing process flow, the company chose a three-phase technology implementation process. First, it upgraded the warehouse management system from a 2001 heavily customized version to a 2008 version that it calls VF Base.
“VF Base has specific targeted customization that we have designed to provide optimized picking management and process flow for VF,” explains Brown. After upgrading the current operation, VF then expanded the distribution center footprint, splitting footwear and apparel operations between two buildings and implementing optimized fulfillment for footwear.
Since then service-level agreements with retailers have improved by 90 percent, and its wholesale service performance is up
32 percent. What’s more, thanks to the technology upgrade, Vans is doing a better job of supplying “never out” products to stores — which for the action-sports brand are the classic shoes that account for as much as 20 percent of sales, according to Brown. “We apply specific metrics to these SKUs to ensure we can fulfill demand by our stores within a day,” he adds. “This ensures that these products are always available based on sales within the store.”
With greater visibility into its supply chain, Vans’ inventory accuracy now is close to 100 percent, which means it can reduce costs by eliminating significant safety stock and keeping inventory levels lower, says
Brown. With results like these, Vans proves it’s smart to let your adrenaline-chasing customers be the ones taking all the risks.
— Jessica Binns
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O ne look at the collections of designer Chloe Dao and you can see she’s got innovation and creativity in spades. In case you missed it, Chloe Dao emerged as the winner of the second season of Bravo’s Project Runway in 2006, and since then, she and her fashions have gone from mainstream to museum, and everywhere in between, including her own boutique in Houston. In
2007, Dao’s designs were featured in the Smithsonian Museum exhibit “Exit Saigon, Enter Little Saigon.” Her skills in understanding fit and women’s bodies led Dao to a contract with
Dove as the national spokesperson for its “Sleeveless Ready” cam-
Pictured here are dresses from Chloe Dao’s Spring 2012 collection.
Cody Bess Photography
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TOP INNOVATORS paign. In 2007, Dao reached the mass market when she debuted on QVC with three consecutive sell-out appearances with her line
Simply Chloe Dao, exclusive to QVC, and in 2008, she partnered with bag and travel gear maker Nuo Tech to create a line of mobile technology and travel accessories.
You might think she would want to spend a little time resting on her laurels, but Dao, who emigrated to the United States from Pakse, Laos with her parents and seven sisters in 1979, is simply not wired that way. Dao and all of her sisters (it’s where the original name of her boutique, “Lot 8,” came from) were always encouraged to work and study hard (they were also encouraged to pursue careers in medicine or law, but that didn’t quite suit
Dao’s passion for fashion) and success has in no way lessened
Dao’s desire to keep reinventing herself.
When Dao’s lucrative contract with QVC ended, she decided it was time to make some changes. Taking a unique approach to evolving her business, Dao applied to the Action Learning Project (ALP), a program of the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University that teams MBA students with businesses, providing the students with real-world experience and the latter a full semester of consulting services free of charge, with the goal of solving a specific problem or offering solutions and suggestions for improvement.
Dao’s business was one of 20 accepted to the ALP, and as part of the program, Dao was assigned a team of six MBA students who worked with her for an entire semester, studying her business, brand, design concepts, customers and boutique as well as competitors’ offerings, store traffic and hours of operation. The students conducted extensive research, including customer surveys, real estate evaluations, profitability analysis on current lines and market projections.
Using their individual specialties, the students took on pieces of the project and then met weekly with their faculty supervisors and with Dao to discuss her current business landscape, along the way discovering hidden inefficiencies and bringing to light the power of her own name recognition over the boutique name,
Lot 8. As a result of their research and analysis, they suggested that Dao make several changes to her business, including a name change from “Lot 8” to “Dao Chloe Dao,” a physical redesign of the boutique, and modifications to store hours by reducing weekday hours by one hour a week and instead opening the store for five hours on Sunday. The team recommended changes in the product line to focus better on Dao’s core customers, and also provided Dao with tools to help her evaluate new opportunities and continue improvements in the future. (As a result of their work, the students all received an “A” and their project was one of four projects given top performance awards.)
Dao’s collaboration with MBA students at Rice University’s
Jones Graduate School of Business brought together a great mix of detailed business analysis and creative fashion design that has left the newly branded Dao Chloe Dao poised to move forward with a new image and more focused product offering, reflecting Chloe Dao’s creative style and her desire to continually surprise and delight her customers.
— Jordan K. Speer
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C alled one of the most common chronic diseases among children and adolescents, diabetes impacts approximately 151,000 people under age 20, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Atlanta. Each year, this number increases as more than 13,000 children are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes is caused by the inability of the pancreas to produce insulin, and children with the disease are subject to insulin treatments, often by injection. Treatment also can be administered by insulin pumps that provide continuous dosages. While this streamlines the process, and can dramatically improve the management of juvenile diabetes, it can be a difficult transition for young, active children.
Julie DeFruscio learned this first hand when her 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. “At the time she was diagnosed, it was also when children were just beginning to wear pumps,” she said. “In fact, my daughter was the first in our area. We were so excited to finally get her on the pump but quickly discovered that there was no way for her to actually carry this device.”
In line with the saying, “It takes a village to raise a family,” a friend’s mom pitched
Launched in 2001 with six products designed for children wearing insulin pumps, today
Pump Wear offers 800+ products, including cases and clothing.
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TOP INNOVATORS now we can handle these efficiently and with great speed.”
Specifically, Greenberg reported he is most proud of how the IT team integrated existing systems with PLM, giving all users complete interconnectivity and communication. “With all systems interconnected, our inventory and e-commerce systems match up with PLM, helping us make decisions really quickly, thanks to the visibility at our fingertips,” he said.
With a handle on production, Swatfame is now focusing its energy on its evolving digital marketing strategy, creating digital images and sales tools that can merge sales and marketing in a more visual way, and that include elements such as social media and e-commerce.
To date, the company has created both a business-to-business e-commerce operation and a direct-to-consumer platform.
On the social media side, Swatfame is focusing on Facebook, Twitter and blogging to
“get our brand out there,” Greenberg said.
“If we can tie this to our e-commerce operation, there is strong potential to grow our private-label brands through innovative promotions that engage the customer,” he added. “We see this as our growth opportunity over the next few years.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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I n the fast paced, ever-changing world of fashion, manufacturers must always be prepared for the rapid evolution of products and constant variation in demand. As a leader in the western lifestyle apparel industry, RHE Hatco knows this first hand. By implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the company will improve visibility into operations, better manage inventory levels and predict consumer demand — and thus improve service levels.
The Garland, Texas-based company, which operates as a subsidiary of Pro Equine Products, manufactures and distributes western and dress headwear for men and women. Among the brands the company creates hats for are Stetson, Resistol, Dobbs, Charlie 1 Horse and Stetson Diamond Jim. The company manufactures goods from raw materials, and has built its reputation on the fact that it is the only U.S.-based company that spins its hat bodies from raw fur, which it does at the Longview, Texas Raw
Body Factory. Hatco also boasts a dedicated and skilled workforce of 350 employees, which it credits for fine workmanship and quality control, and the team uses consumer and industry data to quickly react to market trends.
The company was eager to improve its manufacturing processes and better serve its customers, but its existing business information system, which was installed in the mid 1990s, “was out of date, and lacked critical functionality,” said Drew Neathery, the company’s CFO. Additionally, the software was no longer supported by the original vendor or other software developers.
The existing system also could not be fully integrated to offer true ERP capabilities, which turned any planning operations into manual, cumbersome processes. “We did not have the computing horsepower to plan [whether analyzing production, purchasing, stocking levels] thousands of parts against various constraints,” he explained.
The company also struggled with an outdated operating system that couldn’t support a new solution, or mitigate the risk of a shutdown or system failure. It was clearly time for a new ERP system, and Hatco had prerequisites.
The business’ primary goals were to analyze and improve business processes based on enhanced visibility into operations, improve interactions between the company and customers, and optimize use of financial assets. It also wanted a fully integrated solution that did not require additional functionality from third-party products.
Neathery says the industry-specific functionality built into the
Lawson M3 ERP system fit the bill. The fact that the solution is specifically designed for fashion manufacturers appealed to Hatco, as did built-in capabilities including business intelligence coupled with key performance indicators and scorecards tailored to the fashion industry; financial and scheduling tools; and advanced planning and forecasting capabilities.
Hatco is knee-deep in its ERP implementation, and Neathery says the company plans to be live on the system by July 1. The company expects that the new ERP will allow it to improve planning and forecasting to more accurately predict customer demand, achieve more accurate inventory through better sales predictions, enhance customer service by giving users “more pertinent information” to share with retail partners, and streamline business practices back-office processes throughout the company.
Looking ahead, Hatco plans to utilize additional functionality within M3. One of its priorities is to construct an e-commerce web site where customers can order products, check availability and track shipments online, all factors that “enhance the way our customers see and interact with us,” he said.
“With better planning,” says Neathery, “we will have all of the products demanded by our customers, but only when they demand them. This system will provide tools that will allow us to focus on our customers rather than our back-office processes.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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T he simplest definition of “icon” in the Oxford Dictionary says it all: a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration. Clearly, the word icon can represent many entities, from cultural and religious figures, to those people (and messages) who define pop culture. Now consumers can wear their favorites through the innovative vision of ICON Shoes.
Launched in 1999 by a Hollywood filmmaker and art collector, ICON partners with artists to imprint their images on highquality leather, manufactured into shoes, handbags, accessories and even jewelry.
The nation got its first taste of ICON when the company imprinted the nostalgic “Campbell’s Tomato Soup” label on a leather, sidetied sneaker. It was the perfect introduction to the company’s mission: to use bold color on soft, supple, high-grade white leather, yet still retain the artist’s original vision. ICON completes the rendition using a patented printing process known for vibrancy and long-lasting wear.
Whether purchasing the merchandise as a conversation-starter or as a way to express individual style or artistic taste, ICON’s shoppers often have a keen eye for fashion and art. Like most manufacturers, ICON produces merchandise for shoppers on a seasonal basis. Unlike competitors however, ICON is hard-pressed to research each desired work of art, a process that takes countless hours to ensure it chooses an image that best represents the tastes and individuality of its diverse customer base. The same attention is paid to procurement and reproduction, as well as the payment of royalties to each individual licensed artist.
Once the art has been selected, ICON’s graphic artists strive to reproduce the image in varying sizes and shapes to fit the patterns of different merchandise. The next steps involve printing and reproducing the print onto the purest, white, high-grade leather while respecting the artist’s original colors and making sure the product will hold up to normal wear and tear.
The company is expanding its reach by partnering with foundations. For example, its work with The Living Desert features footwear and accessories touting the foundation’s many animals, with all royalties going directly to the foundation.
In addition to its e-commerce site and 300 stores across the mid-
Atlantic and Northeast regions of the United States, as well as Prince
Edward Island and Nova Scotia regions of Canada, ICON is further expanding its breadth through the “home party” business.
It is also always looking for its next category venture. Through its newest partnership with domestic leather glove manufacturer
Grandoe Corp., for example, ICON is now launching a new line of leather gloves and slippers emblazoned with “iconic” images.
Who knows where the next icon will turn up?
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
Duluth’s Long-Tail Tee (left) prevents workers from “sharing too much.” Its most recent launch: Flex work pants become more comfortable — but no less durable — over time.
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W e all know one of the worst inconveniences of a leaky sink: the unfortunate yet inevitable encounter with plumber’s butt. And let’s face it: plumbers take the rap, but all sorts of working folk are plagued with the problems of shirttail-from-waistband separation. A scientific study I just made up reveals that for every plumber out there, another one hundred workers in other occupations are causing innocent passersby to avert their eyes.
Fortunately, the good folks at Duluth Trading have created a cure, and a very popular one at that. Indeed, this year the company celebrates the 10th anniversary of its Longtail T ® , which is embarking on its second decade of helping to prevent workers from “sharing too much information,” with three more inches of shirt body length than your average tee. The Longtail comes in all sorts of versions — with or without a pocket, long-sleeve or short-
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TOP INNOVATORS sleeve, with a “beefy” 100 percent cotton, in various fits, from “tradesman” to “trim” and including big & tall and women’s.
Incorporating innovative design elements, high-quality fabrics and construction and a good dose of humor, Duluth Trading — whose tagline is “Designed and Tested by
Tradesmen” — got its start in 1989 when two brothers working in the construction business observed how workers would drag a jumble of tools from job to job using discarded five-gallon drywall compound buckets. A few of the guys strung wire around the bucket to hold tools, or even used bungee cords. Thinking there had to be a better way, the two brothers invented the Bucket Boss ®
— a rugged, durable canvas tool organizer that fit on a drywall bucket, which the brothers sold in a catalog they created called Portable
Products.
Since then, the company has changed names and owners, but has continued to identify workplace needs and make products to suit them. There are Ballroom Jeans that let you “crouch without ouch,” work pants that are “tougher than an angry beaver’s teeth,” and Buck Naked Underwear that offers “no sweat, no stink, no pinch,” for example, and if you’re unclear about what any of that means, the web site offers short but very detailed informational videos that will walk you through the features of each garment, always with a few laughs thrown in for good measure.
The most recent launch from the company is its line of Flex work pants, offered in both denim and firehose, whose construction incorporates spandex into the weave of the fabric, says Stephanie Pugliese, president and chief merchandising officer.
“The major benefit is that the fabric becomes even more comfortable and easier to wear without losing durability, stain resistance or abrasion resistance.“ This line of pants is for the person who wants to wear tough pants but wants the ability to move in more extreme situations, such as reaching or bending further, without losing the comfort.
“Innovation is a cornerstone of the brand.” says Pugliese. “We have brought to market a number of ingenious products, including the Longtail Tees, Ballroom Jeans and Firehose fabric. Some of the details that make us unique are ‘Freedom of Movement’ features such as our crotch and underarm gussets, bi-swing backs and the aforementioned Flex fabric,” she says. Also, many of Duluth’s products are triple-stitched for added durability and feature larger zipper pulls and buttons that are easy to grasp.
“Our goal is to make products that our customers can continue to appreciate even more as they use them for years. We try to do that by thinking of all of the details and the benefits that we want to create for the buyer,” says Pugliese. “Then we throw in a good laugh or two to make the experience even more fun.”
— Jordan K. Speer
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From its humble beginnings as a lingerie gift made from embroidered handkerchiefs to today’s global thong domination,
Hanky Panky has come a long way since its inception in 1977, when designer Gale
Epstein created that gift for her friend, Lida
Orzeck, now CEO of the business.
The underwear brand, sold in more than
3,000 stores in 20 countries, is known for its comfortable fit, premium lace and Vfront, V-back design. Orzeck says the company is committed to manufacturing and sourcing exclusively in the United States, with production primarily in Queens and
Brooklyn. “With resources having dried up in the last 15 years, it certainly has been a challenge to maintain a commitment to sourcing from the U.S.,” she explains. “We must price our garments carefully to remain competitive.”
Although Hanky Panky sources trim, elastic, ribbon, and other materials from numerous vendors, 90 percent of its nylon laces are produced by Klauber Brothers, a fourth-generation lace maker located in
New York City that developed the brand’s signature lace using special dyeing and finishing techniques. “We relax the lace before cutting it to ensure our garments are consistently true to size,” adds Orzeck.
Replenishment plays a significant role in Hanky Panky’s business, and last August the company deployed Simparel’s ERP software, after working on implementation for 12 months. The lingerie brand needed to accurately forecast its raw materials in order to streamline production and ensure on-time deliveries. With the Simparel ERP solution, Hanky Panky is now able to deliver faster and efficiently manage its piece goods, finished goods and overhead costs.
What’s more, the Simparel Warehouse
Management System has helped Hanky
Panky to improve accuracy in shipping to the vast majority of accounts in its different sales channels. With built-in report writing capabilities, the brand can now review data on demand and perform detailed analyses of the business. Its entire 65,000square-foot Queens warehouse has been automated, utilizing RF scanners, and the company now has increased control and accuracy over its inventory. Additionally,
Last year, Hanky Panky implemented an
ERP system to accurately forecast its raw materials in order to streamline production and ensure on-time deliveries.
Hanky Panky has eliminated a third-party
EDI vendor, as Simparel also handles that part of the process.
Orzeck says that the software implementation has improved inventory accuracy by 30 percent, and turnaround times on orders are 25 percent faster. Store shipments are also more accurate, adds Orzeck.
— Jessica Binns
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W hen outdoor enthusiasts purchase gear for their favorite activities, they expect their equipment to perform well year after year, from both execution and sustainability standpoints. To uphold its shoppers’ expectations, Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) designs its merchandise with quality and sustainability top of mind.
To support its merchandise design, development, quality and sustainability processes, MEC implemented software to help streamline its material development process, improve the ability to control quality standards and create efficiencies via supply chain collaboration.
Mountain Equipment Co-op, launched in 1971 with six founding members, operates 14 stores across Canada, as well as its ecommerce site. While shoppers have many options for outdoor equipment, MEC’s mission to provide quality gear and excellent value, while minimizing its environmental impact, has earned it the loyalty of 3.4 million members.
“Sustainability to us means working, living and playing with the long-term in mind by making decisions that respect the environmental limits of the planet, and contributing to the well-being of people and communities,” said Sandra Rossi, design manager, Mountain Equipment Co-op. “Sustainability is integrated into every step of our process.”
Maintaining this meticulous design and quality philosophy produces large amounts of data for the company, including inforwww.apparelmag.com
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TOP INNOVATORS mation from lab tests (MEC has its own testing lab), performance specifications, and day-to-day workflow. Organizing the data is the biggest challenge, especially when associates are taking time away from their daily responsibilities to manually manage this information. These efforts become further cumbersome as the company expands globally.
“MEC has spent years testing and evaluating materials to meet the needs of the products we produce,” said Greg Scott, the company’s director of product integrity. “We were finding that our cumulative wealth of information was stored in multiple locations and in multiple formats just at our fingertips, but not easily retrievable.”
MEC needed to ensure it could enable its innovation, quality and sustainability goals by implementing processes that would give its associates quick and easy access to information they needed.
A material lifecycle management platform was the ideal solution.
A value enhancement to its product lifecycle management system, the MLM system from TEXbase, Bozeman, Mt., provides a database to store and track all information regarding materials, including testing data, performance and color. “We can access the data from anywhere in the world and have all the relevant information at our fingertips,” Rossi explained. “The tool has allowed us to formalize material specifications and have an official signoff from our mill partners.”
Besides allowing MEC to deliver on its brand promise to provide innovative and durable products on a growing scale without sacrificing quality, TEXbase’s access to data helps MEC effectively streamline and shorten the development process and reduce operating expenses while improving quality and sustainability.
“TEXbase allows us to track developments, lab dips and test data, as well as timelines and pricing,” Rossi added. “We were able to eliminate Excel spreadsheets and use TEXbase as our single source to house all relevant data — a key contributor helping us to make highly informed decisions based on reliable data.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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C ompetition in the apparel industry has never been greater, making brands hardpressed to create assortments that will attract consumers and drive their loyalty. To maximize every sales opportunity, merchant teams at GUESS work constantly to get the right merchandise mix to put in front of their customers. By transitioning a manual operation to an automated assortment planning tool, GUESS is gaining visibility into its merchandising process and standardizing planning across the enterprise.
When creating an assortment, GUESS’ merchant teams strive to analyze the right merchandising mix their customers will react to. Until a few years ago, it was not uncommon, however, for GUESS buyers and planners enterprise-wide to rely on
Excel spreadsheets when creating these plans. And this was a common occurrence across all four of the company’s divisions,
GUESS, G by GUESS, GUESS Factory and
Marciano.
First, division plans were developed on individual desktops, isolating them from other teams and providing little insight to key executives across the organization.
Because other teams need access to this data, the task of combining reports could take days to compile.
Besides being a highly cumbersome, time-consuming task, revisions to the plans were often difficult to execute due to the labor involved. Because it required cobbling together data from disjointed spreadsheets, the task was intense, and took multiple days to complete — two factors that could be detrimental to responding to industry trends in the fast-turn fashion segment.
Michael Relich, executive vice president and CIO at GUESS, knew an automated solution was the only way for merchants to create a common assortment plan among all divisions. In 2009, the brand began streamlining this task with the implementation of an automated assortment planning tool from daVinci. Designed to adapt quickly and easily to the changing needs of the merchant and management, the solution improves planning productivity, interdivisional coordination and data integration, while giving management and planning teams visibility and control.
Besides improving buyer productivity, daVinci Assortment integrates the buying process with the organization’s other information systems. Meanwhile, financial targets from the merchandise planning system are integrated into daVinci’s dashboard for instant access and process visibility.
Detailed item-by-location assortments are passed on to purchasing and allocation to ensure maximum synergy and efficiency.
Since adding the solution, GUESS has gained a collaborative environment to plan assortments, and it has reduced its planning and analysis efforts from days to mere hours. These reductions are the result of gaining instant access to information without manually intensive data extracts and countless pivot-table manipulations. Further, GUESS now has a standardized planning process ensuring everyone’s plans adopt best practices and organization standards.
Relich says buyers think that every style will sell well even without an efficient assortment planning process, but that this is certainly not the case. “The idea is to buy less and turn product more quickly — a process supported by a centralized plan.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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T he elaborate and beautiful designs created at the JAY AHR
House by Jonathan Riss, artistic director, may call to mind the rich mosaics of Byzantine palaces or Roman cathedrals, but Riss’ method of experimenting and assembling hundreds of thousands of beads, stones and other materials into his exquisite designs for embroidery and jewelry is anything but antiquated.
Verily, Riss is combining his masterful craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology to push the boundaries of what is possible in design. Using 3D design software from Dassault Systèmes,
Riss now begins the creative cycle digitally, developing intricate embroidery for JAY AHR fashions by playing with new colors, textures and materials in a life-like environment before picking up a single component. That's a phenomenal time saver, especially with the number of components involved per piece. Riss says that pieces from the exhibition “Evolution” took him from one month to a year to finalize, and that “the number of stones in the pieces ranged from 30,000 to almost one million in ‘elephant.’ ”
Using the solution, Riss can create virtual prototypes to test the feasibility and functionality of his designs before attempting to model them, and in this way can also collaborate with his team globally to iterate on a virtual prototype before creating the physical prototype.
This process removes countless hours and cost from the design process. Additionally, the process is more sustainable, because mock-up costs are eliminated through the creation of virtual prototypes instead of the physical prototypes typically used for testing new designs.
Designing directly into a virtual environment also provides Riss with a sharable mock-up that facilitates collaboration with manufacturers. With a 3D virtual prototype to work with, he is able
Pictured here is “whale,” featuring approximately 600,000 pearls.
The embroidery process began on Dec. 28, 2009 and was completed on Aug. 20, 2010.
to reduce the time between developing and finalizing his designs and getting those ideas to the manufacturer. Using 3D design software has also opened the door to new materials and design possibilities. Riss recently used CATIA V6 Live Rendering to explore a new area of material and color mixtures for the JAY AHR High
Fine Jewelry collection. Using materials such as colored glass or satinated metal, he was able to experiment with a variety of new design possibilities for future realization.
JAY AHR’s work with 3D is part of Dassault’s recently announced
FashionLab, a technology incubator for fashion designers and stylists, whose goal is to marry the engineering creativity of the technology provider with the artistic inventiveness and industry knowledge of designers to develop a solution integrating the 3D design, simulation and collaboration tools required to manage the entire lifecycle of a fashion collection.
— Jordan K. Speer
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F or the Wuensche Group, an international trading company with more than 10 subsidiaries carrying everything from apparel to foodstuffs to durable consumer goods, efficiency is of utmost importance.
Large discount retailers across Europe, the United States and Australia comprise a big chunk of Wuensche’s clientele. With single orders often containing 200,000 to
300,000 pieces, significant losses would result if even one defective product reached the market.
It’s no surprise that a bunch of independent systems managing various pieces of the supply chain would eventually not be up to the task of streamlining the large and complex business. Wuensche needed a more efficient method, which it found in
Setlog’s supply chain management and vendor collaboration system, OSCA. The solution allowed the Wuensche Group to optimize every part of its production cycle.
“Setlog offers a high level of process integration from the observation of inquiries, pre-production, quality, shipping and finally the delivery of the goods to the customer,” said Uwe Porten, Wuensche Group CFO.
“At the same time the system offers a high performance level even in countries and areas with low-internet bandwidth.” www.apparelmag.com
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Wuensche collaborated with Setlog to build a quality control module within the system. The module not only linked the company’s quality control department with suppliers, but also with the technical departments and testing institutes in the countries where it sources, allowing for monitoring quality at all stages of the process.
For example, in the apparel sector, quality control reports show levels of azo dye, color variations and any flaws in the weaving. This specific information helps the company optimize routes when planning initial or repeat tests to be carried out by its traveling technicians, saving both time and money — especially in countries such as
China and India where factories are often located far apart. The cohesive system also helps to keep information from getting lost in a shuffle of phone calls, emails, faxes and spreadsheets.
“Erroneous or diverging information is something of the past. Today our intervention is targeted and rapid,” said Thomas
Wuensche, managing director of the Wuensche Group.
The system also helps to ensure that customer expectations are met by providing the company visibility into the status of a product from pre-production through delivery, and sending notifications if any delivery dates will be missed. In such a scenario, Wuensche — together with its sourcing offices, agencies, suppliers and forwarders that are all linked to the system — can make targeted decisions to ensure the customer receives the product on time.
Every year, more than 20,000 containers arrive at the Wuensche Group’s warehouse. In the past, the company says, it was difficult to keep track of everything, but now with a flow of specific information, such as precise sailing dates and realtime transit times for ships and carriers, the company can optimize how each ship is loaded and when product is shipped.
Setlog’s source control management software has helped the company not only to increase the efficiency of its complex logistics, but also to create a better product through quality control. Wuensche reports that it is now able to turn out better products more quickly — and save process and transportation expenses along the way.
— Sarah Robbins
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T en years ago, Patagonia’s supply chain was large, unwieldy and complex. By 2007, the outdoor apparel brand had whittled its quorum of 108 suppliers down to just 45, and since that year — sourcing from 58 percent fewer providers — sales have doubled, says Patagonia vice president of global supply chain Doug Freeman. The brand is on track to bring in $500 million in sales this year — up from $412 million in 2011.
So how — and why — did Patagonia do it?
“We just wanted to get a better grip on quality within the supply chain,” explains Freeman, who says the days of working with 108 suppliers were a result of “not having a very disciplined process.” What’s more, moving toward a leaner, more transparent and more socially responsible supply chain was very much in keeping with the company’s mission statement: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
In 2005 Patagonia — which produced 10 million units last year and fills 175 shipping containers annually — began working with supply chain solutions provider TradeCard and implemented its automated procure-to-pay process, a significant step away from relying on letters of credit as is the industry’s common practice.
“It gave us the chance to contain supplier transactions in the cloud and operate in real time very efficiently,” explains Freeman.
The dramatic move, however, was met with considerable protest from suppliers, who fretted over not being able to secure export
Patagonia’s mission statement: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. Pictured here, a zipper flagged for repair.
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TOP INNOVATORS financing or a loan from a local bank to buy fabric and trim. Some even worried that they wouldn’t get paid at all.
To quell the unease and dispel any misconceptions, Patagonia got the stakeholders together — TradeCard, a Hong Kong bank and a concerned supplier — and walked them step by step through the new procedures. Once the suppliers realized the efficiencies
TradeCard presented at payment and saw the potential to dramatically reduce inquiries regarding payments, the transformation took hold. TradeCard’s automated procurement procedure eliminates the time-consuming process of reconciling and getting word on payments to suppliers, freeing up the sourcing manager for other business-critical tasks.
Patagonia doesn’t maintain any liaison offices, operating entirely from its California headquarters. It also no longer wastes money on fees to obtain letters of credit, which Freeman says were plagued by “constant discrepancies.” Suppliers no longer have to chase down payments or spend time re-entering HTS (harmonized tariff schedule) numbers into commercial invoices. “When you can rely on the efficiencies of TradeCard to populate these fields of commercial invoices, packing slips, etc., it makes suppliers much more efficient. They run at a much better clip,” says Freeman.
“Connecting the supply network in one place has improved our collaboration. It allows our suppliers to be more profitable.”
The brand also benefits from having increased visibility into its supply chain. “The TradeCard software allows for a balcony view of the status of shipments and payments,” says Freeman.
“Suppliers are clear … we’re clear. And payment is executed on time. That’s huge.”
Says Freeman, “We have a much easier time managing quality and social responsibility with fewer suppliers.”
— Jessica Binns
NOMINATED BY:
A sh City’s customizable apparel will have you ready for whatever comes your way
— and help keep you cool while you get there.
The 35-year-old company, with 500 employees worldwide, including in Canada, the United States, Malaysia and Bangladesh, creates promotional apparel — everything from jackets to knits to athletic wear — for both corporate and casual markets. The company is always trying to serve its customer better, including by finding out what activities customers want to engage in while wearing its garments, and by developing technologies to meet those needs.
It was out of this commitment to match garment function to customer activity that the company’s Unique Komfort Thermal
Technology lines were born.
This spring, Ash City launched a product line incorporating a new, proprietary fabric technology, Unique Komfort Thermal Technology Cool Logik (Utk Cool
Logik), which features a blend of micron mineral particles embedded into the yarn fibers to provide a cool-to-the-touch experience for wearers. The fabric has an accelerated rate of heat conduction, and the yarns block heat absorption, dispersing heat away from the skin.
A corresponding Utk Warm Logic temperature rating system launched last fall for cold weather. “This is a testing and rating system that helps determine the right piece of outerwear for the right activity and temperature,” says Wendy Fraser, communications manager. “It uses extensive, state-of-the-art, third-party laboratory testing to ensure the best comfort level for the wearer.”
Likewise, the new Cool Logik fabric helps wearers ensure that same level of comfort for warm climates.
“The concept of ‘Komfort’ at work or at play is not a new one — at one point, wicking fabrics were the cutting edge of technology, but now they are standard in most performance garments. Utk Cool
Logik is the next iteration of this. We wanted to help keep the wearer cooler right from the moment they put the garment on, and this is where the concept of a fabric that is cool to the touch and that provides a continuous cooling experience came from,” says Fraser.
Fraser says the Cool Logik line is perfect for companies looking for modern, stylish and cutting-edge garments that will not only enhance their own company image
Ash City’s new UTK Cool Logik features a blend of micron mineral particles embedded into the yarn fibers to provide a cool-to-thetouch experience for wearers.
when worn by staff and given out to customers, but will also ensure the ultimate comfort of the wearers.
Ash City strives to be a leader in environmental responsibility, too. With its e.c.o.
line of products using recycled polyester fibers and organic cotton, and made using fair labor practices, the company’s goal is to show that innovation and responsible practices can go hand in hand.
— Sarah Robbins
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U nderstanding your customers and connecting with them on an emotional level. Sound easy? It’s not. Urban Outfitters says it finds success doing this because its brands — Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain and BHLDN
— are both compelling and distinct, with each brand offering an eclectic mix of merchandise displayed amidst a mix of found objects and placed into “creative selling vignettes.”
Across its brands, Urban Outfitters has focused on creating an environment that connects to the customer on an empathetic level, and more recently it has worked to extend that experience by connecting on a physical level via its rollout of a new mobileassisted selling solution, Starmount Engage, across its brands.
“Our customers have come to expect a differentiated shopping experience,” says executive director of IT John Devine. “With the mobile POS solution, our sales associates are freed from behind the cash wrap to interact with customers at the point-ofinterest, enhancing customer service.”
Delivered on the Apple ® iPod Touch, the solution, says Devine, brings the interactivity, speed and convenience of the online experience to brick-and-mortar stores by providing a faster checkout process and reducing lines, while also allowing store associates to provide more personalized customer service by providing full transaction capabilities anywhere in the store.
Overall, the solution offers customers a
“more connected shopping experience,” says Devine.
Customer feedback about the mobile
POS has been very positive, he says, adding that one area of particularly noteworthy success has been the ability to check out customers as they are leaving the fitting room.
Continuing to enhance the solution, the company in late 2011 rolled out the ability to fulfill store “out of stock” items from its e-commerce inventory. The mobile
Urban Outfitters’ new mobile POS solution brings the interactivity, speed and convenience of the online experience to its brick-and-mortar stores.
POS device also allows Urban to process different purchase paths within a single transaction. For example, a customer might make an in-store purchase, but also place an order for another item that is out of stock in the store, but pay for both items with one swipe of her credit card.
Future enhancements, says Devine, will allow Urban Outfitters sales associates to use the mobile POS to access product reviews, designer notes and outfitting suggestions.
— Jordan K. Speer
NOMINATED BY:
T here comes a time in every young company’s life when Excel spreadsheets just don’t cut it anymore. For Journelle, the luxury lingerie enterprise with three shops in New York City, a boutique in Miami Beach and an e-commerce site, the moment came last year when it realized it needed something a bit more advanced to handle inventory management and demand forecasting. Because since its founding in the heady, pre-recession days of 2007, demand for upscale underthings has only increased.
Investment banking and financial advisory services firm
Consensus recently cited Journelle as one of the next great consumer brands. The start-up caters to sophisticated women who also believe Journelle’s mantra — that great designer lingerie should be worn every day — and who have graduated from mass lingerie retailers such as Victoria’s Secret. Journelle maintains spa-like fitting rooms, and sales associates must complete a two-month training course. It carries high-end brands such as
La Perla, Stella McCartney and Jenny Packham.
Lingerie comprised 20 percent of the U.S. apparel market in
2009, and hoping to capture a bigger slice of that lucrative pie,
Journelle sought out a provider whose technology would integrate seamlessly with its existing NetSuite software. The lingerie company deployed JustEnough’s Advanced Planning for NetSuite solution, which includes demand forecasting, inventory planning and replenishment capabilities. “JustEnough was the perfect fit for us from a solution standpoint,” says Journelle founder and
CEO Claire Chambers. “Not only does the software fully and seamlessly integrate with our NetSuite system, giving us complete visibility into our operations, but it was the only solution on the market that could meet all of our business requirements.”
Among those requirements: the ability to create forecasts based on different product attributes. Journelle also wanted to target customer-service levels with an eye toward maximizing its inventory www.apparelmag.com
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TOP INNOVATORS investments. Journelle started working with JustEnough on the implementation in the fall, and the system went live in January.
“JustEnough was a great partner in helping us customize the solution and providing training for their robust set of features, and now that we’re using the system, we have access to vast amounts of data that previously was possible only through complicated and time-consuming Excel calculations,” says Laura Maurer, executive assistant and social media liaison for Journelle. “JustEnough’s solution now allows us to accurately forecast demand and more carefully monitor our stock position with a very fine level of precision, improving our financial results and allowing us to meet the needs of our customers with more regularity.”
Chambers adds, “We feel that with JustEnough, we are prepared to take on some of the retail industry’s most pressing demand challenges — such as channel proliferation, consumers that have access to limitless product and pricing information and the rise of mobile technology.”
Indeed, Journelle has embraced iPads in a clienteling capacity; associates can upload a shopper’s fit, size and shape data via the tablet directly from the fitting room so she can take advantage of that information when shopping at home.
Maurer is well aware that Journelle will need to keep pace with rapidly evolving consumer technology. “Mobile is an increasingly important channel for our customer, and by making our website mobile-friendly, we find we are able to gain an important, additional touchpoint with our customer,” she explains. “The mobile interaction is different than what she’ll experience in store and even online via computer, because it’s often brief, spontaneous and may not necessarily conclude with a transaction.
“Most importantly,” says Maurer, “mobile visits are usually driven by her interest in the brand versus a desire to buy something specific, and this means that her mobile navigation is an exceptionally important tool in building loyalty and advocacy.”
— Jessica Binns
NOMINATED BY:
W hile Chef Works has been cooking up high quality apparel for the international culinary and hospitality industry for some time, until recently, it’s had a little more difficulty with its recipe for inventory management.
Although Chef Works, a highly automated, paperless operation, has been efficiently supplying uniforms to restaurants and hotels worldwide, the back end of its supply chain was mired by an overflowing warehouse and slow-moving items.
Chef Works carries about 65,000 items, but only about 12,000 — mostly basic chef’s uniforms — represent 90 percent of orders. Still, because of manufacturer minimums, Chef Works was keeping large numbers of smaller-value and slow-moving items in stock to satisfy that other
10 percent of orders. Plus, with the endless variations in style, color and size of its products, Chef Works’ inventory was bursting at the seams, tying up valuable capital and making tracking a daunting task because of the sheer volume of data available from the company’s Sage Accpac ERP system.
The company needed a better, more efficient, way to control and manage inventory throughout the supply chain and fulfillment process.
Dave Roth, Chef Works’ COO, began a search for a product that could handle the company’s complex business forecasting and demanding planning needs.
He contacted Avercast, whose software demonstrations and proof-of-concept demonstrations led to a pilot project with the company.
Roth and his team were impressed with the Avercast software, but saw an obstacle relative to its ability to handle how aggre-
Chef Works carries about 65,000 items, but only about 12,000 — mostly basic chef’s uniforms — represent 90 percent of orders. gate orders could be balanced among the company’s disparate manufacturing sources locally, regionally and globally. In other words, orders from customers needed to be distributed to manufacturers according to pre-determined preferences that took into account the various ordering and costing requirements of the manufacturers. For example, one large manufacturer may deliver the best price but have a large minimum
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TOP INNOVATORS order, while another manufacturer’s minimums may be based on a certain monetary level instead of outputs. Chef Works needed a forecasting application that took these factors into account without requiring lots of spreadsheets of aggregate order levels to be passed back and forth with suppliers.
Avercast rose to the challenge, adding this capability to its business forecasting and demand planning platform. The company also did a “phenomenal job” interfacing to Chef Works’ ERP system, deploying
Avercast at the company and training its staff, and also adding enhancements it requested in “a matter of days,” Roth says.
The results? Chef Works’ data crunching for monthly operations meetings used to eat up 18 hours. With the Avercast system, it now takes just 30 minutes.
Roth says Avercast’s graphical interface is straightforward and easy to use. Additionally, the system has created more transparency throughout the inventory management system and more control in goods purchasing for its international vendors. He looks forward to incorporating more of its features into Chef Works’ everyday operations.
“Our primary driver was inventory reduction,” Roth says. “We hope to reduce inventory by 25 percent by the end of 2012. We know we’ll achieve that, but it’s the balance we want to achieve, not purely the effect of reducing inventory. It’s the balance of having less-requested items available when needed while keeping our most in-demand items in stock.”
— Sarah Robbins
NOMINATED BY:
T here are just four arrows left in your quiver, and you reach for one quietly. A line of women spreads out around you. The air in the pine forest is silent and cool. The deer are unsuspecting.
You pull back and let it fly.
This could be you, participating in one of Próis’ women-only hunts, if you were the winner of the Próis Bucks Rewards program.
Próis, a manufacturer and marketer of performance-driven hunting gear for women only, is capturing a niche that many folks may be surprised to learn even exists. And if you want to know the truth, Próis’ target market is even more narrow than that; it’s a niche within a niche. “There are other companies who manufacture women’s hunting clothing, says CEO Kirstie Pike, “but
Próis currently corners the market on the ‘bad ass’ female hunter with its athletic and performance-driven clothing.” (Amusingly,
Pike pauses to apologize, but notes, “it’s really the best word.”)
Other companies create more “couture” clothing, she says —
“which is definitely a market of its own — while Próis focuses on function, technical fabrics and the layering systems necessary to optimize thermoregulation, comfort and mobility while still maintaining silence.”
Próis launched in 2008, the heart of the recession, which you might not think was a particularly auspicious time to start up a business, but that’s just what Próis did, and it seems to be working. It started as a “small idea from a small town,” says Pike, but the company now distributes products around the country, as well as to Canada, Australia and South Africa, with the majority of its product manufactured in the States by California Apparel Services, Santa Ana, Calif., and distributed and sold using multiple channels and non-traditional methods to draw out the customers of its niche market.
Unusually, for example, its customer-service-based dealer programs include gear exchange, which allows a dealer to exchange gear that does not sell, or needs to be replaced with different gear
This could be you, participating in one of Próis’ women-only hunts, if you were the winner of the Próis Bucks Rewards program. to accommodate the change in hunting seasons. “We are extremely focused on providing customer service to our dealer partners,” says Pike. In fact, Próis employs a full-time dealer relations coordinator who works closely with the company’s dealers to optimally display and sell its products.
Not limiting its distribution to dealers only, however, Próis also has developed grassroots initiatives that are key to marketing and moving its products, such as its Home Hunting Party program, whose representatives “purchase a sales package and then host parties and attend local events to dig deeper into the niche.” The program has become quite successful, says Pike, with new representatives coming on board each week.
Another innovative way in which the company rustles up excitement is through its Próis Bucks Rewards system, which gives star customers, who purchase directly through the company’s catalog or website, coupon codes for discounted gear that they can
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TOP INNOVATORS share with anyone they deem appropriate. Direct sales generated with this coupon code are tracked, says Pike, and the participant who generates the highest level of sales each year wins a spot in one of the Próis women-only hunts.
Of the program, says Pike, “We wanted to find a way to (a) reward our star customers with a discount, (b) encourage their friends and family to bring in more sales and (c) offer a prize that is not only fun, but further enhances the relationship and the draw to the company. It’s sort of like crack, I guess,” Pike jokes.
If you’re curious to know what exactly the female hunter demographic looks like, you might be surprised there, too.
“Contrary to an often portrayed image that all hunters are rednecks, the reality couldn’t be more different. Female hunters are career women, wives, mothers, grandmothers and everything in between,” says Pike, who adds that there is an “instant sisterhood” between female hunters that doesn’t exist with male hunters.
“Women are thrilled to find other women who share their same pursuits. Women are supportive, instructive and understand what it means to be able to harvest an amazing animal, bring home a food source and still maintain all the other traditional roles she may be responsible for.”
Pike says its target customers are quite diverse in their introductions to hunting, as well. You’ve got two distinct groups — those who were raised as hunters, and those who fell into the sport later — but other branches continue to fork off the hunting tree.
For example, while women who begin hunting as adults are typically introduced to the hunting and shooting arena through boyfriend or husbands, Pike says there’s a growing trend of “women introducing women as a means of comraderie.” Another, perhaps unexpected, trend is that more and more moms, instead of dads, are introducing their children to shooting and hunting.
“Women tend to find hunting very empowering. It provides a sense of accomplishment, stamina and pride. … I have to laugh because when I go to the grocery store, ladies come up to me with iPhone images of elk, bucks, turkeys or new bows and rifles — not pictures of their kids!”
— Jordan K. Speer
NOMINATED BY:
G rupo Cortefiel competes in the fast fashion world against global brands such as Zara and Mango. Working with an average of
450 suppliers, largely based in Asia, the company maintains sourcing offices in Delhi, Hong Kong and Madrid, where the company is headquartered. “We buy 74 million garments a year, which yields 174,000 different SKUs for our five commercial formats:
Cortefiel, Springfield, Women’secret, PdH (Pedro del Hierro) and
Fifty Factory,” says Berta Escudero, supply chain general manager for the apparel retail enterprise.
The company’s directly operated stores are scattered throughout Europe, and it maintains franchise locations in 66 other countries. “We replenish our stores three times per week minimum in
Spain and Portugal, and two times per week in the rest of Europe,” adds Escudero. “Our business model consists of frequent planned refreshing of the stores with new collections; therefore in each store delivery, we include new garments and sales replenishment.”
It should go without saying, then, that you can manage such a vast array of moving parts using spreadsheets for only so long.
Grupo Cortefiel lacked a centralized system to manage the range of sourcing and supplier information, which was stored in different locations. Each department — women’s wear, men’s wear, intimates and more — followed separate workflows. Supplier agreements were not well managed or organized, and Cortefiel needed a way to automatically bring new suppliers onboard.
The company turned to Core Solutions for a technology upgrade, deploying its CBX Enterprise system because it featured built-in modules that could handle all of Cortefiel’s specific supplier, sourc-
Fast-fashion behemoth Grupo Cortefiel replenishes its stores three times per week minimum in Spain and Portugal, and two times per week in the rest of Europe.
ing, order and quality needs, in addition to providing full visibility into the entire supply chain through the CBX Critical Path Management tool. “One crucial CBX tool for us is the Critical Path, where we can detect and correct early in the development and production process any delay coming from late fabric reception, problems detected with samples or during the QA inspections, delays during production process, etc.,” Escudero explains.
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“This alert system is highly appreciated by our buyers and helped to speed up the product development process.”
Since implementing CBX, Cortefiel has trimmed a significant amount of time from its supply chain cycle. Now the company’s various departments can forecast seasonal buying and sourcing plans and assign tasks to relevant teams. The system also has helped to improve the management of technical specifications.
“CBX has helped us to increase the productivity in our sourcing offices and supports the business, thanks to faster and organized communication among buyers and designers in Spain, our suppliers and our sourcing and logistics organization,” says Escudero.
“Everyone can check the status of the specific garment development in the system and they don’t need to phone or send emails to get the information. This is indeed very useful when we work in different time zones.”
CBX has also helped Cortefiel to increase teamwork and coordination among its different sourcing offices, because its “been able to align the work processes while still differentiating the particularities of the different countries or suppliers,” adds Escudero.
—Jessica Binns
NOMINATED BY:
F or more than 125 years — since 1883 — generations of American workers have been relying on Wolverine boots for comfort and durability.
Wolverine made the original boots that helped build the railroads, erect skyscrapers, and expand highways across the United States, and its innovations trace back through the years. In 1914,
Wolverine set the standard for durable footwear with its introduction of a footwear line called the 1000 Mile Boot, and in 1991, the company introduced the first in a long line of modernday comfort systems with the launch of Wolverine DuraShocks ® , a technology that features compression pads in the heel and forefoot that absorb shock and return energy.
But Wolverine is more than a work boot brand. Today, its heritage of comfort and durability is integrated into a full line of workwear and rugged outdoor apparel, built, like its boots, with quality materials and fine craftsmanship to withstand a variety of challenging environments.
“Wolverine apparel is designed for active men who need the freedom to move,” says Lisa Stoepker, Wolverine product manager.
One of Wolverine’s most recent innovations in apparel design is highlighted in its perfecting of the brand’s cotton duck canvas jacket. This classic jacket with its traditional, recognizable silhouette, is made from durable canvas and has been a workwear staple for decades.
Even so, Wolverine saw places for improvement and set out to improve the jacket’s comfort and fit. By carefully examining men’s on-the-job movements, Wolverine identified areas where the jacket inhibited motion around the arms and back.
Specifically, it found that when wearers moved their arms forward, the sleeves pulled away from the wrists and the back of the jacket stretched tightly across the back.
The Finley, pictured here, is an updated version of Wolverine's classic duck jacket, offering workers a perfected fit with a bi-swing back and articulated elbows for a full range of motion.
Taking the workers’ natural motions into careful consideration, Wolverine developed an innovative solution to allow for more natural movement and range of motion, by perfecting a fully-gusseted arm socket to provide maximum flexibility around the shoulder, without adding bulkiness, said Stoepker. The design incorporates extra folds of fabric that can stretch when needed but retain the jacket’s traditional, at-rest shape.
Wolverine also integrated elastic into the back of the jacket to reduce the tight feeling across the back that wearers experienced when moving their arms forward. The two components together resulted in a jacket with a fully functional bi-swing back for optimal comfort and natural range of motion.
Taking the design innovations a step further, Wolverine also introduced articulated elbows. Stoepker says the layered design around the elbows allows for a full range of motion at the elbow joint.
The articulated elbows together with the bi-swing back are featured in two new Wolverine cotton duck canvas jackets, the Finley and Hawksbill, which offer the same durability and classic style as the original, but with more comfort, function and flexibility than ever before.
— Jordan K. Speer
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W hen you manufacture apparel for the likes of Target, Chico’s and Kohl’s — and 25 percent of your business comes from the newly reinvigorated JCPenney — efficiency and timely turnaround are the name of the game. For House of Pearl, a global enterprise with 25 offices and more than 20,000 employees in 15 countries, every competitive advantage matters, which is why the company set about implementing OptiTex Pattern Design Software (PDS) in November 2010. House of Pearl previously worked with a hodgepodge of various CAD software solutions and decided it was time to upgrade to a consistent design technology platform.
The company purchased a total of 10 PDS seats: eight for woven garments and two for knitted. So far, after a smooth implementation process, House of Pearl has eight pattern masters who are fully up to speed with using OptiTex; two additional employees are just beginning their training. According to the results of an evaluation survey, efficiency in both units using OptiTex has improved by 60 percent. In the pre-PDS era of manual pattern design, workers produced three to four patterns each day, which has increased to as many as eight patterns daily with OptiTex.
The OptiTex and House of Pearl management and technical teams come together to discuss advancing design technology.
House of Pearl plans to implement an additional 10 seats in the woven garments manufacturing division.
Going forward, House of Pearl sees a place for OptiTex technology in other areas. The company says it will deploy its Automatic Marker Nesting Optimization and CutPlan software, which will reduce production cost and time, in-house sampling and fitting costs, and lead time of sample shipments. Starting this year and into 2013, House of Pearl also intends to integrate its Opti-
Tex suite with its PLM and ERP software.
— Jessica Binns
NOMINATED BY:
L egendary luxury house Ralph Lauren’s innovations in digital technology are well documented; in late 2010, the company launched a 4D initiative in New York and
London, incorporating live models and the brand’s iconic imagery on the side of actual buildings into a spectacle of reality and illusion, and ending the whole affair with a well-timed spritz of its then-latest fragrance.
Crowds gathered in both locations were surprised and delighted (and also perfumed).
While Ralph Lauren may be known for pushing the envelope on branding and engagement, it also innovates behind the scenes on a decidedly less sexy — but just as essential — side of the apparel business: the supply chain. Retailers and manufacturers alike continually grapple with managing expedited shipments. By their very nature expedited shipments are critical — which is why shippers are willing to pay 10 to 20 times more to move them.
Like many other companies, Ralph Lauren Corporation (RLC) managed its expedited shipments by routing them via emailed instructions, referring to a static guide to determine which logistics services provider
(LSP) to use for any given shipping lane.
In this system, the LSP lacks advance notice of when the shipment is coming its way; data about the products being shipped; and information about when the shipment is due. The LSP manually keys in the product data to notify the customer in detail about what’s coming — but that information usually arrives after the shipment has already landed. The process does not manage critical, high-cost shipments effectively, resulting in limited ability to adjust to market conditions, poor visibility into origin transport activities such as routing requests, bookings and handovers, and limited ability to analyze and execute new service options across 400 factories and 50 origins, says David Lande, director of international transportation at RLC. Ten percent to 20 percent of the company’s shipments are expedited, generally to fill customer order windows.
To address this process inefficiency,
RLC’s transportation operations team codeveloped with Acuitive Solutions the International Transportation Management System
(iTMS), a first for the apparel industry. The iTMS dynamically routes inbound expedited shipments and creates live communications between the company and its
LSPs on a 24/7 global basis via a dynamic routing portal. Innovative in several ways, the iTMS links multiple purchase order systems into a single interface for all vendors to access and confirm quantities, packing, weights and handover dates.
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The system also considers multiple service levels, such as standard and deferred, to auto-route shipments to the lowest-cost service option. What’s more, it tenders the shipment and related purchase order data to the nominated LSP on routing selection and receives booking confirmation and shipment status update details back from the LSP. iTMS takes some guesswork out of the process by calculating and auditing the chargeable weight as submitted by the vendor and reconciling it with what the
LSP says it should be.
RLC has been very pleased with the results so far. The iTMS has moved 48 percent of all shipments from the standard, full-price service to more cost-efficient options. Three percent of shipments were routed via an expedited ocean service, saving 50 percent of the standard cost per shipment. Even better: the company achieved
ROI for the project in just three months.
Now that LSPs are notified electronically as shipments are routed — up to five days before vendor booking — the extra lead time helps providers secure capacity, often at a lower cost. The iTMS provides up to 11 additional days’ visibility of inbound expedited shipments, as well as greater vendor control and the ability to quickly and effectively change supplier preferences in cases where LSP performance or cost competitiveness changed suddenly. RLC says data quality around shipment details and status updates has also improved significantly. And since RLC is trimming days from the supply chain, the company’s carbon footprint is also shrinking.
Lande says Acuitive was a great, collaborative partner in bringing the iTMS to fruition. “They designed a new process to address our needs and didn’t try to fit an existing product and alter our process,” he explains. “They developed comprehensive training and podcasts in multiple languages to facilitate development.”
The iTMS has about 400 users, one in each of RLC’s factories. “We held webinars with each factory to train them and they were welcome to also attend them live in our Hong Kong office,” Lande says.
—Jessica Binns
NOMINATED BY:
M.D.H.: I am from Burma but I can not remember ever living there. I was born in the jungle between Burma and Thailand after my parent’s village was burned by the army. We fled through the jungle to the Thai refugee camp. I lived in the refugee camp for 20 years before we were given the opportunity to come to the United States in
2008. In these three years, I have learned so much from reading
English to driving a car to getting a job. Now with WORN, I am able to continue to provide for my family doing something I love to do, which is crocheting.
M.D.H.’s crocheted scarves are sold by WORN, a new socially conscious brand of accessories hand-knit (or crocheted) by refugee women in the United States. Many apparel companies contribute to their communities, but
WORN was born giving back. Launched last year by
Catholic Charities Fort Worth (CCFW), the business was designed to provide supplemental income to refugees to help them and their families rise above poverty.
S.A.: I am from Bhutan but I have spent the majority of my life in a refugee camp in Nepal. In the refugee camp, I was able to graduate from college and teach young children in a small school.
My husband and I were given the opportunity to come to the United
States in 2010 where we were reunited with all of my husbands’ family in Fort Worth, Texas. We were also blessed to have our first child here in the United States. However, my husband and I are still struggling to find steady work, but with WORN I have been able to stay at home with my baby while also contributing to our household income.
Scarves from WORN are hand-knit or crocheted by refugee women who have come to the United States seeking better lives. The income generated by selling their scarves helps to pull them and their families out of poverty.
“This is both a new product launch and a new business strategy. WORN is different from other socially conscious brands because it is made in the USA, provides supplemental income, gives the refugee women an opportunity to attend financial education classes, and reinvests 100 percent of profits from the scarves back into a non-profit agency to help others,” says Susan Vinson, WORN’s senior operations manager. “The idea of WORN stemmed from a CCFW employee and the agency got behind the idea, further researched it, and found funding to support the initial start up,” she adds.
H.L.: I am from Burma but I have spent over 10 years of my life living in a refugee camp. I am the mother of five, two of which were born in a refugee camp, and one that still lives in a refugee camp. I am www.apparelmag.com
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TOP INNOVATORS coming up on my one year of living in the United States and I am still adjusting to life here. Everything is so different from the hospitals to schools to being able to put money in a bank. WORN has been able to help provide an extra source of income to help us adjust to life in the United States.
Refugees from all over the world come to the United States for resettlement, leaving behind the affliction and persecution they faced in their home countries, says Vinson. CCFW, along with other resettlement agencies, helps the refugees’ transition into American culture. This includes help with setting up apartments, providing English as a Second Language classes, enrolling children in schools, and help with integration into the American employment system. “The vision of Catholic Charities Fort Worth is to provide the necessary skills that allow these refugees to be self-sufficient and regain a sense of both self and dignity,” says Vinson.
A.I.: I am a refugee from Burma. I lived in Malaysia because I was forced to flee my home country. I do not like to repeat the events of my life frequently. Whenever I think about it I feel pain again. I am trying to forget.
“WORN is combining fashion with a social cause, ‘purchase with a purpose,’” says Vinson. “As the business grows, it enables the brand to increase the number of refugee women needed to service demand.” Currently, WORN has two product lines a year — Spring and Fall — and sells only scarves, but, says Vinson,
“you can expect to see other hand-knitted (or crocheted) accessories in the future.”
— Jordan K. Speer
NOMINATED BY:
i Love the Madness. That’s the catchy little slogan of Moosejaw Mountaineering, an activewear and outdoor gear retailer with seven physical stores in the Midwest and a strong online presence. The brand is known for its “nonsensical” marketing strategies, such as using a Winston Churchill speech as the “hold music” on its toll-free customer service number and establishing Dating Girl, whom customers can contact for relationship advice. These moves have helped Moosejaw gain a strong following among its core demographic of serious outdoor enthusiasts who are young, anti-corporate and tech savvy.
And yet there’s nothing mad or nonsensical about improving the customer experience in very tangible ways. That’s exactly what Moosejaw did with its mobile point-of-sale rollout last October after developing the system for four months. “Creating that close connection with customers online and in stores is a big part of our brand and the mobile POS plays to that strength,” says Eoin Comerford, Moosejaw CEO. The company partnered with CrossView, a crosschannel commerce solutions provider, to get handheld POS terminals into the hands of store associates.
Comerford says that while the brand looked at how other mobile POS options operate, the company never considered working with another provider, citing existing investments with CrossView and the resulting simplified backend integration: the mobile POS makes it so simple to access product information that sales associates can sell items sight unseen, ordering merchandise from inventory in the warehouse.
The handhelds include an iPod touch with a Linea Pro cradle featuring a 2D barcode scanner and a magnetic stripe reader for credit cards. Shoppers can have their receipts emailed or printed out. Comerford describes the system as hardy enough for a retail environment yet with a sleek form factor that looks familiar to shoppers.
“We had to add a secure wireless modem in each shop to support the rollout,” he adds. “Future shops have wireless built into the store’s firewall device.” Moosejaw is expanding into several new markets over the next 12 months.
Moosejaw associates are quite taken with the new technology. “The employees love the mobile POS and have dubbed it
‘The Future Toaster,’” says Comerford. “I’m not sure why — probably something to do with the credit card swipe slot. They like that it enables them to engage directly with customers without a bulky cash wrap getting in the way.” The POS system also helps
Moosejaw’s new mobile POS makes it so simple to access product information that sales associates can sell items sight unseen, ordering merchandise from inventory in the warehouse.
to eliminate long queues by assisting customers wherever they’re located in the store.
And shoppers love it, too. “A customer used it in our Ann Arbor store one morning and then called back to say that she wanted another item but had her kids in a car, so could we run the jacket out to the car and ring her up? No problem,” explains Comerford. “Overall, customers think it’s pretty cool and get a kick out of signing for their credit card with their finger on the screen.”
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TOP INNOVATORS
Moosejaw is working on creating “customer engagement areas” in its stores.
Different from the standard POS areas where service is traditionally delivered, these areas are located at the front of the store to welcome shoppers and are decorated with broken-in easy chairs, a rug and a coffee table stacked with games. A flat-panel TV with a rotating slideshow of promotions, upcoming events and photos from customers shows a rolling feed from Moosejaw’s Twitter account. The company intends for these areas to not only improve customer interactions but also free up valuable floor space for additional merchandise.
Comerford sees other innovations ahead.
“We continue to look for ways to stay at the forefront of seamless cross-channel commerce, whether that’s web, store, mobile, catalog, social or whatever,” he explains.
“Customers expect a seamless experience with consistent pricing, policies, purchase history and brand voice.”
— Jessica Binns
NOMINATED BY:
W hat began as a group of 23 mountain climbing buddies is now the nation’s largest consumer cooperative, featuring national brands as well as its own REI private brands of outdoor gear and clothing, but still as committed to “inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship” as it ever was.
Each year, REI donates millions of dollars to support conservation efforts nationwide and sends dedicated teams of volunteers
— members, customers and REI employees
— to build trails, clean up beaches, restore local habitats and more. REI also focuses on responsible business practices enterprisewide to reduce its environmental footprint.
In keeping with its commitment to preserve and care for the planet, REI is on a mission to reduce the amount of REI-branded packaging it uses by 25 percent by 2013.
REI private brands comprise approximately
20 percent of product sold in its retail stores.
To accomplish this goal, the company first took aim at the excessive and unnecessary use of cardboard and plastic wrap in packaging REI products, says packaging manager Eric Abraham. Then, he and his team dug deeper and examined every single aspect of packaging throughout the supply chain and store floor, down to the hangtags, which inform consumers of brand name, price and basic product information concerning apparel merchandise and gear.
“Anything deemed wasteful — anything that wasn’t product, that the consumer had to do something with, we wanted to measure,” said Abraham.
The team’s analysis found that REI’s consumption of up to eight million hangtags per year used 59,000 kg of paperboard and more than 36,300 kg of plastic. REI, like other retailers examining their supply chains for waste, updated its paper hangtags to be more sustainable by moving from 10 percent recycled content to 100 percent FSCcertified content — but then went a step further. REI took a close look at the hangtag’s plastic fastener and decided to seek a more environmentally friendly solution.
Overall, the fasteners don’t have a major impact from the perspective of volume compared with other packaging products, says
Abraham, “but the problem was that the guidelines we established early on for designing package require that we either use a single substrate, use recycled materials or close the loop … by using materials that are widely recyclable.”
In working to improve its fasteners, REI designers collaborated with Avery Dennison RBIS for almost six months to engineer a solution that would simultaneously reduce landfill waste and elevate REI’s position as an environmentally sensitive brand.
The team came up with recycled garment fasteners that are manufactured from a minimum of 88 percent post-consumer-waste recycled plastic bottles or plastic retail garment hangers.
Made from recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (rPET) or recycled Polypropylene
(rPPT), the fasteners come standard in 19 colors and can be customized by color for greater design versatility. Each fastener features the
REI’s new recycled garment fasteners contain a minimum of 88 percent recycled plastic.
“Recycled” logo molded onto the paddle of the piece, enabling immediate recognition of the retailer’s sustainability efforts.
As for its next steps, Abraham says, REI’s ultimate goal is to design the fastener out of the product completely. We have entered an age, he says, “when the customer is willing to purchase a $200 jacket using only a smartphone, rather than flipping through a fourpage hangtag. … Our eventual goal is to design out most of the packaging altogether.
“Sustainability is a journey. It’s not a giant leap. It’s about taking steps,” he says.
“We’re all unequivocally linked to the outdoors and what our impacts are on it.”
— Jordan K. Speer www.apparelmag.com
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TOP INNOVATORS
NOMINATED BY:
F ruit of The Loom knows that today’s customers are more demanding than ever, and as such, it keeps an eye on short cycle times to ensure it brings products to market in a timely way to meet their desires.
To make sure it can continue to deliver quality products at a fair price, Fruit of the Loom is consolidating its multiple operating groups onto a centralized product lifecycle management (PLM) solution to shorten cycle times, and better meet consumer demand.
Fruit of The Loom manufactures and sells apparel for men, women, girls, boys and toddlers. While the company is most recognized for its undergarments and Tshirts, it also manufactures casual wear, including fleece hoodies and pants. The company operates four major brands, including Fruit of the Loom, Russell Athletics,
Vanity Fair Lingerie and Spalding, and employs more than 30,000 individuals worldwide.
Fruit of the Loom is working toward consolidating all of these operations under one development umbrella — a move that the company expects will streamline operating costs. Clearly, this task is a huge undertaking. However, the mission is further complicated by the fact that each division has been utilizing different data management tools and maintaining diverse product development processes.
“In order to harness the potential across all of our divisions, it was essential that we move to a common platform for developing, manufacturing and managing product,” said Bruce Smith, vice president, product development, Fruit of the Loom.
“This not only meant utilizing one PLM system, but also refining various business processes into a common process.”
PLM solutions rely on one single data source that is analyzed and used to manage the entire lifecycle of a product from conception through design and manufacture through distribution. Many companies also give trading partners, including factories and fabric mills, access to information to track development.
Centralizing its divisions on one system would allow all involved associates to gain a centralized view from which to monitor and track progress across all areas of product testing, raw materials and styles and sampling, as well as cost breakdown comparisons and analysis, including price negotiations and profit plans.
To streamline this massive job, Fruit of the Loom wanted a solution that went beyond a simple “plug in” of new software.
It also needed a PLM system that could link with many other technology solutions that play a role in product development.
For example, the company wanted the ability to pull pattern and marker information directly from pattern and marker making systems into its specification package. It wanted to build color libraries and palettes within the PLM tool, to house materials test data and create materials specifications within the PLM system, and to create real-time communication with suppliers and vendors by providing secure data entry ports for critical information.
Fruit of the Loom selected the Yunique
PLM platform from Tolland, Conn.-based
Gerber Technology, a provider of automated solutions for the apparel industry.
The company began installing the new
PLM platform in late January while also conducting several function-based workshops. The implementation plan is following a multi-phased go-live approach, with the
Fruit of the Loom division scheduled to go live first, in August, with the other divisions to follow at regular intervals over the subsequent several months.
To ensure the program stays on target, a dedicated team continues to evaluate the development process, and keep its eye open for potential process improvements the technology can offer.
“Cost reduction is an ongoing challenge, especially when our goal is to produce superior quality product at a fair cost,” said Smith.
“This [solution] creates a winning combination for us, our retail partners and most importantly, the end consumer.
“Once the implementation is complete, we will be able to realize improvement not only across product development, but also in how we work and communicate with brand marketing and management, internal manufacturing, as well as material vendors and garment suppliers,” said Smith.
While it is still too soon to report specific results, Smith is impressed with the performance of the combined cross-functional development team that consists of associates from Gerber and Fruit of the
Loom. “Our future plans focus on meeting the needs of the market, and ultimately our customers,” he added. “I have no doubts that this group will lead us through a successful implementation.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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