PI Apparel 2017 | Program

With two successful deployments under it's belt and an ongoing 4-in-1 upgrade roadmap in motion, Ariat International is no stranger to PLM and the work needed to ensure its long term success and adoption. Karen, the company's Director ot PLM & Data, attended PI Apparel NYC last year and noticed three key areas that people were desperate to explore further in an attempt to better their own understanding and strategy.

Today, Karen brings along her expertise and Vanessa, Ariat's Business Analyst, to this session to discuss:

1. Attaining and maintaining senior-level PLM buy-in and support
2. Ensuring a PLM investment and roll-out is managed in partnership with IT
3. PLM is only as successful as the data it manages; how can we configure the system, train the users and standardise its use and language to maximize extractable value?

Come prepared to share your own experiences and ask questions.

Grupo Kaltex is a Mexico-based home textile and apparel vertical enterprise. Like most other companies, they had relied on email and spreadhseet-supported operations for the longest time but, in 2015 and with goals for future expansion, decided that their inefficencies were no longer acceptable and that they needed a universal approach to managing product without having to sacrifice quality and service.

Amongst their many companies were two that worked very closely together: Kaltex Mexico designs and produces products for US-based Revman International that sells them as well as licensed products from other brands. The aim of a PLM investment was to simplify this relationship, using PLM to structure and synchronize processes across the different design and development teams, thus improving time to market, product quality, operational flexibility and international growth.

In this session, Hebe Schecter, President of Grupo Kaltex and corporate technology sponsor will explore:

• The disrepancies of the pre-PLM Kaltex-Revman partership
• The steps taken in evaluating and selecting the right PLM platform for the job
• The way in which the deployment roadmap was formalized and the role she played in its development and execution as the executive level sponsor
• Creating a standardized language across their different teams in design, development and manufacturing 
• Supporting real-time communication between teams to bolster collaboration and visibility over their diverse collection of international product lines, divisons and companies 
• The realities of PLM - much like a baby it doesn't matter how much prep you do before you bring it home, you are never quite prepared for the unexpected changes and new 
• The added complexity of rolling out PLM in two separate companies that needed an aligned and standardized end-result model
• How does PLM allow for a smarter and more proactive approach to the supply chain?

When sales are where they are, organizations are being constantly challenged to be faster with fewer resources. PLM is of course a tool that, in the long-run, somewhat alleviates such pressures but it does become difficult to balance a resource-heavy deployment that demands a huge amount of planning, strategizing and management with a business in flux, that steals and reallocates said resource constantly.

There is no way to tackle the volatily of the marketplace but what you can do is better prepare for it by asking yourself how you might keep PLM one of the organization's top priorities regardless.

Heidi Goold with Kohl's has firsthand experience with this challenge and leads a discussion around how you must constantly be re-assessing what value PLM can provide and in doing so, become adaptive, understanding its expanded value and re-selling it internally at all times to maintain buy-in and ownership. 

Hear live testimonials from Derek Lam, One Jeanswear Group and a Bass Pro veteran!

An experienced panel of industry experts, will discuss some of the biggest challenges that the industry is facing today.

The discussion will focus on:

• Best practices, key learnings and advice about PLM
• Resolving challenges whatever your company size, product offer or business model
• Customer testimonials about real life return on investment

Easy to use and fast to implement, Centric Software’s PLM solutions are designed to accelerate time to market, reduce costs and increase market responsiveness. This session will cover:

• What to expect with PLM
• The benefits of PLM and the changes it will bring
• How to make a business case for a PLM project

Markdowns and excess inventory seem to escalate every year. Even experienced merchants struggle to pick products that will win in the market, and expert planners are challenged to get the buy quantities right. Leveraging the power of predictive analytics, retailers and brands can identify which products will resonate best with customers, and their supply chain teams can make better decisions armed with both history-based planning tools and the voice of the customer. 

Join Gretchen Jezerc, VP Marketing and Mark Chrystal, SVP and Chief Supply Chain Officer at David’s Bridal, as they discuss how incorporating the voice of the customer into assortment and planning decisions can significantly reduce markdowns and inventory costs. 

• Eliminate excess inventory and avoid stockouts by adding the voice of the customer to the supply chain toolkit
• Reduce markdowns by more accurately forecasting demand, AUR price and margin for each item
• Cut product testing and sampling costs and increase new product success rates using customer-powered predictive analytics

Genesco really just wanted correct data – one point of entry for a validated single version of the truth to port into their ERP and integrate into marketing easily. Excel spreadsheets weren’t cutting it anymore, but a hefty system with all the bells and whistles was overkill. The answer? Start with PIM and slowly add in key aspects of a PLM, creating a right-sized new hybrid known fondly as PLIM.

With growing Omni-channel requirements, managing and validating assets became one of the company’s largest hurdles.

In this session, Alex Carpenter, Senior Business Analyst at Genesco, will present how the company adopted a solution that not only streamlined development, but also prepared product information and visual assets to seamlessly integrate with ERP and provide a one stop multi-channel hub for downloading assets globally.

• Challenges and successes in launching multiple wholesale/retail footwear brands in a "PLM Lite" environment
• Empowering designers to move from idea to sketch to bill of materials in a seamless workflow
• Leveraging custom reporting to replace manual and legacy line sheets and product data sheets
• Using PIM and modern tools to simplify data collection and create "one version of the truth"
• Integrating PIM solutions with legacy ERP systems

Genesco sells footwear, headwear, and sports apparel through more than 2,775 shoe and cap stores globally. Their operations include Journeys, Johnston & Murphy, Lids Sports division and Schuh, as well as sales of licensed brands such as Dockers and G.H. Bass footwear. 

The Fila® brand was founded in 1911 in Italy but since 2007, has been owned and operated by Fila Korea Ltd. Fila USA designs, develops and markets Fila® branded athletic and leisure shoes, apparel and a range of sport accessories. The former Italian ownership operated using a home grown and ancient mid 90s PDM platform that managed certain products only. But when it was acquired and a Korean lab for advancing technology and fabrics as well as a new China office were established, the absence of a non-centralized and tethered approach to global product development soon began causing expensive problems.

In an attempt to increase collaboration and communication between global parties, Fila turned to PLM. In this session Sandy Hamilton, IT Director at Fila USA discusses:

• The complications of using an antiquated PDM system, and relying heavily on spreadsheets & email for a well-oiled global collaboration
• Working alongside the vendor to develop and perfect a PLM tool specific to footwear management
• Leveraging the added efficiencies of PLM to maintain workforce numbers vs increasing resources and investment
• What have the impacts of a PLM system been on the global development of Fila lines?
• What are the now-possible overlaps in design collaboration?
• Selectively migrating legacy data into the new system
• What were the cultural aspects of the journey when working across the US, Korea and China?
• How has the investment in PLM impacted the internal model, structure and operation of Fila USA?
• Future phases - translating best practices from footwear into Fila apparel
• Planning for ERP-PLM integration post a new ERP evaluation

Whilst his earlier session outlined one of the hats Mark wears at PVH (specifically in Calvin Klein), he has also been tasked with designing and configuring a holistic and true end-to-end PLM strategy for the entire PVH business. As an acquisition company with little to no integration strategy, they are today a conglomerate with one C-level board operating across 6 different and disparate PLM solutions. As they embark on a selection journey for one true PLM that satisifes all brands' needs, Mark is tasked with understanding and balancing what the users want and what the company needs.

Ada is Mark's counterpart, working on the early stages of a 3D technology investment workstream for the business. 

Unlike in most cases, the two parties have a real opportunity to work in parallel and in unison from day dot to together achieve the the goal of a fully integrated PLM-3D utopia, whereby each product is created digitally in 3D and then seamlessly fed and integrated into PLM.

They lead a discussion on the steps and mindset needed to drive such planning and to achieve such a vision.

The Digital Supply Chain demands that information and data flow throughout the entire value chain. Every PLM system in use today only contributes to a sector of that value chain but whilst its role is rapidly changing, almost no global fashion company knows the proper approach to execute a Connected Enterprise.

This session will discuss how PLM is expanding across its traditional boundaries and the steps you should be taking to make full use of its transformative potential.

• How are Gen Z/Millennial shopping habits shaking up conventional wisdom in retail?
• What are the 3 most important philosophies in retail?
• Where is retail really headed? – A glimpse into the future
• Why the “assembly line” approach to fashion PLM is still so prevalent – and why it no longer works.
• The Connected Enterprise – how to break down organizational silos with PLM to become a consumer-focused, agile, responsiveness organization.
• PLM’s new role within the Value Chain – why extending PLM throughout the value chain is the key to survival

During this session hear how Vera Bradley leverages technology to manage their quality assurance process. Find out how they work with their raw material suppliers to develop innovation in prints, patterns and fabrications while maintaining their high quality standards.

Vera Bradley is a leading designer of women's handbags, luggage and travel items, fashion and home accessories and unique gifts.  Founded in 1982 by friends Barbara Bradley Baekgaard and Patricia R. Miller, the brand's innovative designs, iconic patterns and brilliant colors continue to inspire and connect women unlike any other brand in the global marketplace.  The Company's commitment to bringing more beauty into women's lives includes its dedication to breast cancer research through the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer in which they have raised over $28 million to date.

According to a recently published retail innovation report by Kalypso and Indiana University, the integration of VOC into product design and development was ranked the most important emerging future practice for those companies polled. However, though an overwhelming majority recognized its strategic importance, it's successful adoption has thus far been reportedly very poor.

John Talbott, co-author of the publication and a member of Indiana University's Center for Education and Research in Retailing, believes that before we can find success in VOC, we first need to understand what it is that we are doing now within design and development that is failing us and where the consumer can help overcome those shortfalls.

In this session John will discuss:

• We rightly hold our product designers in very high esteem but how good are they at truly predicting and understanding what the market wants?
• Glancing backwards to move forwards - where have past product designs and market forecasts failed and what were the reasons?
• How can you begin to collate and gather VOC data?
• When should you listen to what the customer has to say?
• How can you transform what a customer is saying into usable and profitable action?
• Data, data, data - what are a few ways in which you can move beyond being just good at collecting data into actually extracting value from it?
• How can we complement and improve our design vision and creativity with consumer feedback?
• How do we test it to ensure we are in fact making the right customer-centric decisions?

The time it takes for a trend to disseminate into mass market products has dramatically reduced the past several years. With this pressure comes an immense need to reduce cycle time and deliver innovative products to maintain competitiveness.  

Come join us to find out how digitizing your design and development processes can help you go from trend to store faster than ever before.

As is the case with most PLM investments, Greg Norman had, for a long time, relied on a copy and paste model within excel spreadsheets and single file sharing to manage product. Koskia Bello was familiar with PDM from a previous professional life so when it was deemed necessary for Greg Norman to abandon their manual way of working and to invest in their first ever web-based system, she leveraged on that inherited relationship when moving forward with PLM. In golf apparel, polos are the key category so they are often working with basic styling templates that they vary from season to season. The minute they started on PLM, they began seeing the benefits of being able to catalogue product information that they could arrange into libraries across style, color, pattern and fabric. 

All in all, PLM has drastically improved their communication across their global operation and has helped expedite the time it takes to take a product from concept through to consumer.

In this session, Koskia will discuss:

• Why PLM?
• The Color Library – basic and seasonal colors uploaded and searchable making it incredibly easy to add to pitch a new pattern
• The Fabric Library – the ability to search previously used fabrics and their associated sourcing times, costs and partners
• How the library format has aided in expediting the transfer from design to tech design to add fit and measurements
• Real time communication and product changes across a globally operated organization
• How has PLM impacted the relay of information between brand and vendor?
• How can retail information be fed back and saved with PLM alongside a product to avoid repeat mistakes?
• The next steps – onboarding sales and merchandising users; extending its reach and function; enhancing visibility of a whole collection in real time

No matter your PLM maturity or roadmap stage, you will be exploring how you might extend its functionality beyond traditional design and development and into the wider end-to-end company operation. While the original drivers behind a PLM investment may have largely been about solving a problem, what if the platform could be instead leveraged to create additional and unexplored opportunities for your business and bottom line?

Historically, the sourcing process has been somewhat messy; there has been no one central place to store, manage and/or rank the sourcing network community and companies largely rely on existing vendor relationships because there is neither the time nor process to effectively evaluate new ones.

But this does not have to be the case; Victoria Brown of IDC joins PI Apparel NYC to discuss:

• Leveraging PLM as a B2B Sourcing Management tool
• Consolidating all vendor information into one place and subsequently streamlining the sourcing process
• Creating an integrated 'LinkedIn of Suppliers' such that all new design information can be sent out to the suppliers and they can contact you for your business
• PLM as a bidding war platform
• Intelligent portfolio design or component recommendations based on past sales performance
• Adding a whole new layer of operational efficiency and logged communication into your PLM

It is no secret that the integration of PLM with ERP has a proven track record of cutting timelines, lowering costs and improving quality by expediting the product development process. However, the complementary roles of PLM and ERP are not always well understood, leading to complexity when implementing and connecting these two systems together.

Ariat International, divided into two business units, already functions on two successful PLM roadmaps and has operated on SAP ERP for years. They know that inevitably they will want, at some stage in the near future, to have their PLMs and ERP communicating but to ensure they avoid any traps, are taking the time from now to have the pre-requisite processes and planning in place to ensure a smooth transition. 

In this session Ryan and Vanessa lead a discussion on how to ensure consistent, standardized and aligned configuration and management across both platforms so that when the time comes, an integration is seamless, error-free and ultimately, fruitful in both the short and long term.