Press Release

contents
MAY
volume 56/number 9
COVERSTORY
With digital technologies occupying increasing space in our minds and
lives, it’s no surprise that many of this year’s award winners took honors for
innovations in the areas of marketing and merchandising, or that a number
aligned themselves with another big trend that is making waves as technology
makes more things possible: mass one-to-one customization. We say kudos to
all of Apparel’s innovators, who continue to move the industry forward in
interesting and unexpected ways.
BY JORDAN K. SPEER, JESSICA BINNS AND DEENA M. AMATO-MCCOY
Cover photography courtesy of Kokatat, Photo credit Jordy Searle
INNOVATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PAGE
INNOVATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PAGE
Acustom Apparel . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Aerosoles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Ascena Retail Group . . . . . . . . . . .38
Betabrand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Brooks Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Buffalo Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
bumbrella . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Canada Goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Chico's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Dragon Crowd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Everything But Water . . . . . . . . . . .26
Francesca's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
Garmatex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Harry Rosen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
Hatley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
in the pink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
JustFab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Kathmandu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Kokatat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Koos Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . .21
L. L. Bean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Lands' End Business Outfitters . . .12
Macy's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Mitchells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Mizuno Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Mountain Equipment Co-op . . . . . .29
Performance Scrubs . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Rebecca Minkoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
RG Barry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
Stantt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
SustainU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Timberland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Topson Downs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Twice as Nice Uniforms . . . . . . . . .28
Under Armour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Vestagen Technical Textiles . . . . . .15
TOP INNOVATOR
SPONSORS
BY JORDAN K. SPEER,
JESSICA BINNS AND
DEENA M. AMATO-MCCOY
With digital technologies occupying increasing space in our minds and lives, it’s no surprise that many of this
year’s award winners took honors for innovations in the areas of marketing and merchandising, or that a number
aligned themselves with another big trend that is making waves as technology makes more things possible: mass
one-to-one customization. Our winners include a company that doesn’t produce a product until it pre-sells enough
of the item to manufacture it, and another that inspired its customers with a study revealing the collective results
that could accrue to the U.S. population – including, perhaps ironically, 14 billion fewer hours spent online – if
everybody ran.
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You’ll also find out about a dry suit that lets you disrobe halfway and a shapewear garment that doesn’t
pose health risks. You’ll learn how several companies are transforming medical scrubs to meet modernday needs, while many others are gaining deep insights into their supply chains — and getting closer to
their customers — by dumping their legacy systems for connected systems that allow them to better
harness the increasing mass of data available to them. We say kudos to all of Apparel’s innovators,
who continue to move the industry forward in interesting and unexpected ways.
Rebecca Minkoff
New York, N.Y. | www.rebeccaminkoff.com
NOMINATED BY:
eBay | www.ebayinc.com and Avery Dennison | www.rbis.averydennison.com
f, while watching Downton Abbey, you’ve
ever slipped into a reverie in which you
have a lady’s maid who helps select and
bring you your clothes, knows your personal preferences, adjusts your surroundings to suit you and generally makes
smooth the path of your day, well, Rebecca
Minkoff just may help your dream come
true.
In an example of how our online and
offline worlds are beginning to collide,
Rebecca Minkoff, designer and retailer
of handbags, apparel and accessories, in
November 2014 unveiled its “Connected
Store” in two locations, one in New York’s
SoHo neighborhood and one in San
Francisco. The store used Connected
Glass and other technologies from eBay
to merge the experiences of shopping
online and shopping in a brick-and-mortar store via “Connected Walls” — oversized mirrored displays where customers
can view videos, browse content, request
items to be sent to fitting rooms, push
checkout to their mobile phone, have
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the items shipped home, and even order
beverages.
Inside fitting rooms, customers can
continue to interact with connected mirrors to request assistance or other items,
save their items to mobile for later, check
out and even change the lighting to better reflect the atmosphere in which they
plan to wear the garment, says creative
director and co-founder Rebecca Minkoff.
(“SoHo after dark” is the current SoHo
store favorite.)
Additionally, merchandise is equipped
with UHF RFID tags from Avery Dennison that allow dressing rooms to identify the merchandise when it is brought
in, enabling the store not only to keep
track of inventory in real time, but also
to provide a better customer experience,
says CEO and co-founder Uri Minkoff.
From inside the dressing room, a customer can find out, for example, what
other sizes and colors are available in
the store, or receive recommendations
about complementary items, he says.
Shoppers can also take their entire
“fitting room” with them via the Rebecca
Minkoff iOS mobile app, adding to their
own personal profiles, while each store
associate is equipped with a mobile companion app to the fitting room and connected wall, which gives them full insight
into customer requests, product details,
and inventory across channels so that
they can quickly and easily provide assistance to customers. It also integrates into
the mobile POS, so that they can streamline the checkout process.
After they leave the store, shoppers
can return merchandise easily across all
channels and learn more about products
they interacted with in the store; that same
trail of information is also available to
Rebecca Minkoff, which can now collect information in-store about what customers browse, try on and buy, just as
they do online.
Sounds like a dream come true for
the retailer, too.
— Jordan K. Speer
Dragon Crowd Garment Inc.
www.dragon-crowd.com | Costa Mesa, Calif.
NOMINATED BY:
Self
n many Asian cultures, dragons — those mythical serpentine fire-breathing creatures — often are renowned for their
wisdom and longevity, and it’s just those two qualities that
have informed Dragon Crowd’s rapid evolution from its traditional apparel manufacturing roots into a vertically integrated, WRAP-certified producer of young men’s and women’s
apparel that now boasts a thriving research and development
operation. It takes a healthy dose of wisdom to think outside
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the box, choose the road less traveled and make differentiation from the competition a top priority — all important ingredients for a lengthy and productive showing in a notoriously
cutthroat and corner-cutting industry.
“We asked our current customers, what could we do above
and beyond the scope of what we currently deliver as a
company?” says Jeff Marshall, marketing director for Dragon
Crowd, which operates four factories producing 1.8 million
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TOP INNOVATORS
units monthly and owns three fabric mills, two for knits and one
for wovens. “Across the board they asked for more fabrics,
more design, more innovation through manufacturing.”
Founded in 1998 by Edward Zhou in Ningbo, China, the company now has offices in Hong Kong, New York City and Costa
Mesa, Calif., and employs more than 3,000 staff, including more
than a dozen full-time associates in southern California who are
developing innovative apparel silhouettes, new wearable fabrics
and post processes. “As a partner and stakeholder in the success
of our clients’ business, we have made it our mission to forecast
and identify trends, anticipate client needs and customer desires,
and deliver goods to satisfy those needs and desires,” Marshall
explains. Those clients include household names such as Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters, Vans and Oakley, and with California’s
status as a hotbed of creative innovation, access to these R&D
associates has proven to be fruitful for Dragon Crowd.
“The research and development strategy provides 100 to 200
new fabrics monthly, quarterly trend-right men’s and women’s
styles guides, and a constant flow of new garment styles and silhouettes,” Marshall says of the new team, which travels across
the globe searching for innovative fabrics, creative fabric post-processing approaches, unique washes, interesting trims, and novel
ideas in garment construction techniques.
Dragon Crowd produces a swatch booklet for clients to review
the latest fabric innovations, and the manufacturer has also created an accompanying “vibe booklet” that aims to provide
inspiration for key apparel pieces relevant to trends in the marketplace, an approach that Marshall refers to as “innovation for
inspiration.”
While company president J. Spencer is fond of quoting the classic film Dirty Harry — “A man’s got to know his limitations,” says
Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan — Dragon Crowd seemingly has
found a winning formula doing what it does best, a strategy that
resonates with clients to the tune of more than $125 million in
annual sales.
And happy employees are a big part of the company’s “good
business” plan; workers get a fair wage and factories shut down
promptly at 5 p.m. The oldest facility, Rock Maui, was constructed
in 2008; the newest, Rock Guangming and Rock Bay, opened
just last year.
— Jessica Binns
Aerosoles
Edison, N.J. | www.aerosoles.com
NOMINATED BY:
CGS Inc. | www.cgsinc.com
erosoles has been practically synonymous with “comfortable footwear”
for more than 25 years. The company has
grown to include the what’s what, A2 and
aerology brands over the years, in addition to the flagship Aerosoles brand, all
of which are distinguished by the company’s signature diamond-patterned soles.
In many ways, Aerosoles has been
ahead of the retail pack; the company has
been in the omnichannel fulfillment game
for more than a decade, says Tom Reeve,
vice president of technology and business solutions. E-commerce orders have
been filled from stores in addition to ware-
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houses, allowing the retailer to leverage inventory in all available channels to
meet SKU-level demand.
However, as business expanded to
include 120 company-operated stores in
the United States in addition to franchises
in 15 countries throughout Europe and
Asia, offprice, and direct-to-consumer
channels, Aerosoles needed an ERP that
could evolve along with a rapidly changing environment. Its highly customized
legacy ERP platform offered limited automation of order management functions, wasn’t
readily scalable, and relied heavily on internal staff for support and development.
TOP INNOVATORS
Two years ago Aerosoles made the switch
to the BlueCherry Infinity ERP platform
from CGS. Reeve says the first year was
spent refining order and inventory processes.
“As the dot-com business has been experiencing double digit growth, we’ve needed
to adjust and enhance EDI and accounts
receivable processes to keep pace with the
increased volumes of single-unit order processing,” he explains.
BlueCherry also has been helpful with
fulfilling orders captured from Aerosoles’
partner sites. “We utilize BlueCherry to fulfill these orders using a virtual warehouse
strategy to match the order to inventory
regardless of which channel (e.g., wholesale, retail, e-commerce) has the inventory
ownership,” says Reeve, who credits the
ERP platform for allowing Aerosoles to
maintain system performance and reliability during a 30 percent increase in order
line volume.
Aerosoles also recently rolled out a new
responsive-design e-commerce experience
created by Digital Management Inc. that
offers a consistent look and feel across
devices and yielded the retailer’s highest
single-day sales on Cyber Monday last year.
“During the past year, we’ve seen the percentage of consumers accessing our web-
site from mobile and tablet devices grow
to over 35 percent,” Reeve notes. “Our new
e-commerce platform will evolve to support buy online/pickup in-store, but in addition to e-commerce/store system integration,
this will require processes and store design
to evolve.
“Our first step will be to direct consumers to the nearest store that has their
size in the style and color they are seeking,” he concludes.
— Jessica Binns
in the pink
Boston, MA | shop.inthepinkonline.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
ou probably already know the story of how Lilly Pulitzer®’s
bold, vibrant, “spill-proof” designs got their start: To disguise
the inevitable juice stains that came from running her own juice
stand in Palm Beach, Fla., Pulitzer had a sleeveless dress made
from a colorfully printed cotton fabric. The rest is history.
That was around 1959. Fast forward to 1995, when a conversation with an old school friend gave Gordon and Sandra Russell an idea: to bring Lilly Pulitzer's brilliant designs directly to
Nantucket island, where “resort living, happy times and wearing Lilly Pulitzer” already went hand in hand. They shared their
thoughts with Lilly herself over dinner in Palm Beach. Thus was
born in the pink, a chain of Lilly Pulitzer Premier Signature stores
located throughout Massachusetts.
Lilly Pulitzer prints should make their wearers feel happy —
and so should the customer experience. To do this, in the pink
made the decision to get rid of its cash registers and counters,
replacing them with mobile POS to transform its eight locations.
“We thought that by removing the physical cash register we
could maximize merchandising and floor space, better serve
customers and ultimately increase sales,” says Emily Evans, district manager. The company chose Springboard Retail, a cloud
POS and retail management platform — a solution that Gordon
Russell and co-founder Jay Stotz actually developed themselves
in 2010 for in the pink when they were unable to find anything on
the market that suited their needs. (Springboard was officially
launched to the market in January 2014 at the NRF show.)
in the pink first piloted Springboard’s mobile POS in its flagship Newbury Street location in Boston. After deconstructing its
cash registers, the store reclaimed 48 square feet of its 1,250 feet
for selling space and ease of movement. Mobile carts and a kiosk
on wheels “allowed for a more fluid customer service,” said Evans.
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3in the pink Boston
store before cash wrap
was removed and
replaced with mobile
POS
6Boston store after,
with floor space freed
up for merchandising
By removing the cash wrap, the retailer was able to acquire
more selling real estate and improve merchandising strategies.
“We run a high-pressure, highly seasonal business in many of our
stores, with 75 percent of total business being transacted between
Memorial Day and Labor Day,” says Evans.
With Springboard’s POS, sales instantly increased and have
continued to climb. Approximately 41 days after implementing
mobile POS in its Newbury Street location, in the pink saw sales
increase by 60 percent. The typical increase for the same seasonal period year over year is 43 percent. Transaction volume and
total units per transaction also improved.4
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TOP INNOVATORS
“There’s a lot of product and five fitting rooms squeezed into
1,250 square feet. We found that where the cash wrap was, on the
right side as soon as a customer enters, was prime selling real
estate,” said Evans.
Because of the excellent results from its flagship store, in the
pink decided to roll the solution out to its other stores. The company started with its stores on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard,
and immediately saw benefits in increased sales.
After rolling out mPOS in all stores, the company saw a 23 percent increase in same-store sales in 2014 compared to the same
period a year prior.
In addition to increased sales, since demolishing the cash wraps,
the stores have seen great improvement in terms of physical
flow. The store is more comfortable and allows for greater efficiency, and customers linger longer because the space is not so
tight, says Evans.
The mobile devices have enabled store associates to move more
freely around the store themselves, while also giving them real-
time access to customer history and store inventory across the chain,
at their fingertips. This allows for more engaging and relevant conversations with customers, and the ability to quickly meet their
needs. A sales associate can, for example, recommend an item
based on the top categories of product the customer has purchased
previously, or easily reserve a product at another location.
“Because the solution is web-based, an alert will pop up in the
other store alerting that team to pull the product off the floor, capture the funds and ship the product to the customer. Similarly our
team can quickly update customers about product that is on
purchase order,” says Evan. The iPads are also great for line busting, she says.
The platform’s ability to offer emailed vs. printed receipts is
another helpful feature — 93 percent of customers are opting for
the former — saving time, money and trees.
— Jordan K. Speer
Lands’ End Business Outfitters
Dodgeville, Wis. | business.landsend.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
lthough Lands’ End Business Outfitters has been providing uniforms to small
and large-sized businesses since 1993,
recently it recognized a gap in its offerings:
“We did not offer a complete line of true
work wear — clothing designed for those
doing the hard jobs, such as construction
workers and mechanics,” says Christine
Hess, divisional merchandise manager. “In
short, the people who do the real dirty work.”
“While our line contained items such as
our performance twill shirts and active polos,
we knew we had to be able to offer headto-toe options,” says Hess. “We took into
account all the situations workers might
encounter, and made sure we were covering them with clothing that would handle
stains and rough treatment, incorporate as
many functional features as we could and
provide them with garments ready to take
into any climate, from mid-summer heat
waves to polar-vortex cold snaps,” she says.
Thus was born the Work Wear Collection. The first product out of the gate
was a better work pant made from a durable
polyester/cotton that resists wrinkles and
that incorporated the company’s exclusive
Iron Knee® technology — a tough poly-
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ester layer sandwiched between two layers of fabric to produce a hidden interlining — and a Stay Tucked waistband to keep
shirts tucked in and neat. The pants are
sewn using a safety-stitching technique
for seams that hold up through years of
wear, says Hess.
It tapped the workhorse fabric of work
wear — heavy cotton duck — for a hooded
jacket and long jacket to supplement its
already existing outerwear collection of
Squall jackets and parkas, using the dense
canvas to make a snag- and abrasionresistant shell that also features a DWR
finish for shedding water. Both jackets
also feature 100-gram insulation in a
quilted lining for warmth, and plenty of
pockets.
On the lightweight side, the company introduced the Wind Shirt and Storm
Shirt, made from wind- and water-resistant microfiber combined with a mesh lining to deliver warmth and breathability,
while it rounded out the collection with
its Thermaskin™ base layers as well as its
Thermacheck 100 fleece and Textured
Fleece half-zips, designed to go underneath all other garments and creating a
true layering system that workers can use
as needed to keep them comfortable in
the coldest of climates.
In other innovations from the division, the company launched its new Per-
TOP INNOVATORS
fect Dress Shirt, which it developed in
response to what it learned from outreach to customers: that they wanted better fit and greater comfort. One of its defining
features is the new Comfort Collar, which
uses an elastic tab to give the top button
the ability to stretch out. “You’ll never feel
like your collar is too tight,” says Hess.
Lands’ End also reworked the sleeve construction by raising the arm opening, which
provides a greater range of motion and ease
of movement.
For the women’s shirt the company also
added a patented, hidden, No Gape™ button technology to fix the problem of “gape
at the bust” which they were frustrated by.
“It makes most women self-conscious and
can be an unnecessary distraction,” said Hess.
“Then, we reworked the length — long
enough to stay perfectly tucked in, or effortlessly untucked if you choose,” she adds.
Both men’s and women’s designs offer
advanced fabric treatments and finishes
that offer cleanliness, comfort and conve-
nience. The inside collar and cuffs are treated
with a stain-release finish, while its very
popular easy-care fabric blend now features an advanced Coolest Comfort™
finish to help the fabric breathe in the heat
by wicking moisture away and drying quickly.
“We’ve even saved you time getting
ready in the morning because this shirt
comes out of the dryer needing little to
no ironing, thanks to the wrinkle-resistant
treatment,” concludes Hess.
— Jordan K. Speer
Chico’s
Fort Myers, Fla. | www.chicosfas.com
NOMINATED BY:
Tyco Retail Solutions | www.tycoretailsolutions.com
ou’ve just found the perfect lace bra and you want the matching panties, but you can’t find them in your size. Also, you’re
not sure if the fit of the bra is correct, and you’d like some guidance, but there’s no one available to help you, because the associates are busy helping other customers search for garments in the
appropriate size, which may no longer be in inventory, or which
previous customers have not returned to their correct spots. You
don’t want the bra without the panties, and you don’t have any
more time to wait, so you put the bra back where you found it —
or maybe you just set it down wherever you are, one more ‘lost’
SKU in a sea of very small, widely varied items — and leave without making a purchase.
This is a nightmare scenario for any retailer, and one that Soma
Intimates is working to avoid. Launched in 2004 as part of the
Chico’s FAS portfolio, Soma is focused on providing beautiful,
sensual intimate apparel, as well as warm personalized customer service, and, like most retailers, it is striving to keep its customers coming back by better serving their needs. That requires
a good handle on inventory, and a deepening engagement with
store associates.
At Soma, associates previously did not have the insight into
inventory that they needed. The retailer had been conducting
inventory counts infrequently, and when it did, the process was
costly and disruptive to the daily business, said Ken Silay, former director, technology research and innovation. Also, with
relatively few physical inventory counts, accuracy could, and often
did, steadily decline over the months until the next inventory count.
Accordingly, confidence in store inventory numbers declined.
Because intimate apparel is heavily style-, size- and colororiented, keeping a full assortment always available on the sales
floor is extremely labor intensive, said Silay. Soma’s replenishment process was difficult in large part because sales associates lacked visibility into inventory both on the floor and in
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the back room. The contents of shipments received were a mystery until each box was opened, which added to the challenge
of finding what customers wanted in a timely manner. To compound the problem, sales associates were losing valuable time
searching for inventory when they could have been helping customers, he said.
To get a handle on its inventory accuracy and visibility challenges, Soma turned to Tyco Retail Solutions’ TrueVUE solution,
embarking on an RFID pilot project in 13 out of its 250+ Soma
stores. The goal was to achieve an accurate item-level inventory
foundation. From there, Soma would be better able to achieve visibility from the manufacturer to the store, and from the sales associate to the customer.
The solution focused on a variety of inventory management
processes including weekly cycle counting, store receiving, daily
sales-floor replenishment and product location assistance for
replenishment and customer service.4
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At each of the stores in the program, readers have been placed
at the back and front of the store. Tags are read in the backroom
when merchandise arrives — eliminating the need to open
boxes to identify their contents — read again after merchandise
moves to the sales floor, and read a third time at point of sale, and
quantities are adjusted accordingly in the system. Both store
personnel and company management can view inventory levels
to determine what items need to be reordered or replenished on
the sales floor.
Item-level RFID is providing sales associates with accurate,
real-time inventory information in one place, which enables them
to better manage Soma’s deep merchandise assortment, drive
increased sales and, with more confidence in inventory accuracy, ensure shopper satisfaction.
By incorporating RFID reads into backend systems weekly,
rather than monthly or bi-annually, Chico’s FAS, Inc. can improve
the flow of inventory from the distribution center to the store and
streamline the replenishment process.
Soma has improved inventory accuracy to 95 percent, including full-store inventory count, and the increased visibility into daily
shipment receipts has reduced out-of-stocks, said Silay.
That customer looking for the matching panties? Well, now that’s
not a problem. Soma is also using the technology to quickly find
products in the store that customers are unable to locate, or to track
down merchandise requested from another Soma store. With a high
level of visibility into inventory in each store, Soma is achieving a
much higher level of customer satisfaction — and higher sales.
— Jordan K. Speer
Timberland
Stratham, N.H. | www.timberland.com
NOMINATED BY:
Omni United USA | www.omni-united.com and Promoboxx | www.promoboxx.com
ou might say Timberland has really put
the rubber to the road lately — literally and figuratively. The outdoor heritage brand, owned by VF Corp., is innovating
across product and marketing in a way that
draws customers to its brand while (or perhaps because of) focusing on its mission to
do well by doing good.
Hitting the Road with Timberland
Tires: In November, Timberland announced
a partnership with tire company Omni
United to create a more sustainable lifecycle for rubber whereby fewer tires end up
in landfills and less virgin rubber gets used
in footwear, says Margaret Morey-Reuner,
director of strategic partnerships and business development, Timberland. “Timberland Tires represent a new model in tire
innovation: a sustainable, tire-to-shoe lifecycle,” she says. The tires, made in the
United States and positioned at the premium end of the market, are designed and
created for superior performance and safety
on the road, using a rubber formulation
that is appropriate for recycling. At the end
of their useful life as tires, they will take on
a second life as part of the outsole of a Timberland boot or shoe, rather than ending
up in landfills. (You can read about this,
and other interesting footwear partnerships, in the April issue of Apparel.)
The use of recycled rubber from Timberland Tires is just the most recent in mate-
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rials innovation for the company, and goes
hand in hand with its goal to reduce the
environmental impacts of doing business. In 2013, for example, 70 percent of
all Timberland footwear shipped incorporated recycled, organic or renewable
materials; the company has also given more
than 128 million plastic bottles a new life
through the use of recycled PET in its
footwear, says Morey-Reuner.
A Journey with Hazel Highway: In
other non-traditional marketing approaches
for the company, last fall also saw the launch
of an interesting social media campaign
around its new Hazel Highway Collection,
which features four classic Timberland silhouettes inspired by the original leather
used in 1979 to build the first Super Boot,
an iconic style for the brand.
The campaign tells the story of a journey
down I-95, capturing the industrial roots
and rustic heritage of the Timberland brand
along the way. To get the word out to both
its retail customers and end consumers, Timberland created a wide variety of social posts
from which its dichotomous retailer base —
ranging from outdoor to urban based retailers — could choose, says Cassie Heppner,
director of North America wholesale marketing, Timberland. To facilitate the process
of sharing assets, Timberland worked with
Promoboxx, a brand-to-retail marketing
platform that enables its clients to launch
online campaigns and share directly with
their retail partners.
“We created a range of targeted content for the Hazel Highway campaign, which
was made available through Promoboxx’s
digital marketing platform,” says Heppner.
“Retailers who access Timberland’s content through Promoboxx utilized the share
functionality to select and push content out
to their social channels. Whether retailers
wanted to post images of the boot in an
urban or rural setting, focus on the limited
availability of the product, or show the detail
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of its leather, there were plenty of options
that met their marketing needs,” she said.
Another challenge for the company was
reaching new audiences, as well as online
followers. To do this, Timberland enabled
Promoboxx’s Match incentive program. The
program rewards retailers for taking action
within the platform (sharing the campaign
on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) with local mobile
ads, says Heppner. These ads, using geotargeting technology, appear on customers’
phones and tablets, simultaneously pro-
moting Hazel Highway and the nearby
retailer, while driving in-store traffic.
Within less than a month of launching the program, Timberland received
more than 1.3 million impressions and a
.35 percent click rate, which Heppner
reports is well above the industry average of about .25 percent. “We could tell
retailers loved the mobile ads,” said Heppner, “because when Timberland mentioned the new incentive in their emails
to retailers, the email open rate reached
81 percent, blowing out our email open
rates for previous campaigns.”
“By launching targeted content, as well
as incentivizing retailers to share our campaign via a new local mobile channel, we
succeeded not only in appealing to Timberland’s broad retailer base, but also in
reaching new customers and driving traffic in-store,” she concluded.
— Jordan K. Speer
Vestagen Technical Textiles Inc.
Orlando, Fla. | www.vestagen.com | vestexprotects.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
he recent cases of Ebola among medical
professionals here in the United States
and the ongoing struggle to combat the
virus in Africa are a stark reminder of just
how important appropriate procedures and
protective wear can be when you’re dealing with a life-threatening disease.
That’s not news to Vestagen Technical
Textiles. In February 2014, the company
obtained the exclusive global medical textile rights to three patented technologies and
applied all three technologies to one fabric, creating VESTEX®, a fabric that is simultaneously fluid repellent, antimicrobial and
breathable. In fact, VESTEX has been clinically proven 1 to reduce the acquisition
and retention of pathogens on the fabric.
Why stop there? After all, healthcare
is the fastest growing sector of the U.S.
economy, employing more than 18 million
workers. Last June, Vestagen decided to
manufacture VESTEX, under the
myGuardian™ brand, into healthcare worker
apparel, seeing the benefits it could provide in protecting nurses from the body
fluid exposures they regularly encounter.
Research documenting the effectiveness
and safety of VESTEX includes a study performed in a hospital setting which showed
a 99.99 percent reduction of methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
on VESTEX uniforms compared to traditional non-protective uniforms, both at the
beginning and end of the work shift 1.
T
“Healthcare is among the most
dangerous jobs in the U.S. because
workers don’t know what has colonized
their patients. Additionally, splashes or
splatters of a patient’s blood and body fluids are a reality of healthcare delivery,”
says Uncas “Ben” B. Favret III, CEO of
Vestagen.
VESTEX is also available for licensing
so that other manufacturers can obtain the
technology for healthcare workers, as well
as for people in other fields who need similar protection. Recently, the largest online
retailer of scrub apparel, allheart.com,
launched its own line of scrubs with VESTEX
Protection.
By creating VESTEX, Vestagen also created a new product category, “Active Barrier
Apparel,” says Favret. The active barrier refers
to combined effect of the fluid repellency,
which keeps fluids from reaching the skin
and undergarments, with an antimicrobial,
which kills the germs left behind, he says.
For scenarios in which there is anticipated risk of exposure, such as procedures
occurring in the operating room, healthcare workers wear Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, which includes full body suits.
However, there are many more scenarios
in which there is an unknown level of risk.
Active Barrier Apparel filled what Favret
says was a “gap in protection” for healthcare workers.
Since the launch of its healthcare worker
apparel, the company has added patient
apparel with VESTEX protection, under the
myComfort™ brand. Most recently, the
company launched scrubs that are specially
designed for operating room (OR) staff,
made with tightly woven, 100 percent polyester to limit lint shedding, and wicking
WarpDry™ technology to ensure breathability and wearer comfort throughout what
are often very long OR procedures. The
new OR scrubs joined the full line of protective healthcare worker lab coats and
scrubs under the myGuardian™ brand.
The ultimate goal is to offer healthcare workers and patients protection from
germs — as well as peace of mind, Favret
concludes.
— Jordan K. Speer
1
Bearman GM, Rosato A, Elam K, et al. A
crossover trial of antimicrobial scrubs to reduce
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus burden
on healthcare worker apparel. Infect Control Hosp.
Epidemiol. 2012;33:268–275.
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Garmatex Technologies Inc.
Vancouver, BC | www.garmatex.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
t’s a sweltering day and you’re on the 17th hole. You’d give anything for someone to dump a bucket of ice over your head
right about now — anything to cool you off so you can focus on
your swing.
Enter IceSkin™, the most recent launch from Garmatex, whose
developments in scientifically-engineered performance fabrics and
apparel technologies include AbsorbSkin™, SlimSkin™ and StellSkin™. IceSkin was launched in late 2014 to help wearers function in extreme heat.
How does it work? The technology uses natural jade minerals to provide non-stop cooling to the wearer. “IceSkin™ is
engineered to react with water in multiple stages,” says Bill Gardiner, executive vice president of sales and marketing. “When IceSkin™ comes into contact with water molecules, the fibers evaporate
the liquid at a highly accelerated pace. During this rapid process,
water molecules are cooled as they travel through the fibers into
lofty chambers embedded with jade. The natural jade minerals
work as a conduit, absorbing the chilled water and perpetuating
the cooling temperature until the fabric is dry.”
With technology in hand, Garmatex then launched its own
branded IceSkin Gear towels and headwear accessories. “Our IceSkin towel can go from 185° F to 65° F in 15 to 20 seconds with
the cooling lasting as long as the towel is wet and waved through
the air to encourage circulation,” says Gardiner.
Like all of Garmatex’s fabrics, IceSkin is engineered through
its proprietary “moisture system transference” (MST) process, to
support excellent moisture management control, and embedded
I
fiber technology — a multi-layered, three-dimensional knitting
method that ensures permanent performance features for the
life of the garment, according to the company. IceSkin is also
equipped with Garmatex’s Bact-Out®, a 100 percent natural antimicrobial treatment that is 99 percent effective in reducing the bacteria that cause odors.
Additionally, in February, the company launched its firstever Kickstarter campaign to introduce its bespoke sports performance posture shirt, Prime4orm™, to the market. The Prime4orm
shirt uses gentle tensions to re-engineer the body’s form via highly
technical construction that gradually realigns your muscles for better posture.
— Jordan K. Speer
Acustom Apparel
New York, N.Y. | www.acustom.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
amal Motlagh is a snazzy dresser and a tall man, and back in his
Harvard Business School days he wanted clothes — all types
of apparel, not just suits — customized to both his style and fit.
But, as we all know, custom-designed apparel doesn’t come cheap.
“I began to wonder why we weren’t able to affordably customize our clothing in both fit and style,” says Motlagh. He began
to look for a better way. He was, after all, in business school.
Thus was born the idea of Acustom Apparel, founded in
2011. Motlagh teamed up with COO and co-founder Charles Tse,
the brains behind Acustom’s “digital bespoke” patternmaking
technology. Tse, like Motlagh, was frustrated with his inability to
find well-fitting ready-to-wear clothing, and equally frustrated
with the cost of buying custom-made clothing.4
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Motlagh and Tse looked around the market to find a solution
that would allow for large-scale customization, but nothing seemed
to match what they were looking for. So they developed it
themselves, figuring out a method of creating patterns that are
unique to every customer, and then writing software to automate the process.
The result is a system that uses 3D body scanners and the company’s own “digital bespoke” software to make purchasing custom clothing easier — and less expensive — for guys. The solution
gathers 2 million data points to create a unique 3D body model
for each customer, and then lets its digital bespoke algorithms
go to work on those measurements. Everything is thus customfitted to the customer, who also helps in the design process, making choices about features such as fabric for shirt collars and cuffs,
or whether or not to have peak lapels vs. notch.
Acustom not only offers traditional custom suits and shirts, but
also makes bespoke-fit products such as jeans, chinos, cords, overcoats, trench coats, shorts and polos. “This is a significant portion of the modern man’s wardrobe, all custom made at retail
prices equivalent to [those of] Hugo Boss,” says Motlagh.
Because Acustom’s technology allows it to create bespoke patterned garments without the traditional time and cost required by
a master patternmaker, the company is able to offer its products
at a fraction of the cost of traditional custom-tailored goods. “A
few blocks away from our store, another retailer in New York City
is offering bespoke jeans for $1200,” says Motlagh. Acustom is
able to sell bespoke denim for only $235. “That’s the same price
as a premiere pair of jeans in SOHO,” he quips.
And let’s face it: Not too many people are willing to shell out
$1,200 for a pair of jeans, which is why there is not the same
type of market for custom denim as there is for custom suits. Acustom is working to change that.
Beyond offering a custom fit, Acustom also has created a unique
and innovative retail experience in SoHo — what it calls a “design
bar” — that looks like a men’s boutique but only features design
samples “to help clients imagine what their clothing will look like,”
says Motlagh.
“After finding something they like, clients can — in 20 minutes
— custom design their products based on pre-designed samples,
get scanned and be on their way to getting custom-made products. And once we have a clients’ measurements, it’s easy to reorder online or in store,” he says. Fit is guaranteed in everything.
The small footprint of Acustom’s store allows it to provide a
face-to-face customer service experience without the risks and
costs associated with stocking inventory. “In our first year open,
we are already well exceeding sales-per-square-foot averages of
established stores in SoHo,” says Motlagh.
Up next? The company is striving to provide more types of garments to its customers. Knits will launch soon with 100 percent
cashmere sweaters in six base styles. Custom fit, of course.
Are there any particular advantages to running a custom-fit
apparel business? Let’s just put it this way: when Motlagh got
married in March, you can rest assured that he and all of the
guys at his wedding were looking pretty sharp.
— Jordan K. Speer
Betabrand
San Francisco, Calif. | www.betabrand.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
any retailers talk about listening to their customers, but Betabrand
has taken this to a whole new level. This is how it operates:
1. Rather than create its own collections, the online retailer actively
solicits design ideas from its community as well as all of its internal
employees (i.e. not just its four designers).
2. Customers submit designs to the “Think Tank” section of Betabrand’s website.
3. Betabrand solicits feedback in the form of votes as well as comments in sketch format.
4. If a new style receives enough votes, then a prototype is made and photographed as
quickly as possible.
5. The style is posted on the website for Crowd Funding for 30 days.
6. A newsletter is emailed twice per week to alert fans of new styles under consideration.
7. If sufficient numbers of customers pre-order the style, then it is produced and shipped.
8. Ultimately, the customer “owns the story.”
To be sure, Betabrand is not your grandmother’s clothing store. “There are no ‘collections,’ no ‘seasons,’ no pre-determined ‘merch mix’” to direct what you will wear, says Lana
Hogue, director of product development and production.
Getting the word out about Betabrand comes primarily from web publications and organic
social media — and it often goes viral, says Hogue. There’s a lot of buzz around the brand,
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TOP INNOVATORS
with a community that “loves to debate
‘Dress Pant Yoga Pants,’ ‘Black Sheep
Sweaters,’ ‘Space Jackets,’ ‘Gay Jeans,’
and shirts with ‘Poo Emojis’ all over them,”
says Hogue. Other popular designs have
included Executive Hoodies (which came
about in response to a particular company’s
IPO), ‘Chef Jeans’ for Chris Cosentino, and
an adult onesie designed by comedienne
Margaret Cho.
The earlier a customer funds a design,
the greater the discount offered. After a
style has been crowdfunded, it becomes
available for sale — at full price — to others who want to get in on the action. To
date, the Straight Leg/Gray Dress Pant Yoga
Pant is the site’s most popular item ever:
as of press time it had achieved 10,408 percent funding, since hitting 100 percent funding on Jan. 17, 2014. The company’s
crowdfunding goal is to meet production
minimums and fund the production.
Betabrand produces enough inventory to
cover its projected demand for about four
to five months, says Hogue.
Betabrand, founded by Chris Lindland
in 2009 (prior to that it was called Cordarounds, which got its start in 2005), sells
primarily online, but also has a flagship
store at its San Francisco headquarters. Also
awesome: 70 percent of Betabrand clothes
are made in the United States (in San Francisco and Oakland), with the balance produced in China, Korea and Thailand.
The Betabrand model really turns retailing on its head by putting the power of
design and production decisions in the
hands of the customer, while eliminating
the challenge of forecasting demand, says
Hogue. It also solves the problem of raising capital for manufacturing, as customers
have paid for the cost of production before
it even starts. “This is the future of the
apparel industry,” she says.
“I have worked in the garment industry
for more than 25 years and for more than a
dozen companies, both big and small.
Betabrand is by far the most innovative company I have ever worked with,” she concludes.
— Jordan K. Speer
Mizuno Running
Atlanta, Ga. | www.mizuno.com
NOMINATED BY:
Promoboxx | www.promoboxx.com
an you name one thing that alone could potentially boost U.S.
GDP by $25 billion, eliminate the smoking of more than 48 million cigarettes daily, decrease homelessness by 46 percent, increase
earning potential by 10 percent and eliminate $143 billion in health
care costs in the United States?
Stumped? According to Mizuno, the answer is running.
That’s the conclusion the 109-year-old company came to after
it posed the question: “Can running really transform the world?”
and then set out to find out, partnering with the University of
North Carolina Kenan-Flager Business School to conduct a statistical analysis to determine how running can change the world
in positive ways.
Drawing on the thought-provoking statistics that resulted from
its research, Mizuno then debuted its “What If Everybody Ran”
campaign online in March 2014 to inspire consumers by demonstrating the potential power of running to transform lives, and
society as a whole.
Via social media, using the hashtag #IfEverybodyRan, Mizuno
promoted the analysis results, including such gems as “7 billion
more hours spent outside,” “63 million happier dogs,” “14
billion fewer hours spent online,” and “135 million more victory beers.”
Findings from the analysis were promoted primarily online
but the campaign also included an in-store component at independent running retailers across the United States.
Using Promoboxx, a brand-to-retail digital marketing platform, Mizuno distributed digital content promoting #IfEverybodyRan to more than 300 of its retail customers across the
country.
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The platform enabled the specialty running shops to spread
the #IfEverybodyRan message in their local communities through
Facebook, Twitter, email and on their respective websites.
Additionally, via the Mizuno Baton mobile app, consumers
were able to transform the power of running into community action
by promising to donate $1 for every mile run with the app to Back
on My Feet, a nonprofit organization that helps those experiencing homelessness turn their lives around through running. (That
46 percent figure above? Not hypothetical. Since its founding in
2007, 46 percent of residential members (the homeless) have moved
themselves forward with a job, a house, or both.) Via the app,
the company raised more than $90,000 for the organization.
During the initial launch month (March 2014), “Mizuno experienced 110 percent growth in U.S. unique visitors to its website
compared to March 2013 traffic, its Facebook followers increased
by more than 25 percent in the first two weeks following the launch
of the campaign and Twitter engagement increased by 121 percent in March 2014 vs. February 2014,” says Kim Hoey, Mizuno
USA’s running division brand marketing director.4
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If everybody ran, there could be 20 million more great grandmothers, 60 million more pounds of pasta eaten, 37 percent more
smiles and 27 million more sunrises viewed per week. “It all starts
with one more run,” says Hoey.
Last month, the company launched its 2015 campaign, “Every
Mile Changes You,” which evolves the “What if Everybody
Ran” campaign in its goal to inspire more running across the nation.
The campaign will continue to support Back on My Feet, and also
will provide running apparel and shoes to a group of military vet-
erans called “The Shepherd’s Men.” This team will be running
911 miles in eight days to raise funds and awareness for SHARE
Military Initiative, which provides free individualized treatment
and counseling to veterans struggling with traumatic brain
injury and post-traumatic stress disorder suffered during the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
— Jordan K. Speer
Kathmandu
Christchurch, New Zealand | www.kathmandu.co.nz
NOMINATED BY:
JustEnough | www.justenough.com
ounded 25 years ago, Kathmandu has grown from a small retailer
of outdoor clothing and equipment to “a global brand that
designs trusted outdoor gear so our customers can live their dreams
of travel and adventure,” says CIO Jolann Van Dyk.
Paying attention to customer demand has helped Kathmandu
grow into a vertically-integrated business that operates 158 stores
across New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom, and a
growing e-commerce channel. With an eye on expansion, the
company is scoping out international markets such as North America and Europe.
Not long ago, it became evident that existing legacy systems
were no longer able to deliver against its business growth strategies, said CIO Jolann Van Dyk. “Systems were either too slow,
required significant time and effort to perform basic day-to-day
tasks, [were] rigid, unsupported or just antiquated.”
More specifically, these solutions didn’t support systemized
forecasting and planning. Historically, the company managed
these processes on multiple Excel spreadsheets, which required
manual revisions that were almost impossible to keep synchronized across disparate spreadsheets. It was a time-intensive and
inefficient process that lacked the functionality needed to manage an increasingly global company.
During a routine business planning session, listening to the
strategic objectives of executives from each business area, it became
clear that the company’s current business systems could not deliver
against their requirements, Van Dyk recalled.
With an eye on assortment range planning, Kathmandu began
its search for a technology partner. The company sought a system
that would reduce the risks associated with forecasting and
planning knowledge, deliver timeliness of data entry and availability, and manage accurate information so that the retailer could
make informed business decisions. From an architecture standpoint, it wanted a stable environment with limited required configurations and modifications; the system also had to align with
the chain’s best practices.
Kathmandu found its ideal solution from JustEnough, Irvine,
Calif. The solution’s functionality, including having all data in a
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centralized location, was a very attractive feature. Its status as a
Microsoft independent software vendor (ISV) partner was also a
plus, as all future versions of the product will integrate with Microsoft
Dynamics AX enterprise resources planning software, which
will streamline upgrades.
Kathmandu added the hosted infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS)
cloud-based platform in phases. For example, the assortment planning tool went live in September 2013, followed by item planning
in January 2014, and allocations and replenishment in October
2014. Already, Kathmandu has gained better visibility of its operating stock requirements, which is leading to better planning practices around assortment range planning, option count and product
lifecycle, says Van Dyk. “Our planners also have more information available to make more informed decisions.”
Van Dyk noted that one of the biggest results the chain has
achieved is a significant reduction in overall stock holdings; insights
provided by the solution enable it to purchase smarter, he says.
Its full-speed-ahead momentum continues, as the company
looks to achieve better space management and just-in-time replenishment, with architecture that can better manage stock throughput and add boundaries to deal with out-of-stock exceptions, rather
than having to troll through all data and traffic to understand product movement.
More immediately, the company is focused on embedding its
new core business systems and unlocking the next stage in business capability, Van Dyk concluded.
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
TOP INNOVATORS
Under Armour
Baltimore, Md. | www.underarmour.com
NOMINATED BY:
SPS Commerce | www.spscommerce.com
altimore-based athletic performance apparel upstart Under
Armour has a knack for spotting talent, as evidenced by its long
sponsor relationship with current golf darling Jordan Spieth —
whose masterful (pun intended) performance at the Masters last
month propelled the brand into the consciousness of millions of
fans and amateur players alike.
Under Armour has made no secret of its desire to catch up to
dominant rivals such as Nike, whose approximate $20 billion
annual revenue is something the Baltimore brand can only dream
of at the moment. As Bill Nienberg, Under Armour's vice president of global merchandise and sales planning, said last year,
"We're a $10-billion brand that just happens to be doing $2 billion of business."
It’s also no secret that Under Armour loves to use technology
to its advantage, not just in creating industry-leading (and
headline-grabbing) apparel innovations but in embracing software platforms that make a tangible difference in corporate operations — and the bottom line.
An SPS Commerce POS reporting customer since 2005, Under
Armour used data from its top retail partners to gain actionable insights into sales information by a host of attributes,
from store and style to color and size. For a while this approach
helped the brand’s sales team identify new opportunities and
become more collaborative with retailers, analyzing metrics such
as weeks of supply, sales-to-stock ratio, sell-through rates and
inventory turnover.
As growth exploded, however, Under Armour upgraded to SPS’
more robust Enterprise Analytics platform, which now is used by
90 employees in the sales, product development and planning
B
teams to deliver and analyze weekly sales recap reports, vendor
report cards using each retailer’s particular metrics, new store sales
performance, and trend reports for key categories.
“With our SPS solution, buyers are more inclined to trust and
act on our recommendations when we provide the data to support them,” said Caryn Hall, retail planner for Under Armour.
“The POS solution from SPS Commerce allowed our sales staff
to discover opportunities to grow our business,” added Hall. “As
a result, we were able to quickly switch gears and utilize only
reports generated from SPS to monitor our sales performance.”
Hall credits the analytics platform for boosting sell-through by
store, style and color and maximizing business in high-performing areas as sales staff has leveraged insights to improve product
placement. “We have been able to share our selling reports and
analysis with our retail partners,” she adds. “This analysis helps
facilitate business conversations as we partner together to grow
our business.”
— Jessica Binns
Koos Manufacturing
South Gate, Calif. | www.koos.com
Gerber Technology
www.gerbertechnology.com | www.yunique.com
NOMINATED BY:
echnology can close a whole host of gaps these days; new advancements enable far-flung design teams to share ideas across the
globe and view fabrics and inspiration ideas remotely, but there’s
nothing quite like touching and feeling a sample churned out in as
little as a single day by the company right across town. That’s the
beauty of committing to domestic production, according to Soo-Jin
Behrstock, CIO for Koos Manufacturing, headquartered in South
Gate, Calif., just seven miles from downtown L.A.
Though American Apparel usually gets all of the “vertically
integrated” buzz, Koos is one of those rare apparel companies
where design, cutting, sewing, washing and finishing are all per-
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TOP INNOVATORS
formed under one roof (it’s the only such integrated jeans facility on the West Coast, Behrstock points out). Headcount stands
at more than 850, the company produces more than 2 million units
annually, and sales for 2014 reached about $150 million. Founder
Yul Ku grew up in a family with a strong apparel manufacturing
background and launched the company 35 years ago, initially producing denim for brands such as Calvin Klein, Gap and Lucky.
Eventually Ku stepped away from the private-label business
to partner with Adriano Goldschmied and launch the AG Adriano Goldschmied brand in 2000, entering into an exclusive license
business for the Big Star brand three years later.
“Made in the USA is something that we support in a significant way, as evidenced by most of the AG-branded denim being
manufactured entirely in Los Angeles,” says Berhstock, who notes
that the company values supporting the local community and
keeping jobs in the United States.
“Koos obviously has to operate leaner in order to compensate for the higher cost of labor in the U.S.,” she continues. “However, our overriding objective of delivering the highest quality
product necessitates that we directly control our manufacturing
processes locally rather than use overseas labor.”
A Gerber Technology customer for more than 20 years, Koos
is migrating from WebPDM to YuniquePLM, which will integrate
nicely with the software company’s AccuMark pattern design platform. “The data on material yields and points of measure from
Accumark will be used to generate costing and product tech packs
for our Yunique PLM users,” Behrstock explains. “By having a
L.L. Bean
Freeport, Maine | www.llbean.com
NOMINATED BY:
Kalypso | www.kalypso.com
ne can only wonder what outdoorsman and entrepreneur Leon
Leonwood Bean would think about the “lumberjack chic” teen
trend that’s driving eye-popping sales of the iconic handcrafted
leather and rubber boots his eponymous company L.L Bean has
been famous for since he brainstormed them in 1912 to put an end
to cold, damp feet on hunting excursions.
In fiscal year 2014 the Freeport, Maine, outdoor apparel
company posted annual net revenue of $1.61 billion,
up 3 percent year over year, and manufactured 450,000
pairs of Bean boots. This year L.L Bean landed the
no. 5 spot on Forbes’ Best Employers list, leading all
companies in the apparel, footwear and sporting goods
vertical. Known for its catalog mail-order business, the company
is steadily expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint from a current
fleet of 22 stores outside of Maine to 100 by 2020, according to Carolyn Beem, public affairs manager. Four store openings are on tap
for 2015, the first of which took place in March in Cleveland — the
retailer’s first physical foray into Ohio. E-commerce is also doing
well; web sales jumped 7 percent last year.
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tight integration between Accumark, Gerber cutting and Yunique
PLM, redundant work will be eliminated and errors that often
occur between creative and development teams will be minimized.
“We hope to streamline product development processes,
enhance productivity and create a more effective design environment,” she adds.
Anticipating that the migration would be a significant change
for employees, Koos took pains to minimize confusion around the
new system and also to encourage workers to take ownership of
it. In-house training was also a new endeavor for Koos, so the
company decided that brief, 30-minute sessions on targeted
topics would be the most successful approach. “This minimized
employee downtime from their job responsibilities and increased
their ability to retain the information that was presented to them,”
Behrstock says.
Koos is also undertaking this year an Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne implementation that will be tightly integrated with
YuniquePLM, Accumark and Retail Pro POS.
Beyond technology, Koos is also on the hunt for innovation on
the material side of the business, partnering with mills to engineer new fabrics and proprietary washes. “Environmentally friendly
practices are also extremely important to the company,” says Behrstock, “and we continue to demonstrate our commitment to being
responsible and sustainable with biodegradable chemicals and
energy-saving equipment.”
— Jessica Binns
TOP INNOVATORS
L.L Bean likely wouldn’t be in its current position without its
legendary commitment to customer service, including a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee — a rare promise in the apparel world.
Despite dramatic changes throughout the years, from rapidly evolving technology to changing consumer tastes and management
mandates to new product ideas, the company’s emphasis to service has never wavered. “Customer service is not just a department but a commitment we all share,” says Beem. Indeed, J.D.
Power and Associates honored L.L. Bean as achieving “Highest
Customer Satisfaction Among Apparel Retailers” in 2012.
L.L. Bean’s confidence in its products stems in large part
from its strong supplier relationships, some of which span decades,
according to Beem, who says the company looks for partners that
share the same corporate values. This exclusive number of stable
partnerships with select mills and suppliers both large and small
enables L.L. Bean to collaborate on fabric development and create innovative new products such as Ultralight down outerwear
and packable down apparel. What’s more, treating these crucial
partners as “part of the family” means the apparel company need
not spend countless hours hassling over supplier negotiations.
This focus on and passion for product quality led L.L. Bean to
partner about 12 months ago with consulting services provider
Kalypso, which is offering expert assistance with a PLM implementation. “We were seeking ways to streamline our processes
while maintaining a clear focus on research and development and
most importantly, product quality,” notes Beem.
“Kalypso works with many other respected clients who have
a broad array of products. Since we have similar challenges, we
felt Kalypso’s capabilities would serve us well in our endeavors to
maintain a focus on product quality while collaboratively facilitating innovation.”
While Beem says it’s too soon to measure the results of the
PLM deployment, L.L. Bean is pleased with the robust tools that
have been developed, which will be instrumental in ensuring seamless collaboration with internal and external teams to reduce development costs, keep them closer to market trends and ensure
that products pass their high quality and compliance standards.
—Jessica Binns
Harry Rosen
Toronto, Canada | www.harryrosen.com
NOMINATED BY:
Infor | www.infor.com
t may have been built on legendary old-school service, but highend Canadian men’s wear retailer Harry Rosen has upgraded its
hands-on approach to the customer experience with decidedly
new-school technology.
With 16 stores in its fleet, the Toronto-based company has been
serving a discerning clientele since founder Harry Rosen and his
brother Lou put $500 down for their first shop in the city’s Cabbagetown neighborhood, though the retailer now has 40 percent market share in an ultra-competitive environment and achieved
10 percent annual revenue growth from 2009 to 2013. Current
CEO Larry Rosen — Harry’s oldest son — describes the clientele as “MOPES:” managers, owners, professionals, entrepreneurs,
“to which we would add professional athletes and entertainers,”
he says. “Our clients are leaders or aspire to be.”
Those clients are as much attracted to Harry Rosen’s comprehensive mix of brands — from traditional luxury labels such as
Ermenegildo Zegna and Giuseppe Zanotti to modern offerings
from the likes of Citizens of Humanity and Original Paperbacks
— as they are to the kind of high-touch service provided by a company whose most senior clothing advisor has been on duty for
an astonishing 59 years. “We’re famed for our longevity and retention of staff,” notes Rosen. “Many have worked with us for more
than 10, 20, 30 years.”
Initially the clothing advisors kept meticulously detailed notes
regarding client preferences on hand-written index cards, but that
all changed once the company’s client roster ballooned to half a
I
million, rendering manual management unwieldy and unsustainable. The company undertook a much-needed upgrade to Infor
CRM, which enables clothing advisors to share data between stores
and segment customers according to clothing preferences,
shopping frequency and average purchase price so they can
offer timely and informed sales recommendations.
While this digital system solved a host of problems, Harry Rosen
wanted to take things one step further. A client who dropped in
for an unscheduled visit usually caught clothing advisors off-guard,
prompting them to sally forth to access the customer database.
Because side-by-side service is perhaps the essence of a hightouch clienteling environment, CIO Stephen Jackson realized that
extending CRM to mobile platforms could elevate the experience for both customers and clothing advisors — and increase revenue per visit.4
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23
TOP INNOVATORS
“My role as CIO is to align technology with the business and
to provide our clothing advisors with a competitive edge through
the most advanced clientele systems within the retail industry,”
says Jackson.
Harry Rosen supports a BYOD environment; clothing advisors
use their own smartphones, which results in a mix of Android
phones, BlackBerrys and iPhones, and a few carry tablets on the
store floor. The average store includes 18,000 square feet (though
the flagship clocks in at 55,000), making connectivity from any
location within the four walls of utmost importance, especially
as clients’ communication preferences have transitioned over
the years from calling to texting and emailing, notes Rosen.
Infor’s mobile CRM version integrates with Harry Rosen’s ecommerce site and POS, creating a unified source of enterprise
data. The software tracks important KPIs such as sales, customer
visit frequency, time spent with clients, revenue per client visit/lifetime, multiple unit sales percentage, profiled clients, and cam-
paign calls. What’s more, the software also integrates with
Harry Rosen’s labor scheduling platform, increasing operational
efficiencies and allowing clients who log into the company’s website to view their clothing advisor’s availability.
“Everyone thinks we sell clothes, but we sell advice and wardrobe
consulting,” explains Rosen. “We earn clients’ trust and create
relationships. We haven’t changed our values since our founding days, we’re just letting the machines work for us.”
Over time, user adoption of the mobile CRM platform has
grown from 33 percent to 95 percent, helping clothing advisors to
be more productive and efficient.
“The pace of adoption to the mobile platform really depended
on the age and awareness of the clothing advisor,” Rosen says.
“Our younger, tech-savvy advisors were quick to adopt. But everyone has come on board, proving there is no truth to the adage that
you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
— Jessica Binns
Brooks Brothers
New York, N.Y. |www.brooksbrothers.com
NOMINATED BY:
7thOnline | www.7thonline.com
hen you think of the Brooks Brothers brand, the
phrases “classic,” “iconic” and “conservative”
instantly come to mind. Yet, the retailer is synonymous with innovation when it comes to continuously meeting shifting consumer demand and new
market opportunities. In fact, this strategy is the key
to its 197-year staying power.
A company that built its reputation as a men’s
clothier with a proud record of outfitting 39 out of
44 U.S. presidents, Brooks Brothers has grown into
a lifestyle brand for men and women alike. From
an operational perspective, the company continues
its transformation efforts — a move that enables
closer customer ties and seamless shopping experiences for both existing and new customers. Brooks
Brothers’ current transformation strategy priority is
“to become a global omnichannel player,” explained
Sahal Laher, executive vice president and CIO of the
company.
However, global expansion is always easier said
than done. “Like many retailers, we were doing business in multiple countries, yet were not ‘truly global,’”
Laher said. “We had stores, operations and offices
overseas, but processes and infrastructure were not
set up to support and scale a global operation.”
Specifically, Brooks Brothers was using a combination of a legacy planning system and spreadsheets.
As the business continued to grow in scale and complexity, the largely manual process and tools posed
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limitations for Brooks Brothers to efficiently
manage rising stockkeeping units (SKU) counts,
and proactively address shifting demand patterns. Specifically, these aging operations
were disparate, “making it impossible to look
at our business as a whole,” he explained.
“These are hindrances to a global omnichannel brand, and also the issues that prompted
us to change our direction.”
It was clear the company needed to eliminate data siloes, consolidate enterprise
technology, and create one version of the
truth running through all enterprise systems. A top priority was to modernize the
company’s demand planning and execution
processes. This required the company to retire
manual Excel spreadsheets that different lines of
business used to compare data, and instead automate its merchandise and assortment planning
capabilities.
While investing in best-of-breed solutions can
help modernize processes, “too often companies
install new packages believing all of their problems will go away,” Laher said. “When they are
still running antiquated processes, and new solutions don’t help, retailers don’t understand why.”
Determined not to go down that path, Brooks
Brothers began exploring consolidated, yet scalable solutions that could break down barriers between
TOP INNOVATORS
channels, and create a foundation for assortment planning. This
is especially important for an apparel retailer such as Brooks Brothers that regularly manages tens of thousands of SKUs.
“We needed a systematic platform that can conduct automated
scientific modeling scenarios that respond to different factors,” he
explained. “It requires us look at demand as the driver of what
specific product is needed in stores.”
The company found its ideal industry-specific solution from
7thonline. At a high level, 7thonline’s solutions will enable Brooks
Brothers to gain visibility of consumer demand signals at the most
granular level, and optimize inventory positions for greater margins and lower financial risks.
By adding the supplier’s Fabrix Retail Suite as its corporate merchandise and assortment planning solution, for example, all
planning and reporting processes are streamlined into an integrated process. This includes insight into multiple factors, including actual and predicted sales for specific stores and channels. This
helps the chain create an accurate global financial model for all
channels. Meanwhile, 7thonline’s Size Optimization Services are
designed to match merchandise size allocation with local demand
across all stores.
Making the move away from legacy systems and manual spreadsheets to the integrated, analytics-rich platform, Brooks Broth-
ers will gain complete demand visibility, streamline processes and
anticipate profit opportunities and inventory risks in a timely manner. “We sought a planning solution that was powerful, yet lightweight to implement and easy to tailor for our unique needs,” said
Laher. “The platform will provide a single point of demand visibility for our direct-to-consumer business.”
The chain plans to begin implementation for its North American operations in July, and Laher expects to begin seeing benefits by the end of the year. “Our expectation is to learn the
impact of customer demand, and delve into sales lost due to not
having the right sizes available, or directing them elsewhere to
save the sale,” he said. “We expect a massive opportunity that will
enable us to have the right product in stores at the right time.”
These efforts are setting the tone for the company’s continued investments in its global omnichannel capabilities, especially as the company inches toward its 200th anniversary. “We
are always considering strategies that will keep us relevant for
another 200 years,” he said. “If we are going to be a serious global
omnichannel lifestyle brand, we need the right processes to support that [goal].”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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25
TOP INNOVATORS
Everything But Water
Orlando, Fla. | www.everythingbutwater.com
NOMINATED BY:
Mi9 Retail | www.mi9retail.com
rivately-held, 30-year-old Everything But Water operates 95
stores and an e-commerce channel catering to women’s swimwear,
resort-wear and accessories. Besides being a destination for shoppers seeking chic vacation wear, pool party ensembles and summer style-inspired merchandise, loyal customers are also attracted
to the retailer’s sales associates who provide personal attention
and help transform what could be a stressful swim shopping experience into “a relaxed ‘me-moment,’” noted the retailer’s chairman, Randall Blumenthal.
However, when Blumenthal purchased the company five years
ago, he immediately noticed that an aging operating system was
indirectly impacting the exceptional service on which the brand
built its reputation. “The main pain point at the time was a
slowness within the [operating] system,” he explained. “Besides
the platform being slow, it had poor reliability and reporting,
and was not scalable.”
When preparing to replace the outdated legacy retail system,
Blumenthal began evaluating new platform options that would
support integrated omnichannel capabilities, including buying,
pricing, inventory management, inventory valuation and customer
relationship management. These processes are especially important within an omnichannel experience that requires a tight connection between demand chain operations, and one that can ensure
that proper product assortments hit the right business channel
at the right time.
These efforts required a scalable platform that supports a centralized database to feed these solutions, as opposed to using manually-managed disparate data marts. “We also required a solution
that offered several modules that work well together, [tied together]
with well-written software,” Blumenthal explained. For Everything
But Water, Miami-based Mi9 offered the ideal solution.
This end-to-end retail suite includes retail analytics, merchandise
management with a fully-integrated mobile platform, point-of-
P
sale and store operations solutions. The comprehensive, scalable,
end-to-end merchandise management and store systems solution provides the retailer with best-in-class technology, real-time
data accessibility and omnichannel functionality — all features
that deliver meaningful visibility into shopper behavior, product
performance and vendor reliability.
While rolling out an all-encompassing solution can be a daunting task, Blumenthal has spent the past 24 months deploying
the platform in stages. The first phase was the enterprise-wide
installation of the solution’s business intelligence module, “and
currently all primary modules are installed,” he said.
Since beginning the deployment, the retailer has increased
business efficiency, streamlined its processes, and managed its
merchandising operations and order fulfillment with improved
visibility. “Operating one system ensures that nothing gets lost in
translation, and our advanced reporting capability has contributed
to virtually no errors in our fulfillment processes,” he added.
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
Macy’s
New York City, N.Y. | www.macys.com
NOMINATED BY:
Alvanon | www.alvanon.com
orty-five million albums sold. More than
24 million followers across Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter. Eight telenovelas
watched by more than 2 billion viewers
in 180 countries.
With numbers like these, it’s little wonder Macy’s jumped at the opportunity to
collaborate on a fashion collection with
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beloved Mexican superstar Ariadna Thalía
Sodi Miranda, better known as just Thalía.
With Hispanics accounting for 15 percent
of adults and 22 percent of Millennials in
the United States, wielding purchasing
power estimated to reach $1.5 trillion this
year, retailers have been paying particular
attention in recent years to this fast-grow-
ing and influential demographic as evidenced by Kmart’s Sofia by Sofia Vergara
collection and Jennifer Lopez’s partnership
with Kohl’s.
Before even considering design elements
that would speak to Hispanic shoppers,
Macy’s knew that perfecting the fit of the
collection would be half the battle. The
TOP INNOVATORS
retailer reached out to fit firm Alvanon,
which took more than 20,000 body scans
to help develop the right size and fit. “We
also sent cross-functional teams to Mexico
City to learn more about this customer and
her fashion needs,” says Marcia Haimbach,
executive vice president of ready-to-wear
and intimate apparel for Macy's merchandising group.
Fit research spanned 18 months and
yielded key learnings about specific body
attributes for the target customer. “The
Thalía fit caters to the woman who has less
curve between her waist and hips with
shorter rise,” Haimbach explains. “She also
has a fuller upper body. She shops our stores
but for different brands and fits, so our goal
was to create a one-stop shop for her.”
Once Macy’s had established the ideal
fit, it was time to get down to brass-tacks
with Thalía, who Haimbach says was very
involved in the overall look of the collection, from color and print to design (and
even fit, too). “She meets with our team for
color and print reviews and to give feed-
back on what's important for the Latina customer,” notes Haimbach. “She identified
animal print as a neutral for this customer
that should be in the collection at all times.”
From shoes and jewelry to apparel and
accessories, the Thalía collection features
vivid colors, eye-catching prints and versatile, flattering silhouettes that Macy’s
hopes appeal to millions of women globally in addition to the Hispanic shopper.
When the time came to unveil the collection, Macy’s leveraged Thalía’s status as
a digital influencer and tapped into the
evolving social networking trends among
Hispanics. In recent years the retailer has
fine-tuned and shifted more of its targeted
marketing to the Hispanic consumer away
from traditional media and into digital media
platforms, especially mobile. “Over the past
few years, we've seen dramatic increases
in consumption of media by Hispanic customers across digital platforms,” says Haimbach. “Thalía is a highly followed social
media influencer, with millions of fans
worldwide.
“Offering a preview of the collection
through the first-ever Facebook launch of
a new brand via a live stream fashion show
was the perfect opportunity to allow her
fans access through a platform they are
already using daily,” she continues. The
runway preview aired on Thalía’s Facebook
page in January and has now been viewed
by more than 3.5 million fans globally; the
collection officially launched on March 5.
As the Hispanic demographic will only
continue to grow in size, importance and
influence in the United States, Macy’s expects
to have an ongoing and productive relationship with the blond bombshell, who
was named one of People Magazine’s Most
Beautiful (Los Más Bellos) a whopping nine
times (a record!) and one of the top 25 most
powerful Latinas by People en Español.
“We see Thalía as a long-term brand at
Macy’s with growth opportunities,” Haimbach concludes.
— Jessica Binns
Twice as Nice Uniforms
Atlanta, Ga. | www.TwiceAsNiceUniforms.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
edical scrubs are traditionally baggy,
unisex, pajama-like garments constructed of low-grade poplin cotton,” says
Debora Carrier, founder and CEO of Twice
as Nice Uniforms.
Carrier knows this first hand. As a longtime dental hygienist, she struggled to stay
both comfortable and professionally presentable in her chilly dental office, but could
not find any uniforms that would enable her
to stay warm and comfortable while looking stylish and also professional. So she decided
to make one herself, securing a patent for her
design in 2013.
It’s not a bad time to be focusing on the
healthcare business. With more than 59.2
million1 workers, the medical industry is one
of the largest and fastest growing industries
globally and most of those workers need
scrubs. Spending on scrubs in the United
States alone will surpass $532 million in 2015.2
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Even so, there has been little to no change
in terms of style, fabric or functionality since
they became a mandatory uniform for hospital personnel in the 1980s, says Carrier.
“The medical industry continues to evolve;
patients are demanding higher levels of care
and medical scrubs must follow suit,” she
says.
In addition to wearing scrubs that look
drab, clinicians also must suffer the cold, as
temperatures in medical facilities are typically kept low to accommodate hospital equipment, says Carrier. To keep warm, workers
often layer their uniforms with hoodies or
other outerwear, a practice that is both unhygienic and unprofessional in appearance.
“These are typically 40-plus-hour-a-week
jobs. That’s a significant amount of time to
wear baggy, uncomfortable clothes.” In short,
she says, “the medical uniform has long been
overdue for an overhaul.”
TOP INNOVATORS
Enter Twice as Nice Uniforms, which has taken a new approach
to scrubs by adding a patented, removable, hidden liner made of
lightweight performance fabric that is both antimicrobial and moisture-wicking. “This scrub not only looks better, but also regulates
the body temperature of the health care clinician, eliminating
the need for layers over or under the uniform,” says Carrier. The
wearer can also quickly remove the liner (it’s attached with a
branded snap tape), which creates two uniforms in one — thus
the Twice as Nice name.
Twice as Nice Uniforms also offer an improvement over the
boxy fit of many scrubs on the market, which Carrier says typically offer style variations only in color and pattern.
Working with fit expert Renée Bavineau of Raise the Bar RTB
LLC, Twice as Nice Uniforms developed two scrub styles with features designed to flatter every body type, says Carrier.
Twice as Nice Uniforms also feature enhanced fabric and finishes. Its premium scrub fabric is a silky poly-rayon-Spandex blend
with two-way stretch that maintains its shape. The liner is interquilt,
which Carrier says keeps the wearer looking fresh and fitted all
day, and pockets have been strategically placed and structured
to accommodate today’s tablets and various sizes of smartphones.
With investor funding, Twice as Nice Uniforms is currently in
its second production run with a New Jersey-based manufacturer.
With this second run, it has launched a men’s line and expanded
its color options for its women’s line. The company is growing
quickly and using social media and its website to build brand
awareness, says Carrier.
Uniforms are marketed online, via local trunk shows at medical professional association gatherings and via a team of brand
ambassadors gathered from within the medical community.
— Jordan K. Speer
1
World Health Organization 2008, http://www.who.int/hrh/documents/
counting_health_workers.pdf
2
2014 Health Care Staff and Scrub Retailer Survey, Uniform Retailers
Association (URA)
Mountain Equipment Co-op
Vancouver, BC | www.mec.ca
NOMINATED BY:
Visual 2000 International | www.visual-2000.com
hether it is customer-inspired or internally focused, sustainability and the
environment are at the forefront of every
business decision that Mountain Equipment Co-op makes. By tightening its focus
on collaboration, the company is creating
a roadmap that will help it achieve its goals
that much faster.
Vancouver-based Mountain Equipment
Co-op (MEC) evolved in 1971 when a group
of West Coast mountaineers agreed to turn
an unconventional retail model into a thriving business. Eager to create a local marketplace for Canadian outdoor enthusiasts,
six comrades developed a consumer cooperative (with an unlimited number of
equal membership shares) that sold quality gear for rock climbing, mountaineering,
ski mountaineering and hiking. Fast-forward more than 40 years, and the company
has evolved tremendously. By matching
people with expertise, experience, enthusiasm, clothing and gear for camping, snow
sports, water sports, cycling, climbing, hiking, running and fitness, the company has
attracted more than 3.75 million members
across Canada. With a commitment to “give
back to the planet,” every year members’
purchases enable the company to donate 1
percent of sales to Canadian non-profit
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organizations that help conserve ecologically and recreationally important areas.
While MEC strives to inspire and enable
Canadians to lead active outdoor lifestyles
with environmentally sound merchandise,
this is more than just lip service. Honoring
the environment is a business strategy
that drives all internal operations, including
product production. “We create our products carefully, and we constantly explore
new ways to improve our practices and reduce
our impact on the environment,” said Sandra Rossi, MEC’s director of product design.
It is this commitment that led the company to bluesign. Officially known as bluesign technologies AG, this Swiss organization
works with fabric mills to ensure that environmental standards — from energy, raw
materials and chemicals going in, and water
and air emissions going out of the environment — are met.
Already designing merchandise with
bluesign materials, MEC upped the ante
and set a goal that it would reach 100
percent bluesign materials used in apparel
and sleeping bags by 2017. “We were making incremental increases season after season, but until we made a concrete goal, the
conversion was slower than we wanted,”
she explained.
Because this was a shared goal across
different departments, it forced everyone
to work together as a team. One way to
keep the team on the same page was through
its adoption of a product lifecycle management (PLM) system. While the PLM
solution was not the catalyst for the project, “it is a tool that will help us easily track
products, material yardage and certifications that support our bluesign and environmentally preferred materials efforts,”
she said. “It provides us with an easy tool
to analyze our progress and set goals for
the future without a lot of extra work and
spreadsheets. Everything we need is recorded
and found in PLM.”
In choosing the best system to support
its needs, the company sought a PLM sys-
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TOP INNOVATORS
tem that was best suited to a small- to mediumsized, but growing, company, Rossi said.
By choosing a solution from Montrealbased Visual 2000 International, the co-op
can streamline all product and material
specifications, as “everything about a style
is now recorded in one place,” she said.
“Anyone in the organization who needs
information can access the portion they
need within PLM.”
The solution is clearly working its magic,
as the co-op continues making significant progress in reaching its fast-approaching bluesign goal. “At the end of 2015,
we will be at 70 percent,” Rossi reported.
“The last 30 percent will be the toughest,
but we are all dedicated to working together
and making it happen.”
Of course, bluesign is only one of many
projects the PLM system supports. “We’ve
got lots of ideas, and Visual 2000 thus far
has been very supportive and we’ve gotten everything we’ve asked for,” she added.
“As we use it more, we expect to continue working with Visual 2000 to get even
more out of the system.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
JustFab
Los Angeles, Calif. | www.justfab.com
NOMINATED BY:
NGC | www.ngcsoftware.com
ince its launch in 2010, e-commerce darling JustFab has been on the forefront
on many of today’s biggest retail trends:
the convenience of online shopping, the
addiction of fast fashion, the desire for a
personalized, curated experience, the subscription business model. Through a series
of acquisitions, JustFab Inc. now includes
Fabletics, FabKids and ShoeDazzle, with 3
million VIP members signed up to receive
a shiny new item — whether shoes, clothing or accessories — from their unique boutique each month for a flat fee of $39.95
(shipping’s on the house for orders of more
than $39).
JustFab can keep its prices so low because
it designs everything in-house in Los Angeles; there’s no middleman to mark up prices
to department-store or specialty retail levels. On track to surpass $500 million in revenue this year, JustFab has been growing
at a rapid clip by moving into new categories, increasing product offerings and
expanding internationally; between JustFab and Fabletics, the company serves Australia, France, Germany, The Netherlands,
Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom,
in addition to the United States and Canada.
With its “need for speed” approach,
JustFab can capitalize on the latest trends
and deliver fresh, of-the-moment products
to customers quickly, feeding the relentless appetite for new, new, new.
But enviable growth always comes with
a few pain points, and eventually the company outgrew some of its operational plat-
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forms. “With our rapid growth and need
to expand our sources of supply, we required
a system that would provide a single source
of data across cross-functional teams,”
explains Russel Steingold, senior vice president of Fabletics and global sourcing. “We
wanted a cloud-based solution that our
accounting, merchandising, design, product development and supply chain teams
could use for their needs, respectively. We
could no longer function using spreadsheets
due to the complexities of our business and
the rapid growth we were seeing.”
In the first quarter of 2014, JustFab began
implementing NGC’s PLM platform to
effectively collaborate with suppliers and
keep tabs on changes throughout the product development process. The software aids
with line planning, material development,
sampling and sourcing, and includes workflow calendars and an exception dashboard
to help keep all aspects of design both on
time and on budget. Today 80 users are on
the NGC platform.
Streamlining its product development
department enables JustFab to pursue interesting opportunities and collaborate on
special collections, as it did with People StyleWatch — a top style source for Millennial
women — on a 32-piece capsule in March.
The 25 shoe styles and seven handbags featured the latest designs and colors for spring,
allowing JustFab to reach People StyleWatch’s
10.5 million subscribers.
Going forward, JustFab plans to continually fine-tune the customer experience.
“As a fashion company, we are constantly
looking to evolve the personalized experience we give our members,” Steingold
says. “I think the customer experience will
continue to evolve and become more and
more customized and engaging. The JustFab Inc. brands have been focused on changing the way people are shopping for fashion
online, and we are always enhancing that
experience.”
—Jessica Binns
TOP INNOVATORS
Performance Scrubs
Brentwood, Tenn. | www.performancescrubs.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
orget New York, forget Los Angeles, forget San Francisco: if
you’re looking for true innovation in apparel, look south, past
the well-known hotbeds of North and South Carolina into the
heart of the deep South: Alabama.
The rumblings of a Made-in-America renaissance are alive and
well in Florence, Ala., where high-tech medical apparel manufacturer Performance Scrubs unveiled in October 2014 a brandnew 50,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility that houses highly
skilled and specialized seamstresses, cutter operators, software
engineers, and sales and marketing staff. Not that domestic production is necessarily new to the company. For many years Performance outsourced production to cut-and-sew factories in
and around Cullman, Ala., says J. Kirby Best, co-founder and CEO.
“About six years ago Performance bought the assets of an old
cut-and-sew operation and decided that one of our core strengths
would be the manufacturing of products right here in the United
States,” explains Best. “Today, Made in the USA is one of our identifiers, although we often say ‘don’t buy it because it is made in
the USA, buy it because it’s the best in the world.’”
To Best, the value proposition of committing to domestic manufacturing seems clear as day. “Many apparel companies are seeking ways to bring their manufacturing back to the U.S. but cannot
seem to get past the prices they are receiving in China,” he notes.
“However, if these companies examined the entire costs associated with manufacturing the supply chain offshore and not just the
price per piece, the benefits would become obvious.”
The new technologically advanced factory is the result of many
years of research and collaboration with thought leaders across
industries, according to Best. “Great minds with top experience
from IBM, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the largest on-demand
digital printing company came together to develop a whole new
way to do business,” he explains. “The supply chain has been
stretched to the limit in the clothing business. Performance seized
the opportunity and collaborated with experts whose boldly creative and technically brilliant minds created a solution that addresses
these challenges.”
That solution is the OnPoint system, which features Recirculation Backbone Technology (RBT), an automated manufacturing
platform that employs software-driven proprietary workflows and
a smart three-dimensional conveyer system. Essentially, RBT shuttles totes filled with cut fabric to the right sewer in the right sequence,
though it’s actually much more sophisticated than that, says Best.
“By automating the entire supply chain from order entry to
delivery, you can use one factory to make millions of unique products simultaneously,” he adds. For clients, this means inventory
can be greatly reduced or even eliminated in some cases as stock
can be replenished literally overnight. And RBT is cost-effective
even for one-off runs.
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Research reveals that consumers want and expect a wide range
of options in every product, Best notes. “The solution is to integrate all of the systems so that the order flows directly from the
customer completely through the system without human interference, without building inventory while still offering millions of
unique product combinations.”
In addition to scrubs, the company also produces sportswear
and sleepwear, all of which leverage similar technical fabrics
that deliver moisture-wicking, antimicrobial, wrinkle-resistant,
color control and odor elimination properties. Every product can
be customized to the client’s specifications, says Best.
Beyond quality and ensuring that each item shipped meets
highly defined specifications, Performance’s most closely tracked
metric is operations per hour. Because every garment requires a
unique set of operations, the only measurement that means
anything out on the floor level is operations per hour per shift,
explains Best. “The whole management team carries iPads around
the shop and can always give any of the team members their exact
counts at any moment,” he explains. “Soon every workstation will
be equipped with a monitor that will scroll through the necessary functions and information needed.”
Instead of resting on its laurels, Performance is investigating new ways to enhance its facility and service, experimenting
with computerized avatars, 3D laser measuring systems, and
robotic arms to deliver even greater levels of automation and
customization.
Best is certain that the apparel industry will have to evolve significantly in coming years. “Business lines will blur more and faster
than before. Retail will move towards showrooms, and manufacturing or high-speed distribution will adapt to make this happen,” he says.
“An omnichannel approach to selling will win, but the question now is just how long will it take, and can manufacturing drive
it fast enough?”
— Jessica Binns
TOP INNOVATORS
Mitchells Family of Stores
Westport, Conn. | shop.mitchellstores.com
NOMINATED BY:
ThoughtWorks Retail | www.thoughtworks.com/retail
hile it describes itself as late to the technology game, Mitchells Family of Stores
is certainly making up for lost time as it
expands the customer engagement technology platform that earned the company one of Apparel Magazine’s Top
Innovator spots in 2014.
When Westport, Conn.-based Mitchells
earned this honor last year, the company
was embarking on a platform that could
enable a true one-to-one engagement strategy. Fashioned around a rudimentary, albeit
effective, practice, engagement came in the
form of store associates using their personal cellphone cameras to take photos
of merchandise. These shots were shared
with loyal customers via emails and texts
to update them on new arrivals. The process,
called Mpix, set the tone for the company’s
evolving omnichannel customer engagement strategy.
In fall 2014, Mitchells, partnering with
Chicago-based ThoughtWorks Retail, introduced a web-based customizable platform
that delivers much more easily accessible
robust customer information to sales associates. A cloud-based database stores details
such as preferences and purchase history,
as well as the associates’ Mpix library of
chainwide inventory and related product
information needed to expertly share offerings with their clients. Six months into its
launch, the platform now manages 15,000
SKUs, and all data shared between style
advisors and customers is updated in near-
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real-time. While he wouldn’t share specific
details, Andrew Mitchell-Namdar, the
chain’s vice president of marketing and creative services, reported that reserved product levels and in-store traffic are both on
the rise.
With an eye to the future, MitchellNamdar didn’t waste time expanding the
platform’s functionality. Almost in tandem,
the retailer launched its e-commerce site,
www.mitchells.com. Now, Mitchells is taking steps to integrate the two pieces together
to create an all-encompassing interactive
customer engagement tool. “By merging
our e-commerce solution, we have truly
created an omnichannel structure that has
the ability to drive in-store and online sales,”
he explained.
One new piece of functionality within
the platform (now known as M World), is
the ability for online customers to sign in
and chat with a virtual style advisor who
serves customers based on their preferences
and style needs. The platform also features
an interactive virtual closet — a personalized digital catalog of every purchase each
individual customer has made brand-wide
over five years, both in-store and online.
Meanwhile, the retailer also launched
an interactive dashboard that enables customers to view the status of alterations
requested in-store, as well as collaborate
with their individual style advisors regarding new arrivals and track reservedproduct status. “While analyzing how many
customers are using functionality, we were
excited to see a higher number of users than
expected,” Mitchell-Namdar said. “Now
we are focused on increasing the ease of
functionality.”
Mitchells has clearly covered a lot of
ground in six months, and the chain shows
no sign of slowing down. In fact, there is
a two-year wish list burning a hole in
Mitchell-Namdar’s proverbial pocket. Among
the first projects is a recommendation engine
— but not just any engine. “Too many seem
automated. We need something that feels
like a virtual stylist is making recommendations,” he explained. “We are working
to bring the in-store experience online as
best as we can, but we also need to make
changes that create a true omnichannel
experience. Our mantra is the customer has
to see the benefit of all of our services brandwide, or they will shop elsewhere.”
To ensure no grass grows underfoot,
Mitchell-Namdar is planning to add more
people to the retailer’s technology team so
it can move as fast as it can, he explained.
“Technology changes very quickly and we
have lots of wonderful ideas.”
“It is a great feeling to have [won the Top
Innovator] honor more than once, but the
best acknowledgement is still when I am
stopped at a store by a shopper who says
how much she loves the site,” he noted. “This
means we are innovating in the right way.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
SustainU
Morgantown, W. Va. | www.sustainuclothing.com/store
NOMINATED BY:
Self
uthentic. Honest. True to its roots. These
are more than words to Morgantown,
Va.-based SustainU Clothing. These words
define a business mission that has contributed to growth for the young apparel
company.
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From long- and short-sleeve t-shirts to
hoodies and zip-up fleece sweatshirts, SustainU is a 23-person, six-year-old company
that produces American-made apparel from
recycled materials. Dedicated to the importance of conserving the earth’s increasingly
limited resources, SustainU has made it
mission-critical to use post-industrial
cottons and post-consumer polyester to
make its comfortable, yet durable fabrics.
These efforts alone save millions of gallons
of water, petroleum, agrochemicals and
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TOP INNOVATORS
CO2 emissions, according to the company.
What is equally as important as the company’s love for the earth is its love and pride
for its country. While the trend in fashion
has been to slash operating costs through
outsourcing labor overseas, the company
has a vested interest in domestic manufacturing. The result is quality apparel
and the reinvigoration of a vital American
manufacturing sector, the company reports.
Local production, comprised of smart
supply chains, also contributes to the creation of an affordable product, debunking
the widely held belief that sustainable clothing is synonymous with being expensive.
“When you show that you can be price
competitive and the quality can actually be
better [using recycled materials], and create jobs domestically it's a win-win for college sports and consumers,” said Chris Yura,
SustainU’s CEO, as quoted in The State Journal, a business publication covering West
Virginian businesses. “We're one of the
companies leading the way in developing
this area of the apparel industry.”
These characteristics have contributed
to significant growth over the past five years.
The brand is especially attractive to other
local companies with similar mission statements. One of its most recent partners:
Facility Merchandising Inc. (FMI), the 30year-old Woodland Hills, Calif.-based distributor of non-consumable merchandise
across arenas, stadiums and events nationwide. The company recently acquired the
rights to operate the retail concessions,
become the master licensee, and handle all
e-commerce operations for the prestigious
America's Cup yachting event. Also dedicated to sustainability and reducing its carbon footprint, FMI plans to use the upcoming
America's Cup as its first venue to introduce an entire product line developed from
100 percent post-consumer waste.
Based on similar business goals, it makes
sense that the two companies found each other
and developed a partnership. Their first event:
the 2013 America’s Cup. “That was an exciting event and it went very well,” Yura said.
Positive results prompted the duo to
team up for SustainU’s most recent endeavor,
designing and manufacturing official game
shirts sold by FMI during the 2015 College
Football Playoff National Championship
played in January. The game, which featured the University of Oregon Ducks and
the Ohio State University Buckeyes going
head-to-head at AT&T Stadium, in Arlington, Texas, gave the West Virginian manufacturer national exposure.
“It's an incredible blessing to be able
to reach that national market,” said Yura.
“Our company has gotten a lot of attention in the sports apparel community. We
have a lot of good employees putting in
some hard work.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
Buffalo Exchange
Tucson, Ariz. | www.buffaloexchange.com
NOMINATED BY:
Celerant Technology | www.celerant.com
apper Macklamore may have made it
cool for the masses to go thrifting and
“pop some tags,” but this is “business-asusual” for Buffalo Exchange, a company that
has created a successful enterprise by featuring high-end one-of-a-kind vintage clothing and a knowledgeable sales team. By
implementing a retail management platform, it is now blending innovation into its
vintage-inspired chain with real-time insight
into its inventory chain-wide.
The Tucson-based company started in
1974 by Kerstin and Spencer Block as a 450square-foot store that bought, sold, traded
and took vintage fashion clothing on consignment. At a time when resale shopping
carried a stigma, the Blocks were determined to reverse this trend. Between Kerstin’s two loves of fashion and finding a
good bargain, the couple grew the company into a 47-store, two-franchise chain
across 17 states.
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The brand, which generated
$81.6 million in revenue (as of
December 2012), features vintage clothing from the 1930s to
the 1980s, thanks to customers
who bring in their fashionable
high-end apparel for resale, all
sold in clean, fun stores with a
boutique atmosphere. Consignment customers receive payment once their merchandise is sold, and at that time, have the
option of receiving cash or trade credit for
their used clothes.
In addition to the vintage clothing,
about 20 percent of the stores’ merchandise is new.
The chain manages more than 200,000
SKUs, but struggled with how to see what
merchandise sold best in which locations,
as well as how to calculate margins.
Meanwhile, each piece of merchandise
has its own unique SKU, which is impos-
sible to manage without an automated system. “We can sell between 4,000 and 5,000
SKUs a week. When you multiply that times
48 stores for 52 weeks a year, it shows the
depth of what we are managing, purely
from a replenishment standpoint,” said
Rebecca Block, the chain’s vice president,
and Kerstin and Spencer’s daughter. “Internally, nothing talked together, or accommodated our SKUs. Instead, we would
create new unique SKUs, replicate the number in our mainframe, and flood the operating system that was supported by DSL
or T1 lines.”
TOP INNOVATORS
Buffalo Exchange tried to modernize its processes times before.
With most enterprise point-of-sale (POS) systems in the marketplace designed to manage traditional sales, they couldn’t satisfy Buffalo Exchange’s needs. Yet, the chain was determined to
automate and distinguish its merchandise trades and cash purchases, and manage its unique inventory identifiers. The company
was ready for an automated retail management platform that could
pull customer information as they made a trade or purchase,
and store it in a centralized database. It also wanted daily reports
on sales compared to trade, as well as automated updates of
total cost of goods.
Buffalo Exchange was able to address its needs by adopting
Celerant’s Command Control platform. The vendor and retailer
worked together to customize the platform to address its specific
needs, and in 2012, the chain launched a new POS system capable of supporting and accounting for all of its desired buy, sell and
trade transactions. A centralized database is integrated within
reporting tools, and also within the chain’s existing accounting
software. The chain also uses the software’s backend functionality, including its human capital management modules such as time
clock functionality.
“I can look anytime, in real-time to see sales for any given day,
review a customer’s purchase or trade history, and even determine if any customers are flagged as problematic, connected to
questionable or stolen high-value merchandise,” Block said.
Looking ahead, the chain plans to open new stores in Pittsburgh and throughout Florida, as well as launch an e-commerce
operation. With plans to launch this spring, the site will curate and
sell vintage clothing. Simultaneously, the chain will augment
the site with a sell-by-mail program. Customers use a self-addressed,
stamped bag to ship consignment merchandise to be evaluated.
“Our POS terminal will conduct the process, and we will respond
with a note revealing the value based on a cash or trade rate,” she
said. “Shoppers will alert us to whether they would like us to send
a trade card or check.”
As for POS-specific upgrades, Buffalo Exchange is evaluating
new hardware, specifically equipment that is fashion-industry
hardened to withstand store debris, such as lint and dust that
can clog fans. Upgrades could launch as soon as 2017.
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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TOP INNOVATORS
Canada Goose
Ontario, Canada | www.canada-goose.com
Gerber Technology
www.gerbertechnology.com | www.yunique.com
NOMINATED BY:
ho would have thought 10 years ago
that an outerwear brand whose roots
lie with Antarctic expeditions would end
up landing on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s
2013 swimsuit issue, gracing Kate Upton’s
curves no less?
That’s the story of Canada Goose, which
has transformed itself from the brand of
choice amongst hardcore outdoorsmen and
cold-clime scientists to a covetable luxury
good with price tags as high as $1,590
and preferred by celebrities including Drake,
Daniel Craig and Emma Stone. The Torontobased retailer’s meteoric rise — 4,500 percent growth over the past decade, and U.S.
sales up 30 percent since last year — has
been helped along as much by the frigid
temperatures of 2013’s Polar Vortex and
2014’s Siberian Express as by CEO Dani
Reiss’s market and branding savvy. Current revenues have soared past $200 million and are expected to reach $300 million,
up from $150 million last year. Bain Capital acquired a majority stake in Canada
Goose in 2013 at a $250 million valuation, and Wall Street seems to be itching
for an IPO in the not-so-distant future.
The company moved into a new 96,000square-foot Toronto factory last October
to keep up with white-hot demand, doubling production capacity and creating more
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than 70 manufacturing jobs.
Canada Goose churns out in
excess of 500,000 premium
jackets, each bedecked with
its signature red, white and
blue “Canada Goose Arctic
Program” patch and many
trimmed with coyote fur. Purchased in 2010,
the Winnipeg facility also has expanded
twice, and recently the company has taken
over the building’s third floor as well, adding
90 new positions in the process. Canada
Goose employs more than 1,000 staff worldwide, including 200 new hires over the past
year, and maintains offices in Denver, London, Munich, Paris and Stockholm.
Canada Goose runs a tight manufacturing ship, implementing Gerber Technology’s cut-ticket process in Winnipeg in
which AccuMark pattern design software
generates a ticket with all the important
information for the work order such as color,
fabric types and quantities. The tickets then
can be scanned to provide precise instructions for Gerber’s spreading and Paragon
cutter equipment.
“Our company is growing rapidly so to
keep up with demand, we’re always looking for ways to increase capacity and improve
production efficiencies,” says COO Paul
Riddlestone. “The implementation of Ger-
Stantt
New York, N.Y. | www.stantt.com
NOMINATED BY:
Lectra | www.lectra.com
here’s no denying that men’s wear is having a moment (and
quite an extended one). According to NPD Group, sales growth
of men’s apparel in 2013 outpaced women’s, and an IBISWorld
report found that e-commerce sales of men’s clothing from 2010
to 2015 far surpassed every other category that analysts reviewed
(eg, electronics, alcohol, auto parts, pet supplies). Translation:
more than ever, men are paying increasing attention to fashion
and style.
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ber’s Cut-Ticket process allowed us to
increase the number of fabric pieces we
could cut at once, while at the same time
improving accuracy and reducing waste.
“The new machine is extremely precise
in cutting the fabric so that we’re not left
with much extra material, which becomes
more and more important as we grow and
produce more jackets every year,” he adds.
Since implementing the process more
than a year ago, Canada Goose has reduced
waste by as much as 3 percent.
“There are more than 325 employees
working in our Winnipeg facility and this
new technology has absolutely increased
production volume, as well as improved
efficiency and increased capacity, without
sacrificing quality,” Riddlestone explains.
“We pride ourselves on making the best
and warmest jackets in the world, so quality is of the utmost importance.”
— Jessica Binns
TOP INNOVATORS
Yet in the midst of this madness for men’s wear, in the newfound enthusiasm for twee bowties and ironic suspenders and
Instagram-ready pattern mixing genius, there’s still plenty of room
for a couple of outsiders with a new idea to step in and disrupt
The Way Things Have Always Been Done.
Enter Kirk Keel and Matt Hornbuckle, co-founders of Stantt,
a new brand of casual dress shirts that Kickstarted its way to
success by crushing its funding goal in lighting-fast time: 200 percent funded in just 24 hours. Clearly, the brand’s mission resonated with supporters. And that mission is to end the long-standing
idea of S/M/L sizing by delivering high-quality dress shirts in —
wait for it — 75 sizes. Each named for a street in New York City.
And it’s all possible because: data.
Keel and Hornbuckle, who both previously worked for Johnson & Johnson in brand management, decided that 3D body-scanning technology would offer the best insights into the range of
body types and sizes out there, partnering with Lectra and
leveraging its user-friendly platform. “We talked to every key supplier of 3D modeling and patternmaking and Lectra’s system by
far was the easiest to use and the most helpful in terms of output and data,” says Hornbuckle. Between physical and digital
models, the pair fit 2,220 guys, informing the wide range of sizes
now available on its Shopify-powered e-commerce site that has
been up and running since December. Users simply enter their
chest, waist and sleeve measurements and an algorithm calculates
the ideal fit. Shipping and returns are free, of course.
Hornbuckle is quick to point out that the brand’s website experience is just as important as perfecting the fit of each shirt. “Today’s
guy knows fit and style are really important but simplicity and ease
are an important part of the shopping experience as well,” he
explains. Despite the initial first push via e-commerce, however,
the duo has discovered that there’s nothing like meeting potential customers face to face.
“We’re seeing old-school retailing, like setting up pop-up shops,
is so much more impactful,” notes Hornbuckle. “We were in
Chelsea Market recently, and having that one-on-one interaction
with the consumer, and allowing him to actually try on the shirt
and discover the amazing quality of our product is hundreds of
times more effective compared with the online customer acquisitions methods we were trying.”
The Chelsea pop-up was so successful that Stantt started another
six-week run on April 27.
Although Stantt launched with a manufacturing partner in New
York, the brand now sources production in Central America
with a factory that can turn shirts around in less than one week,
using 100 percent cotton fabric sourced in Europe. “This manufacturer empowers the 75-sizes methodology where our inventory levels are a fraction of what they are in the industry standard,”
Hornbuckle says.
Stantt plans to expand to as many as 125 sizes this year and
is working on a new line of casual shirts that could launch as early
as this month at a $78 price point. As for competitors, Hornbuckle
sees the brand as being alone in the crowd.
“I see us as carving out a new space in apparel where we’re
giving guys the best of ready-to-wear, which is a fast and easy
experience, but you get the fit like it’s custom made,” he concludes.
— Jessica Binns
bumbrella
www.wearbumbrella.com | Bay Village, Ohio
NOMINATED BY:
Self
id you know that restrictive shapewear
garments can deliver a world of hurt (in
addition to that perfectly smoothed silhouette)? Nerve compression, acid reflux,
blood clots in the lower extremities — that’s
just the tip of the iceberg.
“Most health care professionals would
recommend wearing these shaping pieces
for no more than three to four hours at a
time, thereby making them impractical for
daily wear,” says Tara Gallagher, whose
career in marketing and advertising transitioned to practicing medicine as a physician, where she discovered the shapewear
issues that prompted her to launch alternative undergarment brand bumbrella
in 2012.
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bumbrella is a two-in-one panty-andslip garment that prevents the twisting,
turning and riding up often associated with
traditional half slips while providing modesty and coverage beneath skirts and dresses.
Gallagher was inspired to create bumbrella — “an umbrella for your bum” — by
her own embarrassing experience wearing
a black jersey dress to an outdoor funeral
that unfortunately was revealed to be
see-through in the bright sunshine. And
her idea for the design came in part from
the workout skorts that had become the
staples of her daily exercise regimen.
“As active as I was, I never had to think
about the comfort of my workout wear,”
explains Gallagher. “I wanted to bring this
same kind of design inspiration to an undergarment that was completely lacking in the
intimate apparel market.”
Gallagher’s mother executed the first
prototype, stitching together a cut-up
half-slip and underwear and proving the
concept to be viable. As a newcomer to
the garment industry, the physician
researched product development on the
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TOP INNOVATORS
Internet, partnering with a pair of industry veterans, including a pattern- and
sample-maker with 40 years of intimate apparel experience.
She went through roughly 15 rounds of
trial-and-error with different fabrications. “I remember thinking the first sample felt a lot like a bathing suit,” notes
Gallagher, “which is definitely not what I
wanted.”
Eventually, her team settled on a lightweight, breathable nylon/spandex blend
with just enough stretch to hug the body
and maintain its shape without squeezing uncomfortably.
Gallagher had to abandon her initial
hopes of manufacturing in the United States
once she discovered the dearth of domestic options for producing apparel with fourway stretch fabric. Her product development
partners leveraged their long partnerships
in Asia to forge a contract with a small Chinese manufacturer, which is especially fortunate, says Gallagher, given bumbrella’s
startup status and low minimums.
“I was initially hesitant about manufacturing abroad due to the long lead times
and perceived lack of control,” she adds,
noting that the finished product has far
exceeded her expectations. bumbrella offers
two style options: a hipster panty and a
thong, with a boy short version just about
ready for production, all available in black,
nude and blue.
Although bumbrella’s sales are split 5050 between wholesale and direct-toconsumer at the moment, Gallagher would
like to become a pure wholesaler in the
future. Generating traffic to the bumbrella
website has been an uphill battle, she says,
along with attracting the attention of the
all-important retail buyer. “The challenge
is not only brand awareness but also creating awareness of a new product category
within intimate apparel,” she adds.
bumbrella may soon expand its offerings, as Gallagher says she’s considering a
longer slip length, new colors, and plus sizes.
A children’s line may also be an option —
“I can’t tell you how many mothers have
said how hard it is to find a girl’s slip,” she
says — and a maternity product currently
in the works will again leverage her medical expertise. “It’s so important to consider
anatomy, especially the changing anatomy
of a pregnant body,” Gallagher says.
“I have always loved fashion and am
delighted I can couple my medical and marketing knowledge to create practical, modern problem-solving garments that are also
fashionable and fun,” she concludes.
— Jessica Binns
Ascena Retail Group
Mahwah, N.J. | www.ascenaretail.com
NOMINATED BY:
TradeStone Software | www.tradestonesoftware.com
scena Retail Group aspires to be a $10
billion top-line retailer with top-tier profitability — and an appetite for acquisitions
— is helping them reach their goal. The
addition of a collaborative platform that
unifies the design, sourcing, ordering and
delivery of retail goods will contribute to
achieving this goal as well.
Operating approximately 4,000 stores,
and with close to $5 billion in annual sales,
Mahwah, N.J.-based Ascena Retail Group,
known as ascena, is a holding company for
missy and plus-sized women’s apparel companies Lane Bryant, maurices, dressbarn
and Catherines as well as tween apparel
store Justice.
ascena built its enterprise on the power
of acquisitions, a strategy that is preparing
the company for global growth. However,
with every new acquisition, the company
adds new complexities to an already-complicated existing infrastructure.
“We’ve acquired multiple brands over
time, and each came with its own ways of
working from process, systems and tools
perspectives,” said Jennifer Hunter, vice
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president of operations, ascena global
sourcing (AGS).
Over the years, however, the organization has become reliant on these disparate systems, tools and processes. What
really began taking a toll on operations
was reliance on email, spreadsheets and
other manual processes that buyers and
suppliers used during collaboration. For
example, a buyer might perform an email
search only to receive multiple downloads
of various PDFs and data exports from
Excel spreadsheets when finalizing the
spring collection with one supplier. Those
same cumbersome tasks would be repeated
for all involved suppliers. The organization finally recognized that without common processes and tools across
geographically dispersed ascena brands,
these challenges would only intensify.
“It was becoming imperative to have a
common system in place so all brands could
speak the same language,” Hunter explained.
“Yet, it was also challenging to know that
each brand was at a different starting point
in this potential journey.”
Doubts and fears aside, ascena recognized that it needed to implement synergies across the organization to support its
overall growth business strategy. This
required a common and holistic platform
that featured one version of the truth throughout the entire product lifecycle.
Based on these requirements, ascena
chose TradeStone Software, Gloucester,
Mass. Providing a single platform, TradeStone manages all aspects of product
design, product development, collaborative sourcing, production, quality management, supplier management, order
management, logistics, finance and business intelligence. Overall, this end-toend configuration creates efficiency,
collaboration and a stronger sense of
community throughout the organization, regardless of the brand, or whether
stores are operated domestically or internationally.
The web-based application supports
streamlined collaboration with supplier
partners, and seamlessly integrates with
the parent company’s enterprise resource
TOP INNOVATORS
planning (ERP) solutions, including financials. To manage the deployment, a collaborative project team comprised of members
of the business, finance and IT departments
identified problems and resolutions. By choosing to keep the configuration as vanilla as
possible, the team ensured the solution was
primed to create the highest level of efficiencies enterprise-wide.
The company started applying the solution across the Justice brand in 2014. Beginning with lifecycle management, tight
integration enabled the brand to collaborate
with its vendor and factory partners — a
growing community of more than 55 direct
sourcing vendors and 120-plus factories.
These global partners now have access to a
single platform to find, design, source and
buy merchandise for the retail brand.
Since going live, the brand has seen
efficiency savings, which has been a large
contributor to the project’s return on investment. The company is also using Justice's
successes as its implementation model as it
ramps up subsequent brands.
ascena currently has two brands using
TradeStone as its core platform: Justice and
maurices. But this is just the beginning.
“As we think about growth, we believe each
one of our brands has significant organic top
and bottom line opportunity,” said ascena’s
CFO, Robb Giammatteo. “We see significant growth potential across all our brands
related to expansion of our existing merchandising assortment, and as we continue
our journey toward full realization of our
omnichannel capability.”
Leveraging a shared services platform and
the establishment of a global community further positions ascena for continued growth
and cultural transformation.
“When we first set out, we thought we
were just doing a system implementation
project; it was much more than that,” said
Hannah Schmitz, director of sourcing systems for AGS.
The diverse community consisting of brand
partners and Shared Services (including AGS
and IT) knew failure was not an option. “What
we really did was build a global community devoted to changing how we streamline
our implementation methodology and product innovation processes to take our business to a new level,” Schmitz added.
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
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TOP INNOVATORS
Francesca’s
Houston, Texas | www.francescas.com
NOMINATED BY:
MarketLive | www.marketlive.com
hen you visit Francesca’s.com, the web
site reminds shoppers to “Make sure
to look in every nook and cranny, because
around every corner, Francesca’s is brimming with treasures that are sure to become
favorite pieces in your collection.” The brand
takes this advice to heart, as it continues to
add innovations to help shoppers to find
these treasures, whether they visit online
or in-store.
Francesca’s opened its first store in Houston in 1999, a location that featured a fun,
engaging assortment of handpicked merchandise. The retailer says its merchandise
— an eclectic mix of carefully-curated clothing, bright baubles, bold accessories, and playful gifts — is as fun to give as it is to receive.
Today, Francesca’s has more than 500
boutiques operating in 45 states across the
country (88 new boutiques opened in fiscal 2014 alone), and operates online at
francescas.com, and the chain is striving
for an omnichannel operation that allows
consumers to browse, surf or shop whenever it strikes their fancy.
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Francesca’s is working to achieve this
goal, in part via an e-commerce platform
from MarketLive, a platform that helps
companies to create cross-channel commerce customer experiences, engaging social
campaigns and marketing and merchandising features across all customer digital
touch points, regardless of whether they
are accessed in-store or virtually.
To ensure digital shoppers get the same
service as those shopping in-store, for example, the chain enhanced its online offering with an innovative interactive “Collections
Outfit Page,” which makes it easy and
fun for shoppers to find just the right outfit, even if they can’t make it to an actual
store location. The page is updated regularly for special occasions, holidays and seasons and is also mobile-optimized.
The flexibility of the platform enables
the retailer to round out the interactive
experience through social campaigns, consistent pricing and promotions featured
across touchpoints brand-wide.
Results can be seen in the numbers:
Direct-to-consumer sales increased 64 percent in fiscal 2014 versus the prior year due
to increased traffic.
Another enhancement that Francesca’s
found success with was MarketLive’s geolocation-based boutique locator. (The company has temporarily disabled this feature
due to a lack of internal resources to support it.) Fueled off of a shopper’s desktop,
laptop or mobile device’s current IP address,
the application was able to present the
address, hours and phone number of the
boutique nearest to the shopper’s device.
Convenient links also offered directions to
find another store if multiple locations were
available in a shopper’s city. An additional
content fill slot available on the mobile optimized site allowed the chain to populate
promotional and event-related information tailored to each individual boutique.
This enabled shoppers to see content pertinent to their chosen boutique.
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
RG Barry
Pickerington, Ohio | www.rgbarry.com
NOMINATED BY:
Simparel | www.simparel.com
hen manufacturer RG Barry acquired new brands within its
product portfolio, it was a blessing and a curse. Sure, it expanded
the company’s breadth, but it also increased IT issues. By deploying a category-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the company was able to overcome challenges caused by
disparate systems, including improved order accuracy and streamline shipments.
A 60-year-old company, RG Barry originally built its reputation on its development of the iconic Dearfoam slipper brand. In
the mid-1980s, slippers were no longer being merchandised as
“footwear,” and began to be categorized as an accessories category — a move that prompted RG Barry to begin competing in a
new category. This transition also gave the company more opportunity to grow its portfolio. With an eye on new accessory lines,
RG Barry pursued a series of acquisitions, including Foot Petals,
W
a developer and marketer of premium insoles, and baggallini, a
manufacturer of handbags, tote bags and travel accessories. These
three brands have helped RG Barry evolve into a strong and growing accessory lifestyle manufacturer.
Following the brand acquisitions however, one major challenge
emerged. “We struggled to fold all three unstructured ERP systems into a single system of record,” said Tom Stoughton, director of information services, RG Barry.
Each brand used a different solution, and they were also at
three stages of usage. For example, one brand wasn’t fully leveraging their platform. Another completed its design processes
offline, because it didn’t have the capacity to store all working data.
Meanwhile, RG Barry had its own ERP issues. It relied on aging
mainframe software that was not only generic, it had not been
customized to support the growing accessory company’s increas-
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TOP INNOVATORS
ing volume. Described as between 30- and 40-year-old technology, the system was inflexible, non-scalable, and required upgrades
that could take an entire weekend to accomplish.
In June 2011, RG Barry began exploring integrated, apparelspecific options that could support its company, especially its
expansion goals. Prerequisites included usability across all RG
Barry’s brands, and the ability to identify retail customers across
its specific brands. It had to manage merchandise at granular style,
color and size levels, and identify the way its customers ordered.
“Our old system didn’t have the logic to handle these processes,
requiring us to custom-write code,” he said.
With so many options to choose from, Stoughton and his team
began vetting apparel-specific options. “We immediately eliminated those solutions that were missing components we wanted,
as well as systems that weren’t fully integrated,” he explained.
“That narrowed the field from 30 options to nine. We streamlined
the choices to three requests for proposal [RFP], and then pared
these down to two choices that featured demonstrations for our
steering and IT teams.”
Simparel emerged as the clear choice, and RG Barry began a
13-month implementation process that included transitioning
to the new platform, as well as the ERP’s supporting systems,
including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), accounts payable,
purchasing, sourcing and electronic data interchange. Users also
traded in antiquated legacy-based “green screens” for interactive graphical user interfaces (GUI).
“Using synchronized data, we can drill at many different levels, and easily export and extract information to manipulate and
manage in real-time,” he said. “It's much easier and accurate than
relying on information produced in a nightly batch process."
Most importantly, the solution allows the company to communicate with vendors via an online portal, “so we know order
prices and quantities, and can determine warehouse space needed
during peak times, and ship orders on-time,” said Stoughton.
The ERP system is also supporting new endeavors, such as the
company’s baggalini brand’s new e-commerce program, which
launched in March. As consumers place orders on www.baggalini.com, information is stored in the ERP solution via electronic data interchange (EDI). “We have a very mature EDI
environment that supports 85 percent of orders taken and shipped,”
Stoughton explained. “Since our order management and processing is integrated with Simparel, all information is shared. It
is an exciting time, and we are enjoying the results so far.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy
Kokatat
Arcana, Calif. | www.kokatat.com
NOMINATED BY:
Self
emember what it was like when you were
a kid, and you had to get up in the middle
of the night to visit the bathroom, and you
were wearing your one-piece footie pajamas?
That’s a bit akin to the experience of an
avid kayaking enthusiast who wears a onepiece dry suit to stay comfortable and un-soaked
during a kayaking expedition. Full-body dry suits
have traditionally been one piece, because when you
try to stay dry using separate tops and bottoms, it’s
nearly impossible, says Jeff Turner, sales manager.
“Water finds its way in.”
Kokatat would know. The company, which got its
start in 1971 as a backpacking and bicycling shop in
Arcata, Calif., and moved into wholesaling outdoor
apparel and gear to companies such as REI, eventually
decided to focus exclusively on paddle sports apparel
after a lawsuit brought against the company — then
called Blue Puma — by sportswear company Puma
forced it to make a decision about its direction. “It was
the best thing that ever happened to us,” says Steve
O’Meara, president and co-founder. The company
decided to be a big fish in the small pond of kayaking products
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• www.apparelmag.com
instead of a small fish in the big pond of outerwear apparel, a move that honed its focus
on perfecting apparel for its niche.
Since that time, the company has been improving upon paddle sportswear, experimenting
with different materials and sealing methods,
and thanks to Kokatat, today the in-and-out
challenges of the one-piece dry suit are history. With
its newly launched GORE-TEX Idol dry suit, Kokatat
has kept the crucial goal — staying dry — of the onepiece intact, while solving the problems that come with
having to fully remove the suit.
How did it do that? Rather than incorporating a zipper than runs vertically from top to bottom on the torso
or the back, the Idol incorporates a fully separating,
waterproof, SwitchZip system that circles the waist,
eliminating the torso zipper and allowing for maximum
freedom of movement, says Matt Porter, who can be
seen explaining the finer points of the company’s
kayaking apparel in a series of videos on the company’s web site. “The zipper placement sits between
the back band and the seat, and below the skirt so as not to
interfere with boat outfitting,” he notes.
TOP INNOVATORS
Additionally, the top can be worn separately as a dry top,
with the zipper flap folding over the chain of the zipper to protect
it when it’s in use in this manner. “The SwitchZip acts as the entry
zipper and release zipper in one, allowing men and women to
have front and rear relief,” he adds. An Idol will run you about
$1,000, which is quite a bargain, given its 2-in-1 feature. As Turner
explains, a drysuit and a dry top together will typically run you
about $1,500, but because the Idol can also be worn as a dry top,
there’s no need to have both. Each Idol, like all of its drysuits, is
tested for leaks and guaranteed to remain completely dry for the
lifetime of the suit. The Idol also features 3-layer Evolution GORETEX® Pro Shell fabric, used in combination with 330 Cordura®
GORE-TEX® Pro Shell in areas of high abrasion.
When problems do arise, Kokatat has a repair and service facility in California (and recently opened one in the UK for its European customers) offering services ranging from gasket replacement
and water testing to leak repair and retrofitting.
The ISO-9001 company is a stand-out in the industry, with
about 60 percent of Kokatat’s revenues coming from recreational apparel and the other 40 percent from apparel and gear
manufactured for the military, a venture that got its start after
GORE-TEX saw the advances Kokatat was making in its products
and sought it out as a partner for a project with the Navy Seals.
Kokatat products also are almost entirely Made-in-the-USA at
the company’s Arcata factory, which employs 150. (Some environmentally friendly Gaia® PVC-free flotation foam that it uses in
its life vests comes from Asia.) Keeping production close at hand
allows the company to control quality while also focusing on continued research and development, says Turner.
The Idol has already received accolades from “Gear Junkie,”
being recognized as “Best of Show” at the 2014 Summer Outdoor
Retailer. “It is a game changer!” he concludes.
— Jordan K. Speer
Hatley
Lasalle, Quebec | www.hatley.com
NOMINATED BY:
Visual 2000 International | www.visual-2000.com
omeone should remind Hatley — the
LaSalle, Quebec-based retailer known
for its whimsical kid’s clothing and 100 percent cotton pants — that it’s not a billion-dollar corporation. Because it’s sure
behaving like one.
Hatley maintains 3,200 points-of-sale
worldwide, mostly with key wholesale partners such as Nordstrom, John Lewis in the
United Kingdom and Australia’s David
Jones, though it sells to high-end children’s
boutiques as well. The company runs 16 of
its own retail stores in Canada, constantly
expanding to new locations such as Montreal International Airport, and operates an
e-commerce site that drives about 3 percent of the business. Hatley has plans to
open retail franchises in New Zealand and
distributorships in South Africa, while Australia and mainland Europe are its biggest
growth markets.
In 2007, the Canadian government created the Duty Deferral Program (DDP) to
help corporations, and especially large automotive companies, operate more efficiently,
says Jeremy Oldland, CEO of Hatley, which
expects to do about $42 million in revenue
this year. In essence, net exporters — companies that, for example, import 100 owl-
S
emblazoned onesies into the country but
ultimately ship the majority of those units
for sale abroad — are spared from paying
duties on products not destined for the
Canadian market. “It’s sort of a personal
free-trade zone,” Oldland explains.
Being able to take advantage of the DDP
requires very sophisticated systems and
software, so Hatley turned to Visual 2000
for assistance developing the End-2-End
platform that tracks vital information such
as import numbers of units shipped into
Canada along with the currency exchange
rate for the import date. If a unit sells in
Canada six months after import, Hatley
pays the duty based on the exchange rate
on the day it was imported. If the unit is
further exported for sale, Hatley notifies
the Canadian government that the unit has
left the country and thus skips out on duties
altogether.
“When you’re importing millions of dollars of product, the later you can avoid paying your duties, the less you’re going to pay
because you borrow money to pay for duties,”
notes Oldland.
“We save a ton on interest every year,”
he continues. “It’s much more efficient for
cash flow.” Case in point: Canada levies an
18 percent duty on garments, while similar tariffs in the United States and some
other countries are considerably lower.
Using the End-2-End platform, Hatley established subsidiary companies in
Australia, United Kingdom, and the United
States without setting up multiple warehouses, affording a competitive advantage
over similar enterprises that rely on a distributed warehouse model rather than a
centralized one.
Hatley finds that duties factor into myriad areas of its business. It recently added
international shipping to its e-commerce
site, relying again on data from End-2-End
as well as UPS for what duties and taxes
would be appropriate to charge.
“We charge a $35 flat fee for shipping
and a flat 20 percent for duties and taxes,”
explains Oldland. “That’s a lot of money,
but when you’re buying $300 to $400 of
kids’ clothing, it does amortize pretty quickly.”
— Jessica Binns
www.apparelmag.com • MAY 2015
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TOP INNOVATORS
Topson Downs
Culver City, Calif. | www.topsondowns.com
NOMINATED BY:
California Fashion Association | calfashion.org
opson Downs may be a private-label supplier, but thanks to
its strong passion and “a branded mindset,” it strives to solidify customer connections that tend to be synonymous only with
brand names. Its recent acquisition of Rachel Roy is enabling the
manufacturer to pursue this branded business strategy, while diversifying its portfolio.
“Private label — or private brand as our retailers refer to it —
is a vibrant segment in apparel,” said Danny Abramovitch, the
company’s director of sales. “It creates options for customers —
both retail customers and end-use customers.”
Since its debut in 1971, the company has been committed to
creating trend-right product, taking time to really understand the
marketplace and listen to its customers’ needs, says Abramovitch.
Within its own four walls, the company has employed the same
nurturing and attentive environment, which he says is a “key differentiator” for the business. “This marketplace insight has helped
the company create goods that reflect fashion at a great value.”
“Today’s customer is more informed than ever, and she wants
the newest trend almost instantaneously,” Abramovitch said.
“While private label can be considered disruptive to brands, when
you approach it from a place of integrity and strategy, it becomes
a companion to brands.”
Enter the Rachel Roy brand, formerly operating under The Jones
Group, which became a Topson Downs property in the summer
of 2014, when the manufacturer purchased a majority equity stake
in the designer’s company, and gave a new home to the brand’s
six-year-old team dedicated to design, merchandising, sales, production, in-store development and marketing. Rachel Roy
maintains 100 percent control of her name, while Topson Downs
is responsible for developing marketing and licensing the brand.
The manufacturer also created a new branded head office for Rachel
Roy in the heart of New York City’s fashion district.
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Rachel Roy’s overarching creative vision is contributing to Topson Downs’ strategy to focus on brands via innovation and a focus
on the customer, and it also gives the company an opportunity
to be involved with a direct-to-consumer business. “This acquisition is the first step in our branded strategy: partnering with businesses where we can add our expertise to fuel long-term growth.”
Building off of a successful ready-to-wear category, Topson
Downs is expanding the brand’s matrix to include footwear and
accessories, followed by lifestyle-driven categories such as home
and beauty,” says Abramovitch.
The company is also planning a Rachel Roy e-commerce channel, investing in a new commerce platform and back-end functionality that will help create an engaging and effortless brand
experience, Abramovitch said. “The digital world is highly competitive, but we see it as a huge opportunity to interact directly
with the consumer, and offer her the widest assortment of Rachel
Roy product with excellent customer service.”
Since launching Rachel Roy, Topson Downs is enjoying “a
healthy and growing business,” and is looking forward to building momentum in the brand in a calculated and strategic way.
“It’s important that we nurture and protect the brand, and concentrate on the projects and categories that will add value both
from brand and monetary points-of-view,” he added. “We are
striking a delicate balance between our private label and branded
businesses. That said, we are always open to conversations and
opportunities to add to our portfolio, but we are extremely disciplined about those opportunities. It has to be the right fit, not only
for the executive team, but for our entire organization.”
— Deena M. Amato-McCoy