An Italian sportswear company Lotto Sport, and Stonefly, an Italian footwear producer, have selected Centric Software to provide their product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. Centric Software is a leading PLM solution for fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor and consumer goods companies.

Lotto Sport was founded in 1973 in Treviso, Italy, and now has five sub-brands and an annual turnover of over EUR 300 million. The company focuses specifically on footwear and technical clothing for football and tennis. In addition to headquarters in Treviso, Lotto has teams in France, Spain, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. The company manages the design, development and manufacture of its sportswear, which is primarily produced by suppliers in Asia.

Lotto purchased a stake in Stonefly, a small Italian producer of comfortable sports footwear and is in the process of integrating the IT, finance and product development departments of both companies.

“Lotto had a PLM system in place, but Stonefly had no system at all. We used our PLM system for four years but because it was highly customised, it became more and more inflexible and difficult to evolve. The upcoming project with Stonefly gave Lotto the opportunity to review our information systems structure and look for a more flexible solution. As a result, we decided to change the PLM we had been using and start fresh with a new system across both companies,” said Sebastiano Di Camillo, Head of Information Technology from Lotto.

Flexibility

Flexibility was the key requirement for the new system, said Di Camillo. “We chose Centric PLM because it is a highly configurable solution with no customisation. There’s a good trade-off between cost and quality and Centric is also very user-friendly,” he explained.

With the new system, Sebastiano Di Camillo also expects to see an improvement in the amount and quality of data available to users. “We’ll have more information, with major improvements in quality and we will have more visibility into costs and calendars. As the head of IT department, it’s important to understand the cost of a product and the profitability of our business. We have a lot of people involved in developing collections and with Centric PLM in place, we will be able to make this more efficient with far fewer errors than in the past.”

“As we look forward to the future with Centric Software, we believe it will be a very good partnership,” concluded Di Camillo. “We anticipate sharing new ideas and product developments with each new release of the software.”

Centric Software

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley and offices around the world, Centric Software builds technologies for the prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor, and consumer goods. Its flagship product lifecycle management (PLM) platform, Centric 8, is said to deliver enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, business planning, quality, and collection management functionality tailored for fast-moving consumer industries.

“Lotto Sport and Stonefly have a very important and challenging project ahead of them as they integrate the information systems of both companies and we are proud to be part of it,” commented Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. “We are thrilled to partner with them as they replace old systems and establish new ways of working, and look forward to innovating with them into the future.”

www.centricsoftware.com