Centric Software®, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, proudly announces its partnership with Gudrun Sjödén, a design-focused Scandinavian clothing and home décor brand. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, price and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home décor, consumer electronics, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
Gudrun Sjödén opened her first store in 1976 in Stockholm, and for more than 45 years has been designing and creating striking, colorful clothes with a Nordic flair, crafted from natural fabrics. This unique brand featuring bold colors and distinctive prints has an equally bold ethos — they celebrate individual style, strong women, and sustainability through their motto: Swedish design with a green soul.
Gudrun Sjödén has expanded into a global brand, boasting an €89 million turnover, 350 employees and 22 stores around the world. Catering to an exclusively female audience, Gudrun Sjödén sells 80% of their products through e-commerce, and their largest markets are Germany, the US and Sweden.
With their legacy system reaching its end of life in 2019, Gudrun Sjödén found themselves searching for a design-focused, cloud-based PLM with expanded capabilities. “Our prior system didn’t do much more than to create the styles, to give them colors and sizes, and generate POs,” explains the Buying & Design Team at Gudrun Sjödén.
Prior to implementing Centric PLM, design teams were frustrated and wasting valuable time entering data multiple times, visibility of processes and information sharing between departments was a challenge, and supplier communication needed upgrading.
“The challenge was that we had an enormous amount of information, in many different places, and a lot of duplication,” says the Buying & Design Team. “We looked closely at our processes between design, logistics and buying and identified where we had unnecessary duplication, where we could simplify, and what we could automate.”
Gudrun Sjödén selected Centric SMB, Centric’s cloud-based PLM solution for emerging brands. Centric’spower to streamline processes for design teams, Adobe® Illustrator® integration and centralized Pantone® Color library have been revolutionary for Gudrun Sjödén. The ability to standardize measurements and share to their PIM at the click of a mouse, the pre-built PO module for buyers, and the supplier portal were also key reasons for selecting Centric.
The Gudrun Sjödén team was highly involved in the 12-week implementation process, and they went live in the fall. “Our designers had a great time in the workshops with our Centric consultant; they were really involved,” elaborates the Buying & Design Team. “That’s why we think we’ve had a very successful implementation – we’ve been the ones leading it, and Centric was great at making sure we got what we wanted.”
And the future partnership looks bright as Gudrun Sjödén has their sights set on launching the supplier portal over the coming months, the power of PLM to help achieve future sustainability goals.
“We are very happy with the system…it’s already very good,” says the Buying & Design Team. “And that’s also why we chose Centric as a partner; it’s a future-safe solution and company.”
“We are thrilled that Gudrun Sjödén has selected Centric PLM to enhance the creative force of their design team and streamline business processes,” says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “We know that they will continue their legacy of celebrating strong women through bold and colorful designs, while remaining committed to sustainability.”
