Frank And Oak was founded in 2012 by childhood friends Ethan Song and Hicham Ratnani with one simple goal: to help men and women dress better and more affordably. The Montreal-based company has soared to success and now boasts 23 stores across Canada as well as a thriving e-commerce business. Frank And Oak has added a growing women’s line and is increasingly focused on sustainable production. Today, Frank And Oak is a well-established lifestyle brand that provides customers with purposeful designed products, made sustainably, while upholding strong social values of equality and inclusion.
“Frank And Oak has expanded rapidly in the last five years and the way we used to collaborate using email and Excel spreadsheets didn’t work for us anymore,” explains Frederic Boivin, Vice President Merchandising at Frank And Oak. “We started a thorough search for a PLM solution that would streamline our processes and establish a collaborative platform for our teams in order to cut time to market. We selected Centric PLM for their deep expertise with the apparel industry and out-of-the box PLM solution.”
As Boivin continues, “Centric PLM is user-friendly and intuitive. We knew that our users would be able to start collaborating in the system quickly and easily. Creating a single source of the truth on a shared platform was our primary objective and we were confident that Centric would be able to support that goal.”
Frank And Oak users were impressed by how smoothly the implementation went, says Boivin.
“We are extremely happy with the implementation, which was completed without a hitch. The plan was aggressive to start with, and it went so well that we implemented faster than expected and started some of the more advanced configuration planned for the second phase ahead of schedule. Working with the Centric team has been great.”
Centric PLM has now been deployed across all categories at Frank And Oak and impressively the spring 2019 collection has already been built using Centric PLM across all categories in both men’s and women’s clothing.
“We’re already building entire collections using Centric PLM and orders for 2019 are about to be finalized on the system too,” continues Boivin. “Our users are now able to collaborate much more effectively reducing time spent searching for information and entering data in different places. The reaction from users has been fantastic. They accept the new system and see Centric as a great improvement on our previous way of working. We’re looking forward to the second phase of the project.”
“We are delighted that Frank And Oak has successfully completed their Centric PLM implementation project on time and on budget,” says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. “We look forward to our continued partnership with Frank And Oak as they continue to expand and develop their brand.”
