Stio, the outdoor apparel brand has selected Centric Software’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution for emerging enterprises, Centric SMB. Centric Software® provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home décor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
Headquartered in Jackson Hole, WY at the foot of the Teton mountains, Stio connects people with the outdoors through a broad assortment of end-use products that run the gamut from technical outerwear like ski jackets, to casual lifestyle sportswear like flannel shirts and canvas pants, packs and accessories. Their products can be found at stio.com, in their catalogs, and the Stio Mountain Studio® retail stores in Jackson and Teton Village, Wyoming, Park City, Utah and Boulder, Colorado.
Stio already had a PLM system in place but turned to Centric instead. Says Kelly Hill, Chief Product Officer on making the switch, “There were two big factors: one, Stio is a high-growth organization—for the last five years, we’ve been growing 50% year-over-year from a revenue standpoint and see it continuing into the future. When we chose Centric, we understood at a product creation level, that we needed something scalable. Two, we wanted a solution with established best-practices in place that we could easily adopt, and Centric absolutely has that guidance for us.” Other persuasive points were the reporting capabilities/data analysis, the push/pull of data, the potential to facilitate sustainability and finally, that the Centric SMB option had the features they needed and fell within budget for Stio as an emerging brand.
The implementation was 100% remote and took 10 weeks. “During implementation we had great support from the Centric team. Two Stio subject matter experts were trained and that really facilitated discovery and covered a lot of the ‘can we’ and ‘what ifs’ that we anticipated with the new system,” says Hill. “We adapted and migrated all of our data for a fall 2021 production cycle. It is our second season so a lot of the groundwork is laid on the material side; we’re really only now implementing on the design side, which we didn’t do before. We actually expect that true efficiency, true ROI will come this fall as we annualize our in-system development.”
The users eagerly took to Centric SMB. Hill notes, “I have the benefit of getting to see everything happen in real time. Everyone is really gaining proficiency quickly and the output from the system is serving the greater need.”
Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software says, “I am pleased that Stio has chosen to partner with Centric on their digital transformation journey. Their products encourage the outdoor lifestyle many of us seek to enjoy. At their current growth rate, they are well-positioned to continue providing apparel to adventurers for many years to come.”
