BN3TH (pronounced ‘beneath’) the men’s underwear and apparel company, has selected Centric Software®’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution, Centric SMB for emerging brands. 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.
Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the idea for BN3TH began in 2010 when friends Dez Price and Dustin Bigney had an idea to produce the ultimate comfort in men’s underwear. After running the company on the side with prototypes and small production runs, they made the company their full-time careers in 2013. A patented MyPakage Pouch TechnologyTM provides support to their underwear and base layers for any activity—from outdoors and sports to days at the office. Ever mindful of sustainability, BN3TH as a company, strives to minimize the environmental impact of its business.
Nora Shaughnessy, Director of Product at BN3TH describes how she had looked at quite a few different PLM systems on and off over five years. “With launching about 500 SKUs annually among 60+ different styles, it was becoming overwhelming to manage the approval of the testing and the rest of the product development activities. It was kind of like a ticking time bomb as to when we could actually implement PLM.”
Centric was a front runner because one of its main factories, Venitra, already uses it. Other considerations are that they want a solution that doesn’t require customization as they would have to put full-time people against it. “Our team is lean. Also, I want to make sure that I wasn’t trying to retrofit something to how we currently work. We want an experienced PLM partner that can impart best-practices knowledge to us,” Shaughnessy says. “Centric SMB is really interesting because it can grow with you. A lot of the PLMs that are available to smaller companies are limiting, and then when you get to a certain size, you have to overhaul your whole system and go to something else that has an enterprise version.”
As with most companies, COVID-19 shook up BN3TH. Their sales and market reach actually improved but supply chains were disrupted, and being a smaller company, they were worried about losing out on raw materials because larger companies were able to forecast earlier. Says Shaughnessy, “We’re moving to have a more forecast-planned and less booking-based business model.”
With Centric PLM, the main benefit that they want to achieve is clarity. “Trackability, clarity and fewer balls dropped. We need our design department to know that all the information is there, up to date and accurate. They can create BOMs in the system. We’ll reduce errors from copying and pasting between styles,” says Shaughnessy. And then, “It made sense to us—there are just too many right things to not go with Centric.”
Chris Groves, President, and CEO of Centric Software says, “We are proud to be partnering with a fresh, innovative company like BN3TH. Their products are winning high praise from the general public, athletes, and celebrities alike. We look forward to seeing what the future brings.”
