437, the swimwear and activewear company, has selected Centric Software®’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution. 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 out of Toronto, Canada and founded in 2017 by Hyla Nayeri and Adrien Bettio to satisfy the need for swimwear that flatters more than just the perfect body. 437 has been featured in Forbes, Vogue, The New York Times and Hypebae. In addition, they have a strong social media presence with celebrities such as Kylie Jenner, Gabrielle Union-Wade and others having been spotted in 437’s swimwear and recently launched activewear line.
Jennifer Ginor, Director of Design at 437 describes how they want to streamline their specifications and have a more consistent fit across all their styles and fabrications. “Right now, we have everything living on Google Sheets. It’s really hard to find our source of truth. We have certain styles that have been living with us from the day of inception and to be able to copy those fits over, can be challenging as those specs are living all over the place.”
With suppliers and production scattered around the globe, 437 is looking to simplify collaboration with their vendors and reduce the number of errors in tech packs. The company turned to PLM. With respect to the requirements, Ginor says, “We need something that’s easy to use, quick to integrate. And that we can grow with.” 437 considered a few PLM vendors, but after the initial demo that Centric did, they were sold.
Ginor notes, “It’s very early for us to be adding PLM—we’re only 4 years old—but you can either hire more people or have a better process. With a better process, we have that one source of truth, fewer errors, streamlined BOMs and the ability to make more data-driven decisions. We’re such a marketing-forward company that we want to respond quickly to our customers. Having a system like PLM is going to allow us to integrate into our other platforms to get the right feedback from a sales perspective to offer the products that our customers really do want from us.”
Switching gears, Ginor talks about their environmental efforts. “One of our biggest initiatives for the year is to become more sustainable. We’re starting with fabrics and then moving on to production practices.” Being able to see an overview of where their products and resources are facilitates more strategic sourcing instead of leaving it up to each individual factory.
“Any new fabrics are going to be made from recycled materials if possible. Where we can’t, we would choose those with Fair Trade associations. Sustainability is such a broad spectrum—there’s a lot of ‘greenwashing’ out there. So we’re trying to be super intentional with our choices and be as transparent as possible with our consumers,” says Ginor. They are looking to be more socially responsible. “It could mean using a small family run factory where they employ fair working conditions and it directly supports that family.”
437 didn’t really have any tools that organized the environmental practices that Ginor spoke of. “We’ve moved sourcing from the factories to internally. We’re mandating mills that align with our eco-goals.” Centric PLM enables the management of the certifications and materials.
“One of the most interesting things about working with Centric is we can learn from them. We are a young team and the guidance from Centric has been super helpful thus far. Centric being at the cutting edge of technologies in the industry is beneficial to us as we continue on the sustainability path. We feel that working with Centric will help us reduce unnecessary work.”
Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software says, “I am very pleased that 437 has selected Centric PLM as their digital foundation. It is a smart move to add PLM early in the history of the company, setting them up for continued success as they continue on their growth curve.”
