Fenix Outdoor, a global leader in the development and sale of equipment and clothing for outdoor activities, 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.
Fenix Outdoor is a group of 5 brand manufacturers and multi-brand retail chains within the outdoor industry. The group formed in the early 2000’s after the popular outdoor apparel brand Fjällräven began acquiring other companies, including Hanwag, Primus, Royal Robbins, and Tierra. Fenix sees the people who buy their products as users, not just customers and aims to facilitate great outdoor experiences for them.
Products from Fenix brands can be found in over 100 countries around the world, in Europe, North America and Asia. They sell directly to their users through owned brand stores and e-commerce, as well as 5 multi-brand retail chains operating in 6 European markets. Their brands also sell wholesale through owned sales companies in Europe, North America and Asia, and works with external distribution partners in several other global markets.
With Centric PLM, Fenix and its subsidiary textile brands are consolidating the Sourcing & Production functions, which were previously handled 100% individually by each brand.
”Amongst many other things, that meant different PLM systems, which for obvious reasons is not ideal,” says Johan Kallin, Senior Director of Global Sourcing and Production. ”Consolidation of various functions across our brands is a part of the digitalization journey we are currently on.”
Fenix began its evaluation of PLM solutions with 8 different suppliers and spent a considerable amount of time matching system capabilities against their business needs before deciding on Centric PLM. Their decision was not limited to one deciding factor, however system flexibility and the ability to work with a multi-faceted product portfolio, suitable for their complex outdoor offering, was very important to them.
Fenix sees sustainability as a core part of its DNA and business strategy and expect it to be integrated in all its business dealings, particularly IT systems. They expect Centric PLM to help the group and its brands to achieve a better overview and understanding of what is needed to drive sustainability improvements within its products, and in relationships with suppliers.
“In order to gain more transparency into our supply chain, we use different systems to trace our products from manufacturing all the way down to the fiber crop and to calculate our impact. We are increasingly required to fulfil governmental demands for traceability, transparency and accurate data metrics. Therefore, we expect Centric PLM to allow for different API connections to systems we already use such as the Higg Index, Trustrace and others, as well as to monitor our sustainability KPI’s within a dashboard which is connected to products and suppliers,” adds Kallin.
Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software, comments, “We can’t express enough how thrilling it is to be part of Fenix Outdoor’s digital transformation on such a large-scale rollout. We can’t wait to see what the future brings for the group and their brands.”
