Permoda, a manufacturer and retailer of clothing and fashion accessories, has selected Centric Software®’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Centric Visual Concept Board solutions. Centric Software provides the most innovative business solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, décor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational goals of digital transformation goals.
Founded in 1983, Permoda (operating under the KOAJ brand) directly employs more than 8,000 people and has more than 500 points of sale in Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica, as well as an active presence in Mexico and Panama with operations in Asia. The company specializes in developing international fashion trends, generating unique shopping experiences with an optimal relationship between style, quality and price.
The Colombian multinational chose Centric PLM and Centric Visual Concept Boards to optimize the full end-to-end workflow—including all processes around the value chain— so they can fully focus on the end-consumer experience.
Although it wasn’t the first PLM solution tested by the brand, Pierre Caliz, Director of Technology at Permoda states, “We need to intelligently manage inventory from the beginning, implement a unified and centralized database to feed other business processes in addition to digitalizing the overall life cycle management of our product, improving process times and optimizing profit margins.” Liliana Díaz, Product Development and Innovation Manager adds, “We were looking for a solution that allows us to keep up with the speed of the market and the latest international trends—to quickly integrate the right resources to accelerate the development of innovative products. With Centric Visual Boards, we aim to increase the garment portfolio by 75% to 90% at our Colombian and Mexican factories.”
Besides adopting Centric PLM and Centric Visual Boards, the company decided to leverage 3D integration. Permoda intends to manage all aspects of the product with digital samples and 3D visuals, as well as centralize the information necessary for commercialization. With both Centric solutions, Permoda will enable a full digital product creation workflow as they will have digital access to a virtual materials list, technical specs, sizes and colors, textile libraries and exact costs, to go directly to production without the need to use any samples.
Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software says, “Permoda and Centric’s strategic alliance focuses on three elements, all related to the value proposition and differentiators of PLM. First, Centric’s foundation as a technology platform clearly stems from software expertise, unlike other vendors that were born from industrial hardware. The second is the reduction in cost of goods sold. And finally, the innovative integration between PLM and 3D toolsets that enable digital execution and agility to shorten the product life cycle, generate savings throughout the process of continuous portfolio development and enable strategic decision making.”
Groves concludes, “We are very excited about this collaboration and look forward to partnering with Permoda not only on their goals of speed to market and innovation, but also in developing 3D prototypes to enter into the commercial metaverse. It is very rewarding to collaborate with our clients at the forefront of digital transformation and to see how Latin America is rapidly advancing in business digitalization with Centric solutions as the foundation.”
