Centric Software® is pleased to announce that the sports brand JOOLA has selected their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution, Centric PLM™. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, multi-category retail, grocery, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care and consumer electronics to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
Founded in 1952 in Germany, JOOLA is a globally recognized indoor and outdoor table tennis equipment brand that has sponsored 3 Olympic Games. JOOLA designs and manufactures both hardline goods such as tables, rackets and balls, as well as softline products such as apparel, footwear and accessories. Since 2022, JOOLA has embraced the fast-growing sport of pickleball and expanded into a range of products for pickleball players.
Now headquartered in the US, JOOLA is working hard to grow the brand internationally and wanted a PLM solution to better organize product development data and free up resources.
“We launched the pickleball business in 2022, and we’ve seen tremendous growth since then,” says Richard Lee, CEO of JOOLA. “We’re launching new products left and right, so we definitely need more data organization to make sure we are tracking everything properly.”
Austin Kim, Product Manager at JOOLA, adds, “There’s a lot of cross-team collaboration, especially for design, so that transfer of information and data management can get tricky. User errors happen, and it’s hard to keep everything updated.”
JOOLA conducted extensive PLM research and due diligence, ultimately selecting Centric PLM based on its industry reputation, market leadership and usability. JOOLA will implement Centric PLM for its global operations.
“Our teams are already pretty well-versed in Centric,” says Sunny Le, Director, Softline Products at JOOLA. “We’re excited to start using it, as we’re going to be living in it every day. Along with streamlining processes and organizing data, it’s also going to be beneficial from a labor standpoint as we’ll be able to use resources more efficiently. It will make it really easy for us to work more collaboratively.”
“The Centric team answers any questions we have and provides solutions around best practices,” concludes Kim. “We have had a wonderful time working with them.”
“We are delighted that JOOLA has placed their trust in Centric to build a digital foundation for growth,” says Fabrice Canonge, President of Centric Software. “We look forward to working closely with JOOLA to drive more efficient product development, expansion and innovation.”
