Centric Software®, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, proudly announces its partnership with SugarShape, an online lingerie brand based in Germany. 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.
Sabrina Schönborn and Laura Wacker, sisters from Northern Germany, founded SugarShape in 2012 after years of searching for fashionable and functional bras in larger sizes. The sisters launched the online store with one bra design, the ‘Dolce Vita’, and just over a decade later, SugarShape has more than 350,000 customers, 60 employees, approximately 16,000 SKUs, over 70 unique sizes and a growing European customer base.
SugarShape has been on a meteoric rise since first embarking on its mission to revolutionize the bra industry, and in recent years has grappled with increased business complexity. As the number of new products continued to grow, the development team struggled to keep track of essential details such as colors, alterations, inserts and more. Analog methods of working, and vast amounts of paper, handwritten notes, emails and attachments were stretching the team to their limits.
“When we started out and only had two to three collections and one supplier, it worked well without a software system,” explains Christian Schönborn, Head of Business Development at SugarShape. “Things simply took on massive proportions that we could no longer deal with, and with part of the development team based in the UK, we needed to make decisions quickly and speed up processes.”
SugarShape assessed a few potential solutions, including niche lingerie system providers, but finally selected Centric PLM™ as the best fit. Centric Software’s impressive market penetration, customer referrals and roster of lingerie clients were deciding factors. One employee’s experience working with Centric PLM in a former role also carried weight.
“It’s good that one person in our company has the experience with Centric and knows what is coming,” explains Schönborn. “We also considered that some of our partners in Asia might already be using PLM.”
The company will go-live with Centric PLM SMB, the cloud-based PLM solution specifically designed for small and mid-sized businesses, and Schönborn has been delighted with Centric’s customer service, attention to detail and responsiveness.
“I’ve never experienced an onboarding process like this before, it’s just the best!” says Schönborn. “We have already held several workshops, that is truly unique and unheard of. Centric wants its customers to be happy, wants the solution to work and they do everything to make that happen.”
“Overall, I want things to be faster, clearer, more professional, more cost-effective and more transparent,” says Schönborn. “I want people to be able to make decisions faster, internally and with our producers, and I want to see all of this for new and existing styles to simplify our processes.”
“We are thrilled that SugarShape has selected Centric Software as a partner to digitalize their business,” says Fabrice Canonge, President of Centric Software. “SugarShape is a truly innovative brand with a strong commitment to quality, and we are excited to see how Centric PLM can help to optimize their product development journey and expedite growth.”
