Centric Software® is thrilled to announce the go-live of Centric PLM™ at Zeeman, a leading Dutch retail chain specializing in affordable clothing and textiles. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home and related goods like cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
Founded in 1967 by Jan Zeeman, the family-owned retail chain specializing in affordable clothing and textiles has become one of Europe’s largest retailers. With 450 stores in its home country, the Netherlands, and a total of 1,300 spanning European countries including France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Spain and Portugal, Zeeman’s success is a result of its founder’s mantra, Good clothing and textiles don’t have to be expensive. It sets itself apart from the competition with its award-winning sustainability and ethical production practices and distinctive marketing strategies, such as its headline-grabbing €30 diamond campaign.
Before it launched Centric PLM, buying and administrative teams struggled with the limitations of using multiple legacy systems. Sharing information between disparate systems resulted in wasted time, errors, frustration and a lack of critical, detailed replenishment data.
“Our processes for buying and administration were spread across numerous different platforms, data couldn’t be shared easily and we were doing things twice over—it just wasn’t efficient,” explains Leandra Nanninga, Product Owner at Zeeman. “We really wanted to have one system for the article and PO data and we have that now with Centric PLM.”
Zeeman selected Centric PLM for its fashion and retail expertise, its agility and out-of-the-box capabilities and for its role in helping to define and solidify key processes, providing a solid operational foundation.
“Centric PLM’s flexibility is a major selling feature,” says Nanninga. “We are impressed with how many releases it has, how the system moves with you and how quickly teams can create new attributes in PLM.”
Zeeman recently went live with PLM and reflects on results and collaborating with the Centric Software team.
“It’s been a big change to move to one system, and we are implementing an article structure where we have data on variants and SKUs because of PLM,” says Nanninga. “We are happy with how the Centric team worked with us — they asked us the right questions, got to know our unique business needs and ensured the configuration met our requirements.”
“The biggest topic for us in the future is CSR because of the new Digital Product Passport (DPP) regulations coming into effect. We’ll need to report on details reaching as far back as the cotton farmers at the very start of our supply chain and we’re confident that PLM will help us optimize this process efficiently.”
CEO of Centric Software Fabrice Canonge says, “We are thrilled that Zeeman has successfully launched Centric PLM and that teams are saving time, making data-informed decisions and bolstering eco-friendly practices. We look forward to a long-term partnership with Europe’s retail leader in affordable clothing and sustainable operations.”
