Parisian lifestyle brand Eden Park has chosen Centric 8 product lifecycle management (PLM) to help structure its collection development process and support its international expansion.
Eden Park is named after the renowned stadium in Auckland, New Zealand where French fly-half Franck Mesnel faced the famous All Blacks in the 1987 Rugby World Cup final.
The brand’s logo, a pink bowtie, originates from the style worn by the mischievous Mesnel and his teammates during the final of the French Rugby championship in Paris that same year.
Mesnel, now CEO, is still firmly involved on the front lines of design and marketing, and remains in control of reinforcing the brand’s Parisian identity and international development.
Today, the company offers a complete collection of upscale fashions for men, women, and children, as well as accessories and home textiles. All these products are recognizable by their pink bowtie, a logo emblematic of Eden Park’s philosophy of working hard and being playful.
As Mesnel explains, ongoing brand growth and the need to deliver collections to market more quickly had become difficult to deliver with traditional tools: “Our processes weren’t sufficiently digital. Without a dedicated tool, we were using manual methods of developing our collections. Team spirit is one of the founding principles of Eden Park, but the moment had come for us to establish a more formal structure, and to provide our teammates with more adaptable, productive and flexible solutions.”
Centric 8 emerged as Eden Park’s preferred PLM on the strength of the partnership between the two companies and the comprehensive functionality of the Centric 8 PLM solution – particularly its sourcing, material management, collection development and core product specification modules.
“Centric Software is true partner for us, with proven local and international teams in place,” Mesnel says. “Their PLM platform is pre-configured for fashion, ready to enable knowledge sharing at the brand rather than the individual level,” he added, speaking about Eden Park’s need to democratize and optimize processes, ensuring productivity even when key staff happen to be absent.
Franck Mesnel and Hervé Godest, Managing Director, have overseen Eden Park’s success in France where the brand is sold in 325 locations, including independent retailers, franchises, and department stores. The company has grand ambitions for growth in its export business, totaling 25 – 30% year on year. Today, Eden Park is active in 35 countries.
“Centric 8 PLM will allow us to better understand our markets and to respond with an offer tailored for each, localizing our brand to meet their specific needs, and reducing delays in collection planning,” Mesnel continues.
Supported by Centric Software’s Agile DeploymentSM approach and experienced implementation team, Eden Park will improve the performance of activities like design, marketing and quality assurance that are essential to the brand’s DNA.
Summarizing Eden Park’s decision to select Centric Software, Godest says, “Our strategic objective with PLM is to become known as the French ‘sport chic’ brand, and to match the reach of our US and UK competitors overseas.”
Godest goes on to explain, “People often think of creativity and discipline as opposites. Instead, we believe that Centric 8 PLM will allow us to harmonize those two aspects: to reinforce our trademark team spirit and creativity, and to achieve a greater structure in processes in parallel.”
Centric Software CEO, Chris Groves, echoes Godest’s sentiments, “Our fashion experts, in Paris and around the world, are thrilled to work with the brand with the bowtie, helping their teams to achieve their ambitious goals.
