MORE & MORE Accelerates Time to Market with Centric PLM

No Life Without Centric

We are so happy with Centric PLM. We have 100% control from both sides, in Turkey and in Germany, which enables us to have a very fast customer service,” Yaşar Eşgin, CEO of Cemsel, parent company of MORE & MORE, shares his enthusiasm about streamlining product development, sourcing and manufacturing operations to deliver new quality products in a shorter time period with Centric PLM.

MORE & MORE chose Centric Software as a trusted technology partner to provide innovative enterprise solutions to restructure their supply chain process with the goal of improving competitiveness and efficiency.

With Centric PLM, MORE & MORE has a flexible fashion PLM solution in place that empowers their growth strategy, connects product development teams in Germany with manufacturing and sourcing teams in Turkey, saves time and improves workflows. Now, as Sunsa Ellrich, Head of Product at MORE & MORE says, there is “no life without Centric” at MORE & MORE.

How does MORE & MORE use Centric’s fashion PLM to boost collaboration, innovation and growth?

German Roots, International Style

MORE & MORE is an internationally-acclaimed German womenswear fashion brand, founded in 1982 and headquartered in Starnberg, Germany. The brand offers apparel for women through 50 retail stores in Germany and an online store and is distributed through 1,200 points of sale across 14 countries. In 2016, Cemsel, a Turkish manufacturer, invested in MORE & MORE to support its global market growth.

MORE & MORE has moved from a traditional spring-summer, autumn-winter seasonal model to a fast-fashion approach to its collections. The brand now launches 37 collections and develops 5,000 articles in total per year. At this rate of product development and launch, flexibility, agility and speed are key in order to react quickly to market demand.

Connecting Teams to Unlock Collaboration

MORE & MORE was handling product development previously using Excel spreadsheets, emails and PDFs, which caused issues with version control and access to information.

“We’re in competition with fast fashion retailers, so we needed to optimize our time to market,” explains Ellrich. “Planning new collections used to take a lot more time. Our designers had to search for information across different offices and departments to find out which products were most successful the year before in order to begin new collections.”

One of the primary aims of the PLM project was to connect sourcing and manufacturing teams at Cemsel in Turkey with product development teams at MORE & MORE in Germany, using the same system in real time.

“When we were thinking about installing a new system, we were a little bit nervous about how to organize the two teams, who operate in different countries and cultures, using the same solution,” explains Ellrich.

However, once MORE & MORE encountered Centric PLM, they realized the potential of the solution to streamline and harmonize processes between internal teams and unlock greater external collaboration.

Web-Based Single Source of Truth

MORE & MORE selected Centric PLM for its reliability, ease of use and deep fashion industry expertise. The company was also impressed with its ability to integrate with other systems to cover the entire product lifecycle, speed up communication and streamline workflows with a single source of truth using a web-based and mobile platform.

“When starting with Centric, we realized that we can integrate not just one system, but many,” explains Bernd Moeller, Head of IT and E-Commerce at MORE & MORE. “With Centric PLM we can go from beginning to end – from the initial drawing, through the development of the fabric and all the way to tracking trucks as they deliver items. We can check the status of the product at any given time, and Centric gives us an overview of the whole production chain.”

“Centric PLM supports our workflow in real-time because it is web-based and it makes it possible to work with systems in different countries very quickly and easily,” he continues.

Ellrich adds that teams at MORE & MORE were impressed by Centric PLM’s ability to provide a centralized and reliable source of information covering every aspect of each product.

“Centric PLM enables us to handle different types of information systems on one web-based platform. We start with materials and we can handle everything from logistics to sell-through rate with a single source of accurate information concerning each product.”

Faster and Faster

MORE & MORE implemented Centric PLM in just three months, and teams in Turkey and Germany now work in the system daily. Centric PLM has transformed collaboration across locations and departments at MORE & MORE, says Ellrich.

“Using Centric PLM gives us the chance to work across frontiers,” she explains. “We start a design in Germany, open it up in Turkey, continue the workflow process in Turkey and then continue again in Germany. It’s a wonderful way of working because it gives us the opportunity to be faster and more demand-driven.”

As Moeller adds, “The three main benefits of Centric PLM are that we save a lot of time, the workflow between teams has become a lot faster and the system is very flexible. We have been able to reduce mistakes and increase speed in responding to the needs of market.”

As Moeller adds, “The three main benefits of Centric PLM are that we save a lot of time, the workflow between teams has become a lot faster and the system is very flexible. We have been able to reduce mistakes and increase speed in responding to the needs of market.”

Optimal Foundation for Growth

With teams at MORE & MORE now working fully in Centric PLM, the brand is looking to the future. Centric’s flexibility and scalability is an asset to MORE & MORE’s strategy for future growth, with plans to expand internationally and extend the solution to more of Cemsel’s brands in later phases.

“With our brands in Germany and in Turkey and our employees, we’re like a family – and now Centric is part of that family.”