TECHNOLOGY

Ever-Changing Technology Keeps Apparel Makers and Retailers on Their Feet

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Kim LaFleur

Charming Charlie, a nationwide accessories retailer founded 10 years ago in Texas, didn’t launch its e-commerce site until seven months ago, years behind many of its competitors.

But during its first two weeks of operation, the website was inundated with 700,000 visitors and 34,000 submissions in the gift-card giveaway contest.

“Millennials [ages 18–34] are our sweet spot online. They are the ones who come and shop the most. They are 47 percent of our online audience,” said Kim LaFleur, Charming Charlie’s vice president of e-commerce.

Even though Charming Charlie is based in Houston,

LaFleur said the retailer opted to set up its e-commerce department in Culver City, Calif., when it hired LaFleur in late 2012. The Southern California location made it easier to find the necessary technology and fashion expertise needed to get the online shopping site up and running. The retailer, which launched a site in 2011 and then shut it down, didn’t want to fail a second time.

LaFleur, who explained how the shopping site is organized, was one of several people speaking at the annual 2014 Tech Conference West, organized by Apparel magazine, on April 2 at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in downtown Los Angeles.

A daylong round of seminars featured tech experts explaining how software systems are boosting companies’ productivity and profits as well as reaching the next generation of shoppers, who are more prone to surf the Web rather than venture into a mall for their latest fashion fix.

Charming Charlie was founded in 2004 by Charlie

Chanaratsopon, a Thai-American now in his mid-30s whose parents imported sterling-silver jewelry and sold their merchandise to stores such as Nordstrom, Target and Walmart.

The young entrepreneur, who graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, took some of his parents’ leftover consignment jewelry and opened his first store in Houston in 2004. Now there are 286 stores across the country—most of them concentrated in Texas, Florida and the Southeast—selling everything from hair accessories, hats and handbags to necklaces, earrings and tiaras. The idea is that each new store must be profitable enough to finance the next store.

Charming Charlie stores, whose merchandise is organized by color, carry as many as 10,000 items in each outpost with prices rarely topping $40. While three generations of women may go shopping at a store together on a weekend outing,

LaFleur believes online is where a good portion of Internet-savvy customers will be shopping in the next five years, using smartphones or tablets. Currently, 40 percent of Charming Charlie’s online shoppers are using smartphones, and another 10 percent are using tablets. “We will be upgrading our mobile experience,” she noted.

Charming Charlie’s e-commerce team is also quick to use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram to drive traffic to their stores and the online shopping site. “I would invest in these channels. Let your interns or your marketers work on this. They are inspiring your audience and getting them engaged. It is a good investment,” LaFleur said. “If you have any doubts about how social media is working, it’s working.”

Sportswear makeover

While Charming Charlie may be a relatively young venture to the apparel and retail world, Sport Obermeyer is a 67-year-old high-end sportswear line for skiers and snowboarders. It was founded by Klaus Obermeyer, a diehard skier who at the age of 94 still hits the ski slopes every day in Aspen, Colo., where the company is located.

The company, which has about 60 employees and just under $100 million a year in revenues, needed a total software overhaul. The employees were working with a legacy ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) program and an old PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system. The supply chain and the distribution center in Denver were managed with spreadsheets and emails. The warehouse was a mess. The company ended up buying a whole new racking system for the 70,000-square-foot space.

The company’s chief operating officer, Greg Bannister, put out eight requests for proposals in 2012 to upgrade the system. Bannister and Obermeyer ended up choosing NGC Software for a complete tune-up, said Mark Burstein, NGC’s president of sales, marketing and research and development.

“They wanted to implement all their software in six months,” Burstein said. “So we did a fast-tracking implementation.”

Before the company started installing the live system, they took the software and installed it in the cloud to test and make adjustments, Burstein said. Then they started converting their data.

“The result is that on-time delivery is up 85 percent over the previous year. And the payback period for the system is 21 months,” Burstein said. “Last year, the company’s profits were up 9 percent, and they should be up another 17 percent this year.”

Software upgrades

Sport Obermeyer is just one example of how apparel and retail ventures constantly have to upgrade their systems to keep up with business practices.

Jennifer Terrill, vice president of information technology at True Religion, said technology departments are moving fast. They used to go by a five-year plan. That concept is dead. “It is now year-by-year with a three-year vision,” she said. “You have to be agile and switch gears really quickly. Now it is the consumer who is driving everything.”

Last year, TowerBrook Capital Partners acquired the Los Angeles–based blue-jeans maker and retailer for $835 million. Terrill said the new owners, who previously bought and sold Jimmy Choo shoes, are on board for upgrading the company’s software system.

True Religion is shopping for a new PLM system and recently carved out a project-management office to organize new programs. “This is the year we will explode digitally,” Terrill said.