Leading Chinese footwear and sportswear retailer Belle International Holdings is driving the digital transformation of its supply chain with a new Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution.
The company has selected Centric Software’s Centric PLM – the first time it has chosen an outsourced IT solution – to ensure data accuracy, speed time to market and help reduce costs.
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The Belle Group’s business is broadly divided into three main segments: footwear, sportswear and apparel. In addition to its own private label brands, which include six of the top ten ladies’ leather footwear brands in China, Belle distributes top global brands such as CAT, Clarks, Nike, Adidas and Converse.
In 2015, Belle’s total number of company-managed retail outlets reached 20,873 in mainland China. Belle also manages nearly 200 retail outlets in Hong Kong and Macau.
As one of the largest and most well-known retail groups in China, Belle has been developing a new retail strategy including the acquisition of new apparel brands such as Japan’s Baroque group and strengthening the digitisation of supply chain management.
“Belle has very large and strong in-house IT team to support retail management, but after acquiring Baroque, developing its Chinese business and adding more new brands, we realised that our internal IT team needed more supply chain and apparel product business knowledge,” explains Alan Ma, IT director, East China Belle Group.
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By GlobalData“The IT team needed a professional PLM system to support supply chain management from design to production.”
Belle chose Centric PLM on the basis of its user-friendly interface and the company’s professional expertise, Ma says.
“Belle owns five factories in mainland China, and we also believe Centric PLM will help with internal and external collaboration between our different sites. We see this as a long-term partnership, starting with the apparel division of our business,” Ma concludes.
