Paul Smith, the iconic British fashion designer who sells collections in 73 countries throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, has selected Yourcegid Retail, Cegid‘s cloud-based, omnichannel retail management solution to support its international expansion plans.
Paul Smith started the business, which now employs more than 1,000 staff, from a small shop in Nottingham, England in 1970. Now the British retailer is looking to provide better tools and processes to help drive growth. It currently manages around 40 stores of its own, including 20 in the UK, and has franchises and concessions all over the world.
“The adoption of a new technology solution was deemed necessary in order to evolve and develop our future retail systems strategy,” says Lee Bingham, IT Manager at Paul Smith.
Once fully implemented by mid-2015, all stores will have a global, real-time view of stocks and sales, as well as tools to help with replenishment, stock transfers, customer service and sales reporting.
“Cegid‘s software will play a key role in the management and efficiency of our retail business, in particular for our merchandising, supply chain and multichannel environments,” says Bingham. “It is crucial to have a consistent and highly reliable retail solution to ensure that we deliver a valued level of service and support into store for our retail and merchandising teams and more importantly, our customers.”
Paul Smith says it expects to see tighter integration between channels as well as improved customer analytics and supply chain efficiencies as part of the project.
“Cegid‘s SaaS model will give us a single unified retail solution, resulting in a significant improvement in customer service and functionality; and for the future, this will allow development towards a broader set of omnichannel opportunities, and easy integration to other systems,” he says.
It selected Cegid because of its expertise in fashion, international reach, cloud offering and Omnichannel functionality.
“The technology and systems development will offer a significant improvement in store services and systems, whilst also delivering on the future requirements and demands of our retail business strategy,” he adds.
“We‘re delighted to help another prominent fashion retailer manage an increasingly global and Omnichannel shopping environment, by providing a reliable and secure platform for growth for the future,” concludes Samir Belkhayat, UK Director at Cegid.
