26 June 2009

Brown Shoe is a US$2.3 billion footwear company with global operations. Its retail division operates the 1,100-store Famous Footwear chain, as well as over 300 speciality retail stores in the US and Shoes.com, its e-commerce subsidiary. Through its wholesale divisions, Brown Shoe owns and markets leading footwear brands including Naturalizer, LifeStride and Via Spiga; it also markets licensed brands including Franco Sarto, Dr Scholl’s, and Barbie, Fisher-Price and Nickelodeon character footwear for children.

As the first step in implementing its enterprise-wide information technology initiatives, Brown Shoe wanted to improve collaboration and enhance visibility within its global product development process, from concept through to commercialisation. The company’s product development team across the US and China began an analysis of its systems and how its global supply chain could become even more streamlined, efficient and disciplined while cutting costs. The company sought a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution that was created specifically to serve the needs of the footwear industry.

Following an extensive review, Brown Shoe selected and implemented FlexPLM, from manufacturing software and services solutions provider and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner PTC, because it supports footwear industry best practices, offers global access to a centralised library with version control, provides the ability to manage, streamline and reduce product development cycles and enables Brown Shoe to easily connect and communicate with its global suppliers and factory partners.

Based on PTC’s Windchill technology, FlexPLM is an intuitive, Web-based solution that streamlines communication, tracks milestones, pre-empts performance bottlenecks and provides instant visibility throughout the product development value chain. Highly scalable and fully configurable, it enables global product teams to work more efficiently and productively. The solution delivers a single product lifecycle management (PLM) platform to Brown Shoe, and is expected to enable the company to gain early visibility into its product development processes, improve collaboration, effectively manage costs and reduce development times.

Brown Shoe uses FlexPLM to connect the development of its line calendar, the structure of line planning/sample planning, and the management of product specifications in one system that is accessible to everyone involved in the process. It offers the company critical visibility for planning and budgeting, and enables product developers to focus on creating great footwear for consumers.

Ultimately, we expect FlexPLM to enable Brown Shoe to be an even better partner to retailers, factories and suppliers

Dan Friedman, Brown Shoe  “Ultimately, we expect FlexPLM to enable Brown Shoe to be an even better partner to retailers, factories and suppliers, while introducing trend-right footwear into the marketplace,” says Dan Friedman, the company’s senior vice president for product and sourcing. “This solution is designed to create a more cohesive product development process, which is important to managing our business well. It is still up to our teams to put in the work, but we expect FlexPLM to make it easier for product teams to speed up the development process, obtain visibility at every step and streamline one system for planning.”

“PLM is one of the fastest-growing areas of technology investment in the footwear and apparel industry because of its ability to deliver product development efficiencies,” said Kathleen Mitford, vice president of vertical market strategy at PTC. “Brown Shoe understands the value of PLM because it offers process standardisation that can maximise collaboration across the business. We are happy to work with Brown Shoe and offer our expertise to help it achieve its strategic objectives.”

This article first appeared in the Summer 2009 edition of Prime.

Add a comment