Customers

Case Study - Penny Plain

Managing all the information involved in a product development process is difficult, complex and time consuming but it can be made a lot easier and far more efficient with a data management system. One company that can clearly see the benefits of using this type of computer solution is womenswear mail order and retail company, Penny Plain.

Penny Plain designs its products and manages the product development process in Newcastle, manufactures in the Middle East and Europe and sells via mail order catalogues, retail outlets and the internet. The company believes that repeatability is essential; therefore expertise, quality and flexibility are key. Like many UK companies they manufacture some styles overseas to reduce costs, but Penny Plain will not compromise on their delivery expectations.

Penny Plain implemented a Product Development system from clothing industry specialist, Prima Solutions, in 2001 and is reaping significant benefits from having total control of the product development process.


The solution is an easy to use method of collating and organising all data relating to a product or range of products including concept ideas, technical data, specification forms, costings, critical path management and other key information. Giving everyone access to the same information means everyone 'sings from the same hymn sheet' reducing costly errors, miscommunications and giving total visibility of the product development process.

"We implemented the Product Development system because we recognised the amount of time and money that was being wasted in the process," says Nick Oliver, Joint Managing Director at Penny Plain. "We knew that there was room for improvement and the last three years have been the most successful for business at Penny Plain because we are getting smarter. The solution has played a major part in supporting that progress - we can now make better and quicker business decisions."

Central Repository for Product Information

Penny Plain used to hold all product information in spreadsheets, on paper in manual files and a lot of it was locked away in people's heads. With Product Development, they are able to bring together all this data in one place giving more accurate, complete information that is up to date, reliable and quickly accessible by everyone that needs to know.

"It takes time to get our products right for our customers," explains Nick. "By sharpening the product development process, as we have, we are getting ahead of our competition. Improving communication and the management of this vital information we have reduced the time it takes to develop our products. One benefit is that we are able to place our orders early with our suppliers, book space with the manufacturers before our competitors and then we have more time to refine and tweak the styles. This has led to significant growth to our bottom line."

Critical Path Improves Delivery

Mail order companies are under great pressure to deliver within a short period of time. Late delivery to a consumer can mean losing them as a customer. Penny Plain is using Prima's Critical Path to plan, progress and monitor the progress of products under development with the benefit of shortening the time to delivery.

"This starts in the early stages when a plan is established with timescales for delivery," says Nick. "If any of the activities are delayed, the Critical Path will give an early warning signal and identify what the impact of this delay is for us and our customers, so that we can take corrective action. At worst we would need to renegotiate another delivery date with our supplier or inform our customer when they can expect to receive the garment."

Once garments are manufactured, Penny Plain assesses their progress and backs the winners. By analysing results early and knowing what is selling well the company orders more stock before the first orders run out avoiding customer disappointment. Penny Plain meets their customer demands, delivers on time and is able to take advantage of increased sales.

"The Product Development system enables us to monitor this," says Nick. "The longer term benefit of having this information readily available means we can look at the styles that sold well last season and learn from it so that we produce more saleable garments next season."

Flexibility

The system is so flexible, user definable and easy to use that Penny Plain has taken full control of it, storing information about a product or range of products that is needed. For example, the system has been set up to support the catalogue process. All information about each product including an image, cost, expected delivery time, sizes, colours and fit provides the detail for each product on their web site. Changes to the collection are made centrally and take immediate effect. Integration with their mail order management system means the changes are reflected in the sales department as well as online.

"We have recently gone through a process where we needed to see what impact changes to our prices would have on sales and our margins," Nick reveals. "We experimented with a number of different scenarios and analysed each synopsis report. We used to spend hours trying to work this out, using information that was inaccurate and out of date, and now all we have to do is make the change in the software and see the impact in seconds."

Penny Plain also stores information about order cancellations and returns data against each product so that they can improve their performance. Cancellations and returns are particularly high in the mail order market and understanding why helps to improve margins.
Nick explains, "for example, if a garment has a high cancellation rate it may be because we were quoting later deliveries because the fabric wasn't being delivered on time. The customer may have got fed up waiting, or needed the garment for an occasion and the new delivery date was too late. We can use this information to identify bad performance in our supply chain and to work with our suppliers to improve it."

"Simply by getting smarter, we have halved our cancellations and our returns rate is going down all the time. This is set to continue as we exploit the system more each season," says Nick.

The Future Looks Bright

Penny Plain has also been able to increase their catalogue from 48 pages to 72 pages, representing an increase in their collection and their recent developments into nightwear, lingerie and accessories. Nick claims that Penny Plain has been able to expand to this extent without increasing the cost of product development because they have got the right process and systems in place.

"For us the future is looking profitable and we feel that we have taken strides against our competitors by implementing Product Development," says Nick. "The solution has supported our growth plans and will continue to prove to be an incredibly valuable asset for Penny Plain. We are now in a position to exploit the information we now have access to season by season."

John Norman is joint Managing Director at Prima Solutions, "Penny Plain is a company that has embraced the Product Development solution to their total advantage. As a result, they are now in a position to try new ideas in a controlled environment, and develop their product range with much greater success."

Learning from their experience, Nick is able to give advice on finding the right solution provider. "Quality software is one thing, but getting the right software supplier is just as important. Implementing a business critical system can be time consuming, costly and until you get stuck in you don't know what problems you may come up against. The people at Prima Solutions are very experienced, they know our industry and how the software can make a positive difference for us. We had excellent training and support, and were able to work in a real partnership to get the system up and running in just six weeks. Prima Solutions was recommended to us but their reputation seemed 'too good to be true'. Now that I have the experience first hand, I have to say that their software and service is second to none."