Casual Male is undertaking a transformation as big and tall as the clothing that it sells. An important part of Casual Male's strategic initiative is a $15 million IT overhaul that includes several JDA Portfolio applications. With the help of JDA, Casual Male, the nation's largest specialty retailer of big and tall men's apparel and sportswear, estimates saving $5 million in operating costs annually and plans to return to profitability in 2004. JDA gives us a modernized architecture that is helping us save time, support our growth and control inventory costs throughout our complex, multi-channel supply chain, stated Dennis Hernreich, Casual Males executive vice president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

Casual Male Turns Trucks in One Hour
Using JDA Pre-pack Functionality

In July 2004, Casual Male went live with JDA Portfolio Merchandise Management System-i (MMS), Merchandise Planning by Arthur, Advanced Allocation by Arthur, Performance Analysis by IDEAS and Advanced Replenishment by E3 software applications

Carrying three times the number of sizes per style as any other men's retail chain, one of Casual Male's key requirements was to expedite shipping and receiving of merchandise prepacks. With JDA's solutions working in tandem with Manhattan Associates Warehouse Management solution, Casual Male can, for example, turn a truck load in a little over an hour, whereas it used to take two to three days. Commenting on other early benefits, Hernreich stated, We can more accurately plan assortments plus analyze product and store performance on a daily or weekly basis and re-forecast as needed to meet our sales goals. Simply stated, managing our business with JDA is much easier and we're making better decisions than we did in the past.

While complex IT projects of this magnitude could easily fall off course, Casual Male's unwavering commitment to the JDA project has resulted in immediate bottom line benefits and an advanced IT foundation to support their transformation, remarked David Tidmarsh, JDA's senior vice president of customer success. We look forward to partnering with Casual Male to help them achieve additional ROI.

Targeting Localized Customer Needs

Casual Male is planning the next phase of its JDA implementation to better address localized customer demands. Casual Male is planning the next phase of its JDA implementation to better address localized customer demands.

"The only thing that our customers have in common is that they are big and tall. As we embark on the next phase of our JDA project, we'll take advantage of advanced JDA capabilities such as channel clustering to optimize inventory in our stores and maximize the sales potential in each market," added Hernreich.

The retailer will implement Assortment Planning by Arthur and JDA Intellect applications for demand planning, seasonal planning, and channel clustering. These solutions will enable Casual Male to better manage its lifestyle merchandising requirements amongst its varied customer base serviced by almost 500 stores nationwide alongside its direct to consumer catalog and web channels.

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