Men's design house John Varvatos adopts RLM FashionManager

About 70 team members are now using the cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution to manage receivables, invoicing, order entry, production, receiving, distribution, wholesale sales, and other mission-critical business process. Following a very rapid implementation process, the company reports significant improvements in financial and operational management and efficiency.

According to Vice President and Chief Information Officer Lee Goldenberg, “With the rapid growth we are experiencing, we needed greater performance, capabilities, and usability than our old legacy systems could deliver.

Because it consolidates all of our operations into a single business system that runs in the cloud, FashionManager enables us to provide a ‘rock star’ IT experience for the entire John Varvatos team. With everything available through the web, we can all be more productive even when using mobile devices from any location. As a result, we are now making faster and better informed business decisions throughout the organization.”

Examples of these improvements are evident throughout JVE operations where managers now have a consolidated and comprehensive view of wholesale and retail sales and operations. More robust financial capabilities such as automatic sales posting, foreign currency management, and comprehensive reporting are expected to improve accessibility and accuracy of cost of goods sold (COGS), gross profits, and other key business metrics.

Sharing of item master information, store orders, store-level advanced shipping notifications (ASN), and other information between ERP and POS systems eliminates redundant entry and improves overall process visibility.

In addition to working with RLM Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) at third-party logistics locations in Hong Kong and the UK to manage location, order picking/packing and manifesting, the new system is also integrated with a Manhattan Associates WMS system used at a 3PL site in the US. It is also integrated the KWI Point of Sale (POS) system used across all 10 John Varvatos retail stores.

After achieving tremendous benefits in such a short period of time, JVE is already making plans for implementation of FashionManager PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) to streamline design and development processes and a rollout of the production and shipment collaboration tools to more than 50 vendors in Asia, Europe, and Latin America all in the second half of 2013. 

Concurrent to the RLM implementation, JVE has also bolstered its IT infrastructure with major improvements to its desktop hardware, networking, and other systems; including deployment of the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise solution.