Steve Madden Europe, the European branch of the iconic American footwear and fashion brand, has made the strategic decision to implement WFX PLM to streamline its product development processes.
Steve Madden Europe currently operates in 43 countries with approximately 430 wholesale customers and retailers. The team was impressed with WFX PLM’s speed, user-friendliness, and modern user interface.
“We’re thrilled to have chosen WFX PLM to support our product development processes,” said IT Manager and MT member Ralph Donhuijsen at Steve Madden Europe. Adding, “WFX’s flexibility and scalability will allow us to easily adopt and grow the system as we undertake the ambitious growth of Steve Madden in Europe.”
While planning their growth strategy, it was crucial for Steve Madden to analyze their processes for scalability. However, their findings showed that their existing process was not scalable and required improvement. Donhuijsen explains, “As the number of designs increase, the workload also increases proportionally. Currently, there are many disconnected spreadsheets in use that require manual work, and some macros in use may no longer work with Microsoft release updates.”
To accommodate growth, Steve Madden need to have a process in place that can scale up without adding more staff, as they want to expand with a lean team. “With WFX, we can have a scalable process as all product data is now in a unified database, and the settings in WFX can always be adjusted and refined to grow with the needs of our business,” said Donhuijsen.
WFX PLM will be used to optimize collection management, range planning, sample requests, and approvals, among many other key functions. WFX’s in-built integration toolkit will also be used to automatically sync all data to Steve Madden’s existing ERP system (Reflecta’s XL-Enz) and the various marketplaces where the company sells its products. In addition, the WFX Adobe Connector within WFX PLM will be extensively used by Steven Madden to simplify the creation of digital tech packs.
“We’re excited to be working with the team at Steve Madden Europe and support them in their efforts to streamline their operations. We’re confident that WFX will help them achieve their goals and improve efficiency across the organization,” said Jatin Paul, CEO of WFX.
Johan Bax, Partner, PLMFashion, WFX’s support and implementation partner guiding Steve Madden Europe’s WFX PLM deployment in Amsterdam said, “WFX Fashion PLM is designed to cater to the fashion industry and has been developed from practice by industry specialists based on decades of experience. We’re see more and more fashion and footwear brands in The Netherlands and Europe adopting the platform to support product best practices.”
The implementation of WFX PLM is set to take approximately 3 months, after which Steve Madden will have a centralized cloud-based platform and access to real-time product development updates. The connectivity with other platforms such as Reflecta ERP and various marketplaces will be set up with the Connectplaza IPaaS platform.
In conclusion, the team at Steve Madden Europe is excited to embark on this new journey with WFX PLM. They’re also looking forward to seeing the benefits of the software in the shortest time possible. The company’s IT Manager and MT member, Ralph Donhuijsen said, “We are confident that this partnership will be a game-changer for us and we’re excited to see the positive impact on our product development processes soon!”
With a modern interface, quick implementation, and cloud access, WFX PLM will help Steve Madden get real-time transparency, eliminate data redundancy and improve efficiency across all functions. To learn more about WFX’s digital transformation solutions for fashion brands, visit www.worldfashionexchange.com.