April 30th, 2025

Tariffs: Centric Software’s AI-Powered Solutions Provide Consumer Goods Brands, Retailers and Manufacturers with Agility to Mitigate Retail Uncertainty

Price elasticity, cost simulation, competitive intel, demand forecasting and more are all strategies enabled by technology to combat tariff effects

CAMPBELL, Calif., May 1, 2025 – Centric Software’s product concept-to-commercialization solutions future-proof brands, retailers and manufacturers against uncertainty caused by tariffs and other market disrupting activity. Centric Software^® provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, comply, buy, make, price, allocate, market, sell and replenish products such as fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home, food & beverage and cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

With the recent burst of tariff activity and market volatility, fast-moving consumer goods companies and retailers are faced with widely fluctuating costs and questions about pricing strategies. Real-time access to data becomes crucial in today’s circumstances. Agility is necessary for maintaining market relevance amid shifting market conditions.

Centric Software’s wider end-to-end product lifecycle platform, Centric PLM™ integrates with Centric Planning™, Centric Pricing & Inventory™, Centric Market Intelligence™ and Centric PXM™. All Centric Software solutions, infused with AI optimization as a natural evolution of trusted rule-based methods, target the unique challenges faced by the retail sector and deliver comprehensive, data-driven decision-making for modern retail operations.

Ravi Rangan, CTO at Centric Software states, “If you’re seeing oscillations in cost of goods sold, it causes much uncertainty. You don’t know how to respond, and things are changing by the day.” He continues, “We have tools at our disposal; in addition to Centric PLM for sourcing strategies and what-iffing, Centric Market Intelligence gives us the ability to really understand competitive prices and market trends, Centric PXM gets the feedback from digital & social marketplaces and Centric Pricing & Inventory models price elasticity. With these tools, we’re able to bring some of the unknown-knowns and the known-unknowns into the known-known arena.”

Companies can revamp their offerings or develop new products that cater to evolving consumer demands to mitigate the effects of higher COGS with the right information.

Underpinning the entire platform is Centric PLM which serves as a centralized digital backbone for end-to-end product development and go-to-market execution, empowering businesses with the visibility, agility and control needed to thrive amid global disruptions. With Centric PLM, cross-functional teams can instantly access detailed product, sourcing and cost data in real time to simulate tariff scenarios, assess landed cost impacts—including fluctuating raw material prices, duties and shipping fees—and pivot sourcing strategies to protect margins and maintain supply chain resilience.

Centric Market Intelligence is a key tool in the fight against uncertainty, enabling brands and retailers to understand and adapt pricing strategies across international markets in response to tariffs, inflation and shifting consumer demand. Granular, SKU-level insights and global benchmarking capabilities give users the ability to track competitor price changes over time, evaluate global price architecture, analyze impacted categories, support SKU rationalization and identify over-assorted categories or price bands with low competitiveness, resulting in smarter portfolio decisions in markets where pricing power is challenged. These insights enable brands to respond to macroeconomic pressures and proactively optimize their global assortment and price position, realizing up to 12% increase in average initial price point.

Centric Pricing & Inventory empowers brands and retailers to confidently navigate economic headwinds such as tariffs, inflation and global market volatility. By leveraging AI-powered demand forecasting and dynamic lifecycle pricing, businesses can optimize product performance, drive margins and boost revenues by up to 18% via price and inventory optimization from pre-season to in-season to season completion by remaining responsive to changing conditions through AI-driven demand forecasting, lifecycle pricing optimization, price elasticity and scenario planning, localized and category-level pricing control, aligning pricing with assortment strategy, identifying SKUs to protect, promote or optimize for markdown.

Centric PXM – With Centric Product Experience Management (PXM), brands get an end-to-end solution that combines product information management (PIM), digital asset management (DAM), content syndication to e-comm sites, marketplaces and social media and digital shelf analytics (DSA). It captures demand signals from digital sales channels and shows in real time how consumers are reacting. Having live insights creates a continuous loop, allowing brands to quickly adjust products, pricing and inventory to personalize consumer experiences and increase sell-through.

In this world of fluctuating tariffs, shipping rates and raw material prices, Centric PLM, Centric Market Intelligence, Centric Planning, Centric Pricing & Inventory and Centric PXM support companies in making informed, smart, timely decisions—ultimately contributing to manage risk and uncertainty in the go-to-market journey. This ecosystem integration ensures that market signals, competitor pricing and data-driven insights directly inform product development—supporting more strategic, cost-aware decision-making needed to navigate evolving trade policies.

“The Centric Software approach is making the unknown actionable, so brands can respond with clarity and speed,” says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “We turn complexity into opportunity, lead with data and act fast to connect decisions across the product lifecycle. Our goal at Centric Software is to equip brands retailers and manufacturers to continuously sense market pulses, recalibrate rapidly and position themselves ahead of the competition.”

Learn how to mitigate retail uncertainty with Centric Software’s resource hub of tariffs.

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Centric Software® (centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides an innovative and AI-enabled product concept-to-commercialization platform for cosmetics & personal care manufacturers, brands and multi-category retailers. As experts in all fast-moving consumer goods, Centric Software delivers best-of-breed solutions to design, develop, source, comply, buy, make, package, price, allocate, market and sell products. Centric solutions optimize the product portfolio, harmonize product offers and streamline product development by speeding time to market and innovation while enhancing quality control and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Centric PLM™ features integrated industry best practices and innovative, AI-enabled capabilities tailored specifically for cosmetics & personal care manufacturers and retailers. Seamlessly manage the overall product lifecycle, from initial concept and formula development to packaging, quality, supplier collaboration, labeling, production, SKU rationalization and beyond. Results include up to a 50% improvement in productivity and a 60% decrease in time to market.
Centric Visual Boards™ are a visually oriented product portfolio optimization tool. A singular accessible workspace pulls in real-time data and imagery from multiple business systems. It is a new, visual way of working to ensure robust, consumer-right product offers, dramatically decreasing assortment development cycle time.
Centric Market Intelligence™ is an AI-driven platform delivering insights into consumer trends, competitor offers and pricing to boost competitivity and get closer to the consumer, with an up to 12% increase in average initial price point.
Centric PXM™, AI-powered product experience management encompasses PIM, DAM, content syndication and digital shelf analytics (DSA) to optimize the product commercialization lifecycle resulting in a transformed brand experience. Increase sales channels, boost sell through and drive margins.

Centric Software’s market-driven solutions have the highest user adoption rate, customer satisfaction rate and fastest time to value in the industry. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition, appearing regularly in world-leading analyst reports and research.