March 14th, 2025

DEICHMANN Steps into the Future with Centric PLM & Visual Assortment Boards

German footwear leader partners with Centric Software to empower global collaboration & boost transparency by transforming product development

CAMPBELL, Calif., March 17, 2025 – Centric Software® is pleased to announce that DEICHMANN has selected Centric PLM™ and Centric Visual Boards™ to drive targeted product development and boost transparency across the product lifecycle. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home and related goods like cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

DEICHMANN was founded in 1913 by Heinrich Deichmann and today is a proud third-generation family-owned business. It is the footwear retail market leader in Germany and Europe and a key player in North America with a sales volume of nearly €9 billion in 2023. Headquartered in Essen, it operates more than 4,700 stores in 34 countries, sells more than 184 million shoes per year and has 49,000 employees. It is a people-focused company with a mission to serve its customers, employees and those in need.

Peter Csapo, Head of Strategy & Corporate Development at DEICHMANN describes how Centric will support DEICHMANN‘s entire product development process and improve the overall data quality.

“We’re currently undergoing the biggest transformation in our company’s history, and the world around us is evolving faster than ever,” he explains. “We always strive to bring our customers the best price-value ratio on the market, and through leveraging Centric solutions, we aim to further enhance our product offering. Specifically, we’re looking to boost transparency, improve data quality and work more efficiently.”

DEICHMANN aims to leverage Centric PLM’s AI-enhanced functionality and the collaborative, visual aspects of the Centric Visual Boards to empower its product development and buying teams to develop more targeted products, minimize excess samples and cut unnecessary costs.

“With Centric solutions, we anticipate a more structured workflow to reduce over-development and focus on creating the shoes our customers actually want,” shares Rainer Ochsenkiel, Chief Purchasing Officer Germany & International Sourcing.

“With Centric Visual Assortment Boards, we can give our international colleagues and subsidiaries a clear, intuitive view of the pipeline,” elaborates Csapo. “That leads to us being able to make decisions about which styles to buy and bundle order quantities at our factories more efficiently.”

The DEICHMANN team was impressed with the powerful functionality of Centric solutions and Csapo is optimistic that the implementation and adoption will be well-received.

“We are proud that DEICHMANN, the market leader in Europe’s footwear industry, has selected Centric Software as its digital transformation partner,” says Fabrice Canonge, President of Centric Software. “We look forward to a successful implementation and to collaborating over the long term.”

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DEICHMANN (www.deichmann.com)

DEICHMANN SE is the market leader in German and European shoe retail, operates more than 4,700 stores worldwide and is represented in 34 countries. The company, headquartered in Essen and employing more than 49,000 people, was founded in 1913 by Heinrich Deichmann and is now owned by the third generation of the family.

As a modern omnichannel provider, the DEICHMANN Group is growing worldwide and is therefore always looking for qualified employees.

The group includes, among others, DEICHMANN, SNIPES, DOSENBACH, OCHSNER SHOES, OCHSNER SPORT (Switzerland), vanHaren (Netherlands and Belgium) and RACK ROOM SHOES (USA).

In Germany, DEICHMANN has been recognized as a top employer several times in a row and offers many interesting entry and advancement opportunities in various areas such as sales, IT or logistics.

The DEICHMANN purpose is: The company must serve people – primarily customers, employees and people in need. With the DEICHMANN Foundation the company currently supports almost 200 humanitarian and social projects in Germany and worldwide.

Centric Software® (centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides an innovative and AI-enabled product concept-to-commercialization platform for retailers, brands and manufacturers of all sizes. As experts in fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home, cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail, Centric Software delivers best-of-breed solutions to plan, design, develop, source, comply, buy, make, price, allocate, market, sell and replenish products.

Centric PLM™, the leading PLM solution for fashion, outdoor, footwear and private label, optimizes product execution from ideation to development, sourcing and manufacture, realizing up to 50% improvement in productivity and a 60% decrease in time to market.
Centric Planning™ is an innovative, cloud-native, AI solution delivering end-to-end planning capabilities to maximize retail and wholesale business performance, including SKU optimization, resulting in an up to 110% increase in margins.
Centric Pricing & Inventory™ leverages AI to drive margins and boost revenues by up to 18% via price and inventory optimization from pre-season to in-season to season completion.
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 Visual Boards™ pivot actionable data in a visual-first orientation to ensure robust, consumer-right assortments and product offers, dramatically decreasing assortment development cycle time.
Centric PXM™, AI-powered product experience management (PXM) 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.