September 17th, 2024

Onward Kashiyama Advances Digital Transformation with Centric PLM for ONWARD VISION 2030

Japanese apparel manufacturer’s partnership with Centric Software enhances traceability and sustainability

CAMPBELL, Calif., September 18, 2024 – Centric Software® is pleased to announce that Onward Kashiyama Co. Ltd. has successfully implemented Centric PLM™ to drive its digital transformation strategy and achieve its company strategic goals. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, 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.

Originally established in Osaka in 1927, Onward Kashiyama became one of Japan’s pioneering apparel manufacturers to produce and sell ready-to-wear clothing. Today, Onward Kashiyama offers a wide range of high-quality women’s, men’s and children’s clothing, guided by the mission to “Enrich and bring color to people’s lives while being mindful of the environment.”

As part of its ONWARD VISION 2030 strategy, the Onward Group is driving digital transformation to improve the efficiency of product planning and development operations. With consumer lifestyles and fashion trends evolving rapidly, Onward Kashiyama is committed to delivering valuable, timely products by digitalizing its supply chain—both within the company and in collaboration with its suppliers.

Onward Kashiyama, the core company of the Onward Group, was experiencing the challenge of traditional purchasing and production management systems that were no longer able to meet evolving business requirements. Information required for product development was not effectively shared within and outside the company. System support for product development was limited and product development operations were managed manually, with each brand following its own management rules.

To standardize product data management and eliminate manual processes, Onward Kashiyama decided to implement Centric PLM in 2021. The solution was selected due to its proven success with global fashion brands, and early buy-in from end users was secured thanks to the comprehensive demos provided by the Centric team. Onward Kashiyama‘s management also praised Centric PLM for its configurability, scalability and ability to manage the complexities of the fashion industry’s value chain.

Nine months after the project kick-off, Centric PLM became fully operational in the first phase for selected brands, managing the entire process from product planning to sampling. Today, Onward Kashiyama utilizes Centric PLM for full-scale, end-to-end operations across all its brands, including mass production orders and collaboration with key suppliers. Centric PLM is also seamlessly integrated with Onward Kashiyama’s major internal systems.

With Centric PLM, Onward Kashiyama believes it will significantly advance efforts to ensure traceability of raw materials used in its products across the entire supply chain. Yoshihiro Higuchi, Senior Executive Officer of Onward Holdings, says, “As of May 2024, approximately 60 suppliers have onboarded Centric PLM, allowing us to deepen traceability and improve transparency in our production processes.”

Higuchi added, “We aim to centralize data from upstream product planning and development processes, increase transparency in manufacturing and enhance collaboration with suppliers through Centric PLM. These are key components of ONWARD VISION 2030, which focuses on evolving brand, product and supply chain strategies of the fashion domain and expanding and advancing digital initiatives like OMO (Online Merges with Offline) and PLM.”

“We are honored to partner with Onward Kashiyama, a forward-thinking leader in the industry, from driving product development to sustainability,“ says Fabrice Canonge, President of Centric Software. “We look forward to continuing our partnership and providing innovative solutions that align with their strategic goals.”

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Onward Holdings (https://www.onward-hd.co.jp/en/ )

Founded in 1927 by Junzo Kashiyama as Kashiyama Trading in Osaka, the company changed its name to Onward Kashiyama in 1988. In 2007, Onward Holdings was established.

Our mission statements is “Enriching and Adding Color to People’s Lives while Caring for the Planet” and to Keep moving forward as a “lifestyle and culture creation company” that contribute to creating lifestyle with richness and colors in harmony with the planet through “customer-centric management leveraging employees’ diverse strengths”.

The Group’s core operating company Onward Kashiyama is a comprehensive apparel manufacturer of men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing. Leveraging the long-cultivated planning, development, and technological capabilities that constitute our strengths as a manufacturer, we are pursuing maximization of both the brand value and the product value.

We offer women’s and men’s core brands and mainstay brands, such as Nijyusanku, ICB, Jiyuku, J. PRESS, and Gotairiku, primarily at department stores and brands such as any SiS and any FAM at shopping centers.

Centric Software® (www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides an innovative and AI-enabled product concept-to-replenishment platform for retailers, brands and manufacturers of all sizes. As experts in fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home and related goods like cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail, Centric Software delivers best-of-breed solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, 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 giving insights into consumer trends, competitor offers and pricing to boost competitively 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 Software’s market-driven, best-of-breed 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.