The Digital Playbook for Manufacturers

Thriving in a Digital World: The Manufacturers Playbook for Success

The fashion manufacturing industry is at a turning point. Global uncertainties, shifting trade policies, rising sustainability demands and the push for shorter production cycles are driving manufacturers to rethink their strategies. The winners in this new landscape are those who embrace AI-driven market intelligence, digital collaboration and streamlined product development.

Are you ready to future-proof your business?

As top global brands like PVH and H&M demand greater agility and supplier responsiveness, the traditional OEM model is being disrupted. More manufacturers are transitioning to offer design and development services, securing higher margins and long-term competitiveness. But this shift comes with operational challenges—managing SKUs across multiple production sites, navigating fluctuating tariffs and optimizing pricing strategies in an increasingly complex market.

This exclusive playbook reveals how leading manufacturers are using solutions from Centric Software to:

• Centralize data and streamline global production
• Improve design ideation and speed to market
• Access real-time market insights to predict future trends
• Automate pricing strategies with AI-driven competitive insights
• Build a scalable, future-ready business model

Whether you’re an OEM looking to increase efficiency or an ODM aiming to deliver greater value, this must-read guide provides real-world strategies and success stories to help you stay ahead and future-proof your business.

The Evolution of OEM and ODM Models

OEMs focus on production efficiency, fulfilling large-scale orders for brands, while ODMs take a more design-driven approach, offering original concepts and tailored offerings. The transition from OEM to ODM is highly lucrative but requires investment in trend insights, product development and advanced collaboration tools.

What do you mean by customized? And solutions?

New Market Pressures and Challenges

• Tariff Impacts & Global Sourcing: With the rise of trade barriers, manufacturers must rethink supply chains and explore multi-region production strategies.
• Production Management Across Locations: The expansion of manufacturing into Vietnam, Cambodia and other locations requires better coordination of production instructions, quality control and multilingual support.
• SKU Rationalization & Smaller Orders: Brands are shifting away from bulk production, demanding more agility and lower minimum order quantities (MOQs).
• Sustainability & Compliance: Increasing regulatory requirements and consumer demand for sustainable production are shaping sourcing and manufacturing decisions.
• Competitive Pressures & Digital Transformation: Automation and data-driven decision-making are becoming critical differentiators.
• Market Intelligence & Consumer Demand Insights: Understanding what consumers worldwide will want next is essential. AI-driven market intelligence helps manufacturers predict trends and align product development with real-time demand.
• Pricing & Profitability Optimization: Manufacturers need visibility into global pricing trends to remain competitive. Access to dynamic pricing insights ensures products are positioned effectively for different markets and consumer segments.

1. Costing and Quotation Complexity

Traditional costing methods using spreadsheets are prone to inaccuracies and inefficiencies. Responding to fast-changing material costs and tariffs demands real-time cost visibility.

How Centric PLM™ Helps:

• Standardized costing templates to eliminate manual errors.
• Automated cost calculations incorporating real-time material price fluctuations.
  Faster response times for brand price requests.

2. Supply Chain Volatility and Sourcing

Brands are seeking alternatives to mitigate geopolitical and logistical risks. Diversified sourcing reduces dependence on a single country but adds complexity to supplier management.

How Centric PLM Helps:

• Centralized supplier information and real-time collaboration tools to enhance visibility across the supply chain.
• Streamlined material management to reduce sourcing errors and ensure faster procurement decisions.
• Automated workflow processes for supplier communication, reducing lead times and improving efficiency.

3. Production Management Across Locations

Managing production instructions across multiple locations and languages is a significant challenge, especially for companies operating in Southeast Asia.

How Centric PLM Helps:

• Centralized multilingual data access for standardized production instructions.
• Real-time production tracking to enhance workflow visibility.
• Seamless coordination between multiple facilities for efficient operations.

4. The Need for Faster Product Development & Sampling

With brands reducing lead times, manufacturers must optimize design, prototyping and sampling. Traditional methods are too slow and error-prone.

How Centric PLM Helps:

• 3D sampling integration for faster approvals and reduced waste.
• Centralized tech packs to streamline design collaboration.
• Real-time tracking of product development and samples.
• Mobile app providing real-time access to product information on the shop floor; upload photos from sample room, report quality concerns.

5. Sustainability & Compliance Pressures

Sustainability regulations and compliance requirements are increasing worldwide, forcing manufacturers to adopt more responsible sourcing and production practices. European and US brands demand full traceability of materials and responsible sourcing. Sustainability is no longer a niche concern but a business imperative.

How Centric PLM Helps:

• Full visibility of materials across the supply chain, meeting compliance and ethical sourcing regulations.
• Automate sustainability reporting for brand clients.
• Optimize material usage and production planning to minimize waste and improve environmental impact.

Why ODM Offers More Growth Potential

OEMs operate with thin margins and depend on order volumes, while ODMs command higher prices by offering end-to-end solutions. The shift to ODM status enables manufacturers to build stronger relationships with brands and increase profitability.

How to Transition from OEM to ODM

• Invest in design capabilities and trend monitoring.
• Enhance collaboration with brands by offering custom design services.
• Use AI-powered market intelligence to create compelling product proposals.

The fashion manufacturing industry is becoming increasingly data-driven. Traditional methods relying on manual processes and disconnected systems slow down product development, create inefficiencies and limit a manufacturer’s ability to react quickly to market shifts.

To stay competitive, OEMs and ODMs must embrace digital transformation, using AI-powered solutions and PLM technology to enhance agility, improve decision-making and optimize product development.

1. The Role of PLM in a Digital Transformation Strategy

A centralized digital platform such as Centric PLM eliminates inefficiencies by integrating all aspects of product development, from concept to production, into a single source of truth. A single digital platform unifies teams and streamlines decision-making.

How Centric PLM Helps:

• Eliminates redundant manual tasks through automation, increasing operational efficiency.
• Centralizes product data to ensure teams work with real-time, accurate information.
• Enhances collaboration between manufacturers, brand clients and suppliers for seamless product execution.

2. Leveraging AI for Market Intelligence, Pricing Insights and Product Innovation

In today’s fast-moving fashion industry, understanding market trends ahead of time is essential to reducing waste, optimizing production and staying competitive. Traditional methods used to predict trends rely on historical data and human intuition, which can be slow and prone to inaccuracies.

AI-driven market intelligence transforms decision-making by using real-time data analysis to predict future trends, customer preferences and material demand.

Centric Market Intelligence: Data-Driven Insights for Smarter Decisions

Centric Market Intelligence helps OEMs and ODMs gain real-time visibility into global market trends by analyzing vast amounts of industry data, giving manufacturers a competitive edge in pricing, emerging trends and product strategy.

• AI-driven competitor and pricing insights track brand positioning and optimize target costs based on market data.
• Real-time market demand tracking to align production with consumer buying behavior.
• AI-driven material and category insights to optimize sourcing and product mix.
• Predictive analytics to forecast shifts in consumer preferences before they happen.

A South Korean apparel manufacturer with a strong global presence

Centric AI Fashion Inspiration: AI-Driven, Trend-Inspired Designs

Rather than relying on traditional, labor-intensive trend analysis, Centric AI Fashion Inspiration instantly generates designs by analyzing fashion images, runway shows and social media trends using AI-powered technology.

• AI-generated trend analysis identifies emerging styles, silhouettes and patterns.
• Automated color and material predictions help manufacturers align with upcoming seasonal trends.
• Faster product ideation and development by reducing the time needed for manual research.
• Reduces overproduction and markdowns by ensuring products match real market demand.

Learn more: [embed video https://youtu.be/4XBY8-caXRw?si=FHlBLc0FwS812oG4

What’s Next for Fashion & Apparel Manufacturing?

The fashion and apparel manufacturing landscape is evolving rapidly, with increasing pressure to balance cost efficiency, sustainability and speed. Future trends will be shaped by:

• Rising sustainability regulations and consumer expectations for ethical sourcing.
• The shift towards customization and on-demand production.
• AI and automation revolutionizing design, production and supply chain management.
• Shorter product lifecycles requiring real-time market adaptability.

The future belongs to manufacturers who embrace innovation and technology. Whether you’re an OEM looking to streamline operations or an ODM aiming to expand design capabilities, success hinges on agility, data-driven decision-making and digital transformation.

By leveraging Centric PLM, Centric AI Fashion Inspiration and Centric Market Intelligence, manufacturers can reduce costs, optimize efficiency and stay ahead of evolving market demands. Now is the time to build an agile, future-ready business and unlock new growth opportunities.

About 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, food & beverage 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 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 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; it appears regularly in world-leading analyst reports and research.

Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software, Inc. in the US and other countries. Centric PLM, Centric Planning, Centric Pricing & Inventory, Centric Market Intelligence and Centric Visual Boards are Trademarks of Centric Software, Inc. All third-party trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.