Blog | Backbone HQ
Do More with Less: Finding the Right Fashion PLM Software
By: Team Backbone | May 10th, 2022
At a Glance:
What are the Benefits of Fashion PLM Software?
PLM software has evolved to impact more than engineers or operations teams. Today’s modern fashion PLM software covers the entire length of the design and production lifecycle, enabling real-time access to the product at every stage. Cross-functional teams can access the same material lists, design sketches, size specs, and tech packs needed to work efficiently and increase speed to market.
Fashion PLM software helps design and development teams align on product data, collaboration efforts, and system processes to introduce high-quality products to an increasingly competitive market. The right PLM solution helps smaller fashion brands empower creativity, scale their business, and remain flexible during the development process. For larger organizations, fashion PLM helps abolish bottlenecks with a sustainable framework built on growth and scalability
What are the Benefits of Fashion PLM Software?
Fashion PLM software, such as Backbone, provides a single source of truth from concept to creation. The contextual and collaborative nature of Backbone’s interface helps users effectively resolve issues that might halt production and lead to significant delays.
In the current fashion landscape, fashion brands must continuously innovate and discover ways of improving product quality, time to market, and operational efficiency while reducing overhead costs to establish customer loyalty and generate revenue. Embracing a digitally native platform allows your brand to maintain relevance among competitors and become more responsive to evolving trends. Fashion PLM software delivers a unique supply of benefits that span across the organization and beyond, including:
- Reduced risk
- Increased productivity
- Cost management
- Accelerated speed to market
- Increase revenue
- Real-time access to data
- Centralized system of record
- Higher quality products
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Brand scalability
Related Article: Traditional PLM Software vs Fashion PLM Software: Why Backbone is Better
Fashion PLM Software Today
Beyond the digital space, eco-conscious consumers focus less on appearance and more on sustainability. They prioritize ethical essentials over fast fashion to reduce carbon emissions and textile waste. As shoppers demand a healthier future for the environment, we recommend using fashion PLM software to track and optimize your sustainability efforts. Reevaluate your supply chains, access compliance requirements, send approved material lists, and streamline communications regarding environmental best practices.
Backbone helps brands manage the sample development process in real-time to reduce sampling rounds and excess waste. The size spec feature standardizes fit across core products, saving time and money on materials, production, transportation, and labor. With the help of a PLM, your fashion brand can meet the consumer demand for sustainability to stay on-trend.
Fashion tech software provides a unique opportunity to innovate and usher in a new means of producing goods. Brands can spend more time designing thoughtful products that add value to the consumer and the planet. Dedicating more resources toward design and development allows fashion brands to remain nimble and create products that align with the customer’s values.
Related Article: How to Reduce Your Environmental Impact
Do More With Less
You don’t need a never-ending chain of email threads and spreadsheets to manage design and development needs. All you need is a dynamic, cloud-based PLM to help transform how your business functions. Backbone PLM has you covered in the following ways:
SKU Management
When working in the Backbone system, your brand can manage more SKUs effectively. From everyday products to seasonal staples, most brands have too many collections to maintain without errors. Chubbies is a fashion brand with a unique number of colorways, and as a result, the Chubbies team relied on Backbone to consolidate product information and keep SKU numbers in order.
According to Product Developer and Materials Manager, Amanda Gosney, “Our classic swim trunk in the 5-inch seam alone, for instance, has up to thirty colorways preseason, and the Summer 2022 collection has 476 SKUs!”
For Chubbies, Backbone’s platform leaves a tremendous impact through its product and component libraries. These dynamically connected elements make it easier for product and design teams to track styles, size specifications, and BOMs.
“If we didn’t have Backbones today, we would definitely need more people,” Gosney continued.
To learn more about Chubbies relationship with Backbone, check out the case study below.
Dynamic Results
Did you know 83 percent of brands reported greater efficiency and time savings in the first year since using Backbone? Whether you’re leveraging PLM software to grow your fashion startup or searching for a more productive way to create tech packs, Backbone’s cloud-based system of interconnected libraries places dynamic data at your team’s fingertips.
For example, the two-way Adobe Illustrator plugin enables designers to access and update files without worrying about the current artboard version. Changes sync seamlessly, taking the pain out of product revisions for your whole team. Interconnected libraries with dynamically updated data are your central source of truth for products and components. Best of all, they can be edited or updated with ease to eliminate duplicative work.
Speed & Efficiency
For Backbone users, speed to market is crucial. Our brands report moving products to market 46 percent faster, which increases profit margins by allowing brands to enter the sales window sooner. Within Backbone’s platform, you can design faster, create tech packs in minutes, reduce sampling with fewer errors, and improve quality control. Backbone’s centralized record system helps you manage information across teams and move at digital speed.
Create tech pack templates to reuse later, and send tech packs directly from Backbone to factories, your team, or anyone else in minutes. Changes made to products reflect automatically in the BOM, and BOM templates provide a starting point for new products to be adjusted for individual components. And when design teams need to collaborate, create POMs, and store them in one convenient location to use across assortments.
Digital Drives Revenue
As your fashion brand pivots to a digitally native platform, automated systems will allow your team to reduce data entry by 44 percent, saving more than 10 hours of working time during the week. Backbone believes the future of consumer brands is digital, and we offer a solution to empower brands to develop products at digital speed while simultaneously scaling for growth.
With a modern fashion PLM like Backbone, you can make informed decisions on material costs, design changes, and timelines to safeguard revenue and limit waste. View and filter real-time data associated with your products, including lead times, sample tracking, factory allocation, and much more. Create visual product reports and compile data for greater visibility as you collaborate with internal and external partners. Finally, leverage data across your Backbone libraries to create dynamic utilization reports to help analyze the impacts of component changes and the choice of raw materials on your bottom line.
Concise Communication
Driving engagement across teams by enabling callouts on images that dynamically populate your BOM, record POMs, and collecting feedback in one place all contribute to a 30 percent time savings during the sampling and revision phases. Admins can create, edit, and manage custom fields specific to your brand’s unique needs and goals. Our intuitive admin panel makes it easy for teams to configure brands, taxonomy, fields, and users.
Teams can also utilize Backbone’s shareable folders to design and share tech packs with factories in minutes, reducing sampling with fewer errors and improving quality control. Backbone’s centralized system of record helps teams manage product information and standardize size specifications across core and carryover styles.
Related Article: Why Smaller Design Teams Should Embrace Fashion PLM Software
Backbone Does it Right
Small fashion businesses are all about doing business. With innovative ideas and transformative designs, the way people engage with fashion startups often surpasses that of traditional retail storefronts. Fashion PLM software guides these emerging brands and helps them succeed in a competitive digital climate.
By improving product quality and overall visibility across the various stages of the product development lifecycle, Backbone takes a dynamic approach to fashion PLM compared to traditional legacy systems. Backbone provides a central source of truth needed to create tech packs, line sheets, BOMs, and more within minutes.
If you’re ready to increase your speed to market and utilize the right fashion PLM software, discover our collection of case studies, blogs, and free resources to learn more.