Company News • 10.06.2015
Peek&Cloppenburg Hamburg launches TXT Retail
Merchandise & assortment planning of stores and online
The Peek&Cloppenburg KG Group in Hamburg, Germany, a leading multi-label fashion retailer, has recently adopted TXTPlanning as its corporate merchandise planning platform.
After having successfully deployed TXT’s Financial Merchandise Planning, Peek&Cloppenburg Hamburg is now launching TXT’s Assortment Planning across all channels, products and countries. The Peek&Cloppenburg Fashion Group in Hamburg combines the retail brand Peek&Cloppenburg in Germany, the onlineshop VANGRAAF.COM and the international fashion retail company VAN GRAAF, which currently represents the group in Poland, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. With its 100 years of history, the group offers over 300 brands, from top-quality basics to young, trendy brands and international designers.
“Planning in the Fashion industry is unquestionably a complex matter,” explains Kai Schmidt, IT Director at Peek&Cloppenburg KG in Hamburg. “The market is so dynamic that you cannot just take information from the past and replicate it. You need to be good at intercepting trends and you need to plan very early in the cycle because of the long lead-times typical in the industry. In addition, with a multi-label business like ours, you need to cope with different planning cycles of our suppliers, a lot of planning dimensions and a large amount of possible combinations. We found in TXT Retail the right partner to support this complexity.”
With TXT, Peek&Cloppenburg KG Hamburg overcomes the traditional limitations of planning done with spreadsheets. This often led to information being decentralized with long lead times to consolidate data for decision-making. TXTPlanning now supports an end-to-end process, allowing tighter integration of corporate and merchandise planning, a great success for a key objective of the project. Advanced Planning and analysis are carried out across a variety of dimensions and attributes, enabling a unified plan for both the physical stores, and online channel. TXTPlanning supports all planning processes in a single environment, achieving data consistency and visibility throughout.
“We chose TXT Retail because of a strong combination of the advanced planning solution, best practice processes and technical as well as fashion know-how. Also, we valued the fact that configuration is easy within the system, which made us free to define our process,” added Schmidt. “As a result, we benefit from a more structured, fast and stable process. Before, we had too many different ways of planning, but now we have a flexible end-to-end all in one solution. This means being faster in planning decisions, as well as being able to continuously adapt our planning practices according to market dynamics, which is really important in today’s Fashion retail market.”
Peter Charness, Chief Marketing Officer at TXT Retail, concluded: “Retailers know that with faster innovation and multichannel retailing, the world of planning also needs to change. Taking a holistic approach to the process is vital for effective merchandising. We are delighted to work with a leading group such as Peek&Cloppenburg, supporting their vision and journey to end-to-end, integrated planning. Synergies between our companies are proving extremely effective.”
Source: TXT e-solutions S.p.A.
