A Private-
Label POV
INTERSPORT FRANCE
LEVERAGES PLM TO ENSURE
PROFITABILITY
Nicolas Thibault, Exclusive Brands
business unit manager at Intersport
France, is leading a major initiative to
double turnover from its private-label
business in the next four years.
Like many industries operating in
today’s global marketplace, the
apparel business faces ever-increas-ing consumer demand for high-quality products that are price-competitive and offer excellent
value. Private-label strategies are
becoming more and more critical
to meet that demand and to help
improve gross margins and profitability in the face of flat sales.
One of the industry’s major players, Intersport France, a member of
Intersport International Corporation
( www.intersport.com), is leveraging product lifecycle management
(PLM) technology and processes to
speed sourcing and sample development of its Exclusive Brands business in an increasingly competitive
environment. With more than 500
stores and annual turnover of more
than 1 billion euros, Intersport is
“For PLM, it is absolutely critical to work with a company
that will take the journey with you and ease your way.”
— NICOLAS THIBAULT, EXCLUSIVE BRANDS BUSINESS UNIT MANAGER,
INTERSPORT FRANCE
undertaking a major initiative to
double its Exclusive Brands turnover
in the next four years.
Navigating an Obstacle Course
Nicolas Thibault, Exclusive Brands
business unit manager at Intersport
France, assessed the challenges that
lay in the path of achieving that goal.
At the top of the list: Each product
team in the Intersport France
Exclusive Brands organization had
its own methods, making work with
suppliers inconsistent and making
it virtually impossible to achieve
bargaining power with suppliers.
Technical files lacked specificity,
which led to a long, unreliable,
redundant — and therefore costly
and delay-ridden — sample development process.
“To get our collections into stores
on schedule, we must have definitive samples, or the entire season’s
delivery schedule can be affected,”
says Thibault. “Yet, valuable time
was being lost as we went back and
forth with the suppliers, answering questions or requesting
changes, because we provided
inconsistent information in our
technical design files.”
The new PLM solution would
need to be able to adapt well to his
group’s business needs and be
extremely simple to learn and use by
every product manager. It also had
to offer the comprehensive functionality and benefits of true enterprise
PLM, while offering rapid imple-
