Aptean Apparel ERP, Full Circle Edition Case Study: johnnie-O

HEADLINE

• johnnie-O Drives Agility and Scalability With Fashion-Specific Technology From Aptean

Founded in 2005, johnnie-O is a popular clothing brand that combines east coast styles with a California vibe. The company’s patented add-on features like the "Tweener-Button®" and a focus on high quality have helped drive growth. With its seasonal, golf and collegiate collections, johnnie-O continues to innovate and define that modern, enduring style that customers love.

The Challenge

Initially, johnnie-O operated without an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. As a smaller company, it had originally implemented a warehouse management system (WMS) for order entry and inventory control, which worked for a little while until the team began feeling the limitations in their day-to-to-today operations and planning abilities.

These were some of the challenges johnnie-O was experiencing:

• Misaligned software limited inventory control and desired growth

• Increasing business complexity made it difficult to gather real-time insights

• Project management, production, design and accounting were tracked manually

Derek Karnatz, Director of Operations & IT, johnnie-O

“Prior to 2015, we didn’t even have an ERP system. But we wanted to be able to grow. We wanted to be in control of our own destiny. Choosing a tailored fashion ERP was clearly that next step.”

The Solution

Recognizing the need for real-time insights to boost efficiency and enhance the customer experience, johnnie-O looked to adopt an ERP system. After conducting a request for proposal (RFP) process, the company chose Aptean Apparel ERP as it provided fashion-specific functionality and a single source of truth to automate processes and drive business growth.

“We chose Aptean Apparel ERP to gain more visibility into our data, improve inventory control and order management and provide us with accounting efficiencies,” explained Derek Karnatz, Director of Operations & IT at johnnie-O.

Karnatz recognized that a fashion-specific ERP would provide the most out-of-the-box functionality to manage the nuances of an apparel business. “We didn’t want to have to go in and do our own programming to meet our needs. Aptean Apparel ERP provided the most benefit to us.”

The Implementation

Once the implementation process began, Karnatz and johnnie-O were immediately impressed with Aptean's Customer Success team.

"I really felt like they were invested in the success of the implementation,” noted Karnatz. “The Aptean team had a testing protocol checklist and they were helping to really drive that on our behalf, which was key to our success. I think that was instrumental in making the rest of the johnnie-O team feel invested and that we were being taken care of with this software solution.”

Derek Karnatz, Director of Operations & IT, johnnie-O

“It wasn’t just a sales transaction. It really was a partnership at that point. It was invaluable.”

The Result

The capabilities of Aptean Apparel ERP helped the johnnie-O team perform cost-benefit analyses, rethink workflows and decide how to automate existing business processes most effectively. As a result of adopting Aptean ERP for fashion and apparel businesses, johnnie-O experienced several important benefits:

• Gained greater inventory visibility to understand shortages, communicate proactively with customers and reduce costs

• Enhanced customer experience with flexible ordering and earlier shipping to increase and pull forward sales

• Improved customer experience, especially during peak seasons, with a single source of truth and real-time data

• Streamlined warehouse management allowed them to scale

There’s no question that Aptean Apparel ERP helped embolden johnnie-O to prepare and adapt to future business goals. Karnatz expressed confidence that the system can grow and scale with johnnie-O as it looks to expand across clothing lines and geography.

“Aptean Apparel ERP is pretty impressive in terms of the overall strength that Aptean has, the bandwidth and the resources behind it. I’m definitely happy with our Aptean journey and recognize all the successes that our business has been afforded because of our partnership.”

Ready To Optimize Your Apparel Business With Aptean?

Whether you’re starting out with your first ERP or replacing a legacy system, choosing an industry-specific platform with out-of-the-box features designed for apparel businesses helps you secure bigger benefits and quicker return on investment. So, if you want to optimize efficiency, master omnichannel fulfillment, improve demand forecasting and gain real-time visibility, Aptean Apparel ERP is the right system for you.

Not only is the solution available for cloud deployment, offering improved scalability, security and cost-effectiveness, but it’s also supported by our dedicated in-house team of apparel and fashion experts. Proven across many successful projects in your industry, our team is able to offer best practice advice and by-your-side support throughout your implementation and beyond.

And finally, as you progress through your digital transformation journey, we can offer a range of complementary solutions to build out your full apparel software ecosystem and deliver additional benefits. These systems include a specialized product lifecycle management system and shop floor control software to help you reduce time to market and optimize production processes.

Ready to level up your operations with Aptean’s fashion ERP? Discover more apparel customer success stories or get in touch with our experts today to arrange a personalized demo.