SAN FRANCISCO -- (June 28, 2022) -- MakerSights, the only collaborative assortment management workspace for consumer-obsessed retail brands, now integrates with PTC FlexPLM V12, retail’s most widely used, visual, and easy-to-use PLM platform and has been implemented at Madewell and J. Crew. The best-in-class integration instantly synchronizes product data from FlexPLM, a product lifecycle management platform, with the MakerSights Workspace for the product creation and merchandising teams, enabling them to quickly and easily engage with consumers on in-development products.

“Integrating MakerSights with FlexPLM has made testing new products with consumers and finalizing assortments a much more seamless and efficient process at Madewell,” said Madewell Divisional Merchandise Manager Grace Brooks. “We are now able to move from evaluating newness to finalizing an assortment more quickly and with far greater confidence because we’re making decisions based on product-specific feedback from our target consumers. This is a game-changer for us in terms of productivity, efficiency, and scalability.”

This integration breaks down stifling data silos and connects two critical digital tools within a brand’s value chain, creating a direct path to cross-functional collaboration on assortment management within a single digital workspace. Automating this workflow ensures product information in MakerSights is always current, saves time, and empowers teams to test products in development with consumers at scale more quickly, resulting in faster, data-informed decisions.

“The integration between MakerSights and FlexPLM is a critical connection in the retail product development landscape, saving product and merchant teams valuable time and enabling them to become faster and more agile as they create and bring new products to market at digital speed,” said Bill Brewster, SVP & GM of PTC’s Retail Business Unit. “Whether they realize it yet or not, there is an intense need for retail brands to create an integrated technology ecosystem that provides a digital thread, connecting cross-functional teams and processes. Accelerating time to market and improving profitability, which is something on just about every brand’s agenda this year, depends on this digital thread and the automation of workflows from planning to product creation and go-to-market.”

Product, merchant, and other cross-functional teams and stakeholders at brands can now have a complete, always up-to-date view of in-development assortments within the context of consumer sentiment data and internal stakeholder feedback. This 360-degree view of the assortment empowers product and merchandising teams to make faster, data-informed product decisions, which reduces the risk of over-assortment and overproduction, and deliver higher-performing assortments with improved SKU productivity, margins, and full-price sell-through rates. 

According to McKinsey & Company, "digital tools and analytics have transformed key parts of the fashion value chain, but these optimizations are often siloed within organizations, limiting the potential for cross-functional improvements. Brands should embark on end-to-end value chain integration to create more efficient and more profitable ways of operating."¹

“As brands continue to look for areas of growth, the need for systems to communicate effectively will become critical to their success,” said MakerSights Co-founder and CEO Dan Leahy. “The MakerSights integration with FlexPLM enables brands to scale insights above just one area of the business, empowering them with the holistic visibility into their product lines and consumer sentiment data they need to find opportunities and curate higher-performing assortments across their entire portfolio.”

MakerSights is exhibiting at PI Apparel in New York this week and speaking in breakout room 1 at 11:50 a.m. today alongside Dearfoams Chief Merchandising Officer Angela Kenney about the importance of embedding consumer obsession into product development. The company’s booth will showcase the FlexPLM integration and the latest analytics capabilities available in the MakerSights Workspace, including Line Efficiency, which helps brands drive SKU productivity. 

About MakerSights

The retail industry is one of the biggest polluters on the planet. At MakerSights, we know there is a better way. Consumer obsession powers growth and sustainability, so we’ve reimagined assortment management with the consumer at the heart of every decision. MakerSights is the only collaborative assortment management workspace that embeds actionable consumer data into product development, merchandising, and go-to-market workflows. Our customers are smart-to-market, consumer-obsessed brands, including Madewell, New Balance, and Champion, that are radically reducing economic and environmental waste by streamlining the concept-to-consumer process.

¹ Amed, Imran., Berg, Achim., et al. (May 2022) The State of Fashion Technology. McKinsey & Company, 15. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-fashion-technology-report-2022.