Infor has revealed that Anne Fontaine, the renowned women’s ready-to-wear brand, is to modernise its operations with Infor CloudSuite Fashion ERP. Anne Fontaine founded her fashion brand alongside her husband around the iconic white shirt.
Fontaine set up her first retail outlet in Paries in 1994. Since then, the company has expanded to over 60 retail locations worldwide and 350 employees. The firm operates across Europe, the US and Asia, selling products through several hundred third-party locations. The firm has 15 subsidiaries and sales of over €60 million.
The selection of Infor is part of a much wider transformation project. Anne Fontaine engaged with Prodware, a consultancy that helps firms along their digital transformation journey. While the firm has close ties with Microsoft and Sage. Prodware worked with Anne Fontaine to identify the right solutions for its operations.
Ari Zlotkin, CEO of Anne Fontaine, comments: “Our brand has been gradually built up over time, and, as our needs evolved, our system became increasingly obsolete. Today, manufacturing is at the heart of the issues facing brands, and we want to quickly gain in efficiency by equipping ourselves with a modern, scalable ERP solution.”
Choosing the right solutions
Anne Fontaine selected the Infor solution at the end of 2022. Anne Fontaine identified that the solution was developed specifically for the fashion, textile and luxury industries. It also aligned with the Infor industry-first ethos. The solution was not only multi-tenant. With Infor IOS, it also has an open API architecture allowing it to integrate into other solutions chosen by the fashion brand. In addition, it would support the many marketplaces that Anne Fontaine needed to connect with as it delivered an omnichannel strategy.
The Infor solution offered the Order Management System functionalities it sought, including automated tracking and managing sales, orders, inventory and order fulfilment. Alongside the Infor ERP, Anne Fontaine opted for C-DESIGN’s PLM rather than the Infor solution.
C-Design offered the ability to organise product development data into a single, reliable interface for monitoring the progress of a collection. It was also chosen because its organizes product development data into a single, reliable interface for monitoring the progress of a collection.
Patrick Abbou, CEO of C-DESIGN, commented, “We are delighted to welcome Anne Fontaine among our customers, and we are convinced that our PLM solution will help them achieve their product development objectives and strengthen their position in the fashion market.”
Ann Fontaine has also selected a new CRM solution, but it is unclear which one they opted for.
The company also works with Rizer technology to deliver its eCommerce platform Magento, which Infor will integrate. It will also use the Cegid Yourcegid Retail Y2 store management and omnichannel control software. It is also using Cegid’s Retail Academy e-learning platform. The plan is to implement a solution that will dematerialise (digitise) vendor invoices.
The project
Anne Fontaine is leveraging the expertise of ELCIMAÏ Business Solutions, a long-standing Infor partner that worked with its first customer in the beauty/fashion sector in 2009. ELCIMAÏ will conduct the project across several phases. The first phase will see the solution rollout in France and the US and should be completed by the end of 2023. It will then roll out to further countries in a high-availability cloud environment hosted by Amazon Web Services.
Bruno Kientzel, managing director of ELCIMAÏ Business Solutions, comments: “This is a particularly ambitious digital transformation project in the Infor cloud, with a very broad application and geographical scope at the outset, the first batch integrating logistics flows for 16 subsidiaries in 13 countries, and the implementation of international finance for seven subsidiaries in four countries.
“Added to this is the integration of almost 50 boutiques, checkout management, five marketplaces, an e-commerce site, PLM (product lifecycle management), a warehouse management system in the U.S. and the dematerialization of supplier invoices. This project is in line with our strategy of carrying out significant international digital transformation projects based on the Infor CloudSuite.”
Zlotkin concluded, “We are enthusiastic and eager to have access to all these modern tools, which should enable us not only to improve performance and customer satisfaction, but also to develop our market share by increasing our online sales, thanks to an accurate, real-time view of our stocks. The development of e-commerce is one of our main concerns, although all the points, such as CRM, PLM and tax compliance, should also contribute to the success of this project.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
While it is unclear what ERP solution Anne Fontaine moved from, this is an important win for Infor. It cements its reputation within the fashion industry as a leading player. Other recent wins have included Delta Plus, American Exchange Group and Cueroz Vélez. What is different about this story is the decision by Anne Fontaine to select a range of best-in-class solutions to power its operations.
Philippe Maillet, Infor’s sales director for channel in France & Iberia, comments: “Infor’s solution enables fashion brands to manage all their activities — accounting, production, purchasing, inventory and warehouse management — within a single, integrated solution and, de facto, to manage all their intersubsidiary flows, as well as localization and compliance obligations at country level.”
It seems Anne Fontaine believes the choice of a hybrid software architecture will deliver the best solution for its operation as it continues to expand.
