The Donna Karan Company, the international fashion retailer, is implementing a new merchandise, store and assortment planning software solution. QuickAssortment from Maple Lake will enable Donna Karan to create store assortments that align with the purchasing preferences of its customers in each location, as well as via its e-commerce stores.
QuickAnalytics is also being used to provide extensive reporting and analytical capabilities.
"From an inventory planning and management point of view, our challenge is to balance the needs of a multi-brand, multi-channel organization with long design and buying cycles," said Donna Sarian, vice president of planning and allocation at Donna Karan. "It’s very easy for departments to be disconnected and find we don’t have enough of the right product in the right stores. With Maple Lake we’re joining all aspects of our retail planning into a single application, so that we can be sure our products, stores and assortments all balance."
The Donna Karan selection team used the power of social networking as part of its due diligence process to help choose a vendor. The team established contacts with existing Maple Lake clients and obtained informal references and on-site visits in absence of the vendor to gain a real world understanding of whether the solution could really add value.
“The evaluation process was exceptionally quick, mostly due to the smarter way the team used their social networks,” said Stuart Aldridge, chief marketing officer at Maple Lake. “And the result is that we are already well into the project and on schedule for delivery, whereas most traditional customers would still be reviewing an RFP response.”
QuickAssortment includes merchandise planning, store planning, store clustering, store assortment planning and key item planning. QuickAnalytics provides a comprehensive reporting and analytical capability powered by MicroStrategy.
Maple Lake’s software operates on a Microsoft SQL server platform and operates within a client-server architecture. The system is integrated with a variety of merchandise management and business intelligence (BI) systems.
