MLM enables retailers and wholesalers to balance four critical tasks:

1. Design private label products in less time to take advantage of market trends and fickle consumer demand
2. Source goods globally to meet price and delivery requirements
3. Manage the manufacturing, quality and logistics milestones in production
4. Deliver high margin private label merchandise that sells through at the IMU

MLM facilitates collaboration between buyers and sellers, eliminates errors that occur during data entry as a result of redundant systems and creates a single view of the supply chain. This gives suppliers and buyers a level playing field resulting in greater choice and diversity. As soon as the Purchase Order is issued, each line item is assigned to a production and quality assurance regimen. Buyers can have one view of all of their global orders, by collection, class, sub-class, even by style.

These orders can be viewed on a world map, in a stop lighted manner: all orders progressing according to their product lifecycle in green; all orders with the possiblity of missing a critical milestone in yellow; all orders which require immediate attention due to testing failure or a missed milestone date in red. Drilling down on a missed quality test might reveal a defect in the fabric; another click would quickly reveal what styles are impacted; another click can substitute an alternate fabric or pattern.

And because these lifecycle milestones are embedded into the actual orders, changes are immediately directed up and down teh supply chain to the stakeholders who need to know. These changes might include introducing a new color or pattern to the collection when a color preforms poorly in a test market or simply switching from ocean to air to capitalize on a popular style or trend.