N Brown is the UK's leading direct home shopping company, operating nearly 30 successful catalogue brands. The catalogues offer a huge selection of clothing and products for all ages and sizes, but are specialists in the area of larger size women's wear. As part of their continual improvement process, the retailer implemented the TradeStone Quality Management solution to drive out the cost in fit evaluations and the sampling process by advancing the quality of products and reducing the number of fits needed for each item.
"Our clothes are designed to provide the best fit at the best value," said Paul Short, Buying & Merchandising Director at N Brown. "When dealing with larger sizes, fit is very important. If the quality and fit of the garments are good, then we will have fewer returns which increase our profits and more importantly provides us with a happier customer base. By getting the fit right the first time around, we save significant time and money and build customer loyalty. TradeStone helps us do that."
With TradeStone's Quality Management solution, N Brown has also enhanced accuracy and accountability of sample measurement and access, reduced turn-around time for samples, increased the number of their collections and enabled N Brown to maintain a more accurate sample history online from previous seasons. Suppliers understand exactly what is expected of them and can self audit the samples at the source before shipping it across the world.
"N Brown's ability to boost customer choices by 22 percent has resulted in significant sales increases in key departments," said Sue Welch, CEO, TradeStone Software. "Furthermore, the TradeStone application is reducing the time it takes to bring their products to market and enhancing visibility. We are thrilled that they continue to integrate our private label solutions across their various brands and see significant ROI with each new module added."
About N Brown Group
N Brown Group is a leading direct home shopping retailer, fulfillment and financial services company with over 140 years of experience in the distance shopping market. Our extensive ranges of value products, principally clothing, footwear, household and electrical goods, are carefully targeted at the right customers and are provided through whichever channels to market our customers demand.
About TradeStone Software, Inc.
TradeStone provides merchandise lifecycle management software that enables the world's most successful retailers to bring innovative and highly profitable private label products to market at record speeds. TradeStone's Merchandise Lifecycle Management(TM) solution, which consists of TradeStone PLM for Retail (TM), TradeStone Sourcing (TM), TradeStone Quality Management (TM) and TradeStone Global Order Management (TM), delivers radical results - 200 to 400 basis points to the bottom line; sales increases of 35 percent; average consumer spend increases of seven percent; and sell through at margins of 78 percent. TradeStone marquee customers include American Eagle Outfitters, Boots, Circuit City, Deutsche Woolworth, Guitar Center, Kohl's, Macy's, Novi Footwear, N Brown Catalog Company, Pacific Sunwear, Regatta and The Children's Place. TradeStone Software is headquartered in Gloucester, Mass., with offices in Atlanta, Bangalore, Hong Kong and London and can be found on the Web at www.TradeStoneSoftware.com.
