Automation is the name of the game for surf specialty brand Captain Fin. Since its founding in 2007, the team has been moving from strength to strength, growing to be an international business. Now that Captain Fin is using ApparelMagic and its wide variety of powerful integrations, they’re able to spend less time on data entry and more time on what’s really important: surfing.

The brand started with one simple idea: introduce art into the world of surfboard fins.

“Traditionally surf board fins that go on the bottom of your board were just a solid color,” Captain Fin CEO Danny Gillis remembers. “We grew up skateboarding and snowboarding. Growing up, you always had your favorite snowboard that had artwork on it.”

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The Big Idea

But like the extreme sports motto, Captain Fin wasn’t content with just any designs to decorate the line: they went big.

“We were the first company in the surf industry to collaborate with professional surfers, artists, and musicians to put artwork on high performance surf board fins and products,” Gillis says.

The concept has been a hit, growing the brand over time to include men’s and boys’ apparel. Now they’re stocked online, in brick-and-mortar stores, across the US, and in about 40 countries around the world. So how does a brand scale that fast without feeling the pinch?

“We’ve expanded online, and that business is really growing,” Gillis says. “ApparelMagic has helped us in a lot of ways to grow the business and have visibility into the business. What we can do with Shopify and ApparelMagic and systems like this in the cloud is incredible.”

Growing Pains

It wasn’t always this easy for the brand. They’ve ran their business using multiple systems and found that their old software overcomplicated their data and workflow, to the detriment of the whole team.

“It wasn’t a system that if you hired a new employee they could get on and figure it out. It was highly customizable—too customizable—and it didn’t integrate with anything. It was an antiquated technology.”

The team learned quickly that when a piece of software is integrated, that doesn’t mean it’s optimized.

“It was integrated, but you had to manually push things through,” Gillis says. “You had to go in and look at your orders everyday, and there was some manual entry.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Switching to ApparelMagic

When enough was enough, they looked for something that could save the business time and money, and they found ApparelMagic.

“We needed something that was more scalable, that integrated, and that anyone could get onto and figure it out pretty quickly,” Gillis says. “We couldn’t be happier, honestly. It’s a really good system for that.”

What works for Captain Fin is using ApparelMagic as the central hub of their business, linking it with integrations to Shopify, CartRover, and 3PL Central to round out their workflow.

Automated Ecommerce

“We’ve got it all set up now so it’s all relatively automatic and seamless,” Gillis says. “An ecommerce order comes through Shopify into ApparelMagic, pushes over into our warehouse, they ship the goods, and then it pushes back into ApparelMagic with tracking information and shipping. It’s really great. It’s saved us a lot of time, and it saves us on the manual side for processing orders. A ton of time.”

When it comes to ERP and fashion business software, getting started is a pain point for many businesses, and that’s why ApparelMagic’s development has always put the user and their experience first.

“One thing that attracted me, of many, to ApparelMagic was that I didn’t have to customize it. Out of the box, it worked for us,” Gillis says. “It had all the features that you would need, whether you’re a large company or a small company. It had everything I needed.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Captain Fin’s Favorite Features

• Invoicing – “We’re able to invoice directly through ApparelMagic. It’s hooked up to our email system. We can send invoices, and we can track it all through ApparelMagic.”

• Multi-Currency – “We do a lot of international business so we’re able to send invoices or estimates or quotes in the currency in the country that we’re dealing with, which is really powerful.”

• Available to Sell Inventory Reports – “We use the automated ATS reports out of ApparelMagic that [customers] get on a recurring basis so they are able to see inventory and reorder when they need to.”

• Commission Tracking – “Our sales reps are able to log in and see just the accounts that they deal with. We’re able to see in real time who has been paid, when they have been paid, and what they’ve been paid on.”

What is Timereaction?

Overview

For Clayton Hunt, “it all starts with the cotton.”

Hunt, a co-founder of SoftShirts, an organic T shirt manufacturer, is one to talk: he grew up in the American South, where they know their cotton.

“South Carolina used to be textile center of the country. My family was in the yarn business for 80 years, and I got my chops digging through mills in the South,” Hunt says. “I had mentors who taught me how to knit and sew, so I can go into a dye house and set it up exactly how I want.”

Thanks to Hunt’s know-how, SoftShirts is able to follow a business plan that is almost minimalist in an age when his competitors are trying to expand into hundreds of new SKUs every season: “Make one shirt. Make one fabric. Make one dollar. Keep it real simple.”

Challenges

Simplicity, as is often the case, however, is never so easy to pull off.

SoftShirts manages its production down to the yarn, working with suppliers and factories across the world, bringing yarn from India and quality from Peru—all to create the best T-shirts available on the market.

“Most companies are not doing this,” Hunt admits.

Managing their production process requires full transparency. Hunt, who manages production on his own, needs to know where his materials are and where exactly in their WIP stage they sit as they are knit, cut, and dyed.

Working with his factory in Honduras, Hunt found that they were managing their production with only spreadsheets.

When it comes to making quality apparel on time and on budget, “spreadsheets don’t work.” Hunt says, “Nobody knows whats going on.”

The factory relied on just once weekly reports to keep customers abreast of their production status and schedules, leading to outdated, inaccurate data.

“When you do get a report, the data is a week old. You never know what you’ve got,” Hunt said. “I’m more of a real time reactionary: I need to see it right now.”

At the time, the factory was on the look out for ERP software to meet their increased demands, and that’s how Hunt developed a streamlined workflow for his business, combining the features of some of the best software in the business to create a nearly automated process from production to sales.

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Solution

“I spent about a year and a half checking out different systems,” Hunt says. “I probably checked ten systems out. I decided to use ApparelMagic because quite honestly it was the only one that could track my contract management.”

With ApparelMagic as the central hub, Hunt was able to keep accurate inventory throughout the process as he got a bird’s eye view of his production pipeline with the Timereaction integration.

Timereaction, a workflow software, keeps everyone in sync through visual calendars that are both easy to understand and incredibly powerful when used across teams and departments.

SoftShirts uses the integration between Timereaction and ApparelMagic to keep both their office team and their factory’s team on the same page. Teams can mark the status of lots and POs so their counterparts can easily see statuses at a glance.

“So if it’s stuck in QC [quality control] because there’s a hole in the fabric and it’s taken twice the time, it shows red on my screen,” Hunt says, the visual cue showing any hiccups in production as soon as the factory reports them.

Insights

What’s the advantage of using this integration rather than a custom-built solution?

“So essentially, without them having to spend $20,000 on an ERP system and project managment, it’s all tied in,” Hunt says. “And they’ve already got the thing built.”

With his fully-integrated workflow, Hunt has been able to automate much of his production and logistics process.

“It’s in the front door of BigCommerce, straight through ApparelMagic, and out the back door at ShipStation,” Hunt says. “It’s seamless.”

Calling it a supply chain makes it sound deceptively simple, but there are few things more abstract: for a modern fashion brand, the supply chain is a complex web of materials, manufacturers, suppliers, dates, duties, and international logistics.

For a multinational conglomerate, it’s a department. But for a small business? It’s a full time job. Ethical womenswear brand Anaak uses ApparelMagic as their one-stop shop to track products and their supply chain around the world.

“To have one place that we’re going to to look style by style is really important,” Anaak founder Marissa Maximo says.

Why ApparelMagic?

Time is money in any business, but when you’re a small business with higher order quantities each season, an apparel inventory system is indispensable.

“It reduces the duplication of work and reduces the margin of error. For a small designer, that’s really important,” Maximo says. “Whatever investment you have, you need to make it worth your while and have a strong ROI.”

Maximo, whose brand is centered around ethical production by highly skilled female artisans in India, is committed to keeping visibility over her entire supply chain, often traveling to work with the women for months at a time.

A Central Hub

“How did it get made? How did it get the trim? How did it employ people? How did it ship?” she asks. “It’s all these hidden costs that people don’t realize.”

And it’s all of these hidden aspects that ApparelMagic can track.

Using ApparelMagic as a central hub for her business, Maximo has a virtual home for her data with the sales figures from the London showroom, the product designs from the US, and the POs going to India now all in one place.

“The showroom will show the collection to buyers from all around the world,” Maximo says. “We enter the orders into ApparelMagic, and then pull our factory production purchase orders, which is very helpful to have automated.”

Maximo is able to communicate clearly and quickly with her collaborators in every time zone, using reports created directly from ApparelMagic.

“From the production order, you can also print the dye lot, so the factory can quickly see how many styles and how many colors,” she says.

Making Connections

Utilizing ApparelMagic’s connections to the industry’s top services in ecommerce, B2B, logistics, and more, Anaak can do their bookkeeping through ApparelMagic or software like QuickBooks or Xero.

“We do all of our accounting through QuickBooks,” Maximo says, “And so to be able to do that sync is also helpful.”

With all her data under control and ApparelMagic as the central hub, Maximo is able to focus on Anaak’s real mission: making clothing responsibly and giving new opportunities to “all the people that I work with all the way down my supply chain,” Maximo says. “Which might be a short supply chain, but it’s a meaningful one.”