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.”
