Roles

Achats, Designer, Qualité & conformité, Packaging, Technical Product Manager

 

Challenges

  • Reduce product time-to-market by optimizing the design process and collaboration between partners
  • Establish an integrated design, review, and approval process for the retailer and its partners with critical-path and milestone tracking
  • Integrate private label design processes from range planning through to sourcing
  • Improve accuracy and visibility into design, range plans and product specifications at various stages of completion to ensure smooth transition
  • Provide a single source of data from range plans to final product specifications  that shared with all stakeholders

Trace One can help

Driven by the need to compete for customers with unique and innovative products designed to meet a range of tastes and budgets, the private label phenomenon reflects a major inflection point in retail strategy. As a result retailers have taken on a new role as product developers, manufacturers, distributors and merchants of their own product lines.

Trace One Product Conception manages the product development process for private label merchandise, fulfills range plans, manages product and packaging design, and supports the creation of the ‘tech pack’. Its web-based interface enables collaboration among designers, buyers, merchandisers, QA, agents and suppliers. The design process, the merchandise plan and sourcing functions are linked together with a critical-path, enabling teams to monitor the status of new and existing products to meet critical dates such as seasonal launches or promotional events.

Benefits

  • Lower Costs: Lower product development costs and reduce design times by introducing streamlined and standardized best practices across the buying teams and strategic suppliers
  • Better Quality: Develop the ‘right product first time’ through more rigorous product specification, supplier collaboration, and inclusion of test results in buyer critical-path activities
  • More innovation: Foster collaborative product innovation with strategic suppliers
  • Increased Conformance : Set quality standards and test results for supplier conformance during the product design process
  • Speed to market: Achieve faster cycle times with the reapplication of existing items in new designs
  • Reduce Administration: Reduce product data inconsistencies and rekeying by capturing and storing data in a central repository, providing a single integrated and shared view of product information
  • Increase Margins: Reduce the need for high stock holding and improve stock turn and therefore net profitability
  • Greater Competitiveness: Beat competitors to market on consumer electronic or design led products and ranges
  • Smoother Supply Chain: Reduce risk of « lumpy » demand and creates a smoother, more effective supply chain

Features

  • Range Fulfillment enables merchandisers and buyers to manage groups of products against defined critical paths in order to meet critical dates and reuse hot selling items in new plans
  • Trends & Concepts captures and stores new product ideas, market trends and other early design concepts that may influence the next season
  • Product Specification allows designers to capture information about a product, its design properties, external graphics, and legal requirements into the central information repository
  • Tech Pack Creation automatically generates the ‘Tech Packs’ (also known as Design Briefs) to include detailed design, commercial and technical specifications once product specifications are completed