Claudia Sträter goes Pebblestone

The Dutch fashion retail chain Claudia Sträter was founded in 1970. Nowadays Claudia Sträter has become an internationally established label with its own collections and brands as Claudia Sträter, Maura styled by Claudia Sträter en CS Sport.

Every year 8 collections are developed at the head office in Diemen, where 100 people are employed. It is also here that buying, sales, production and quality control are managed. The actual production takes place in Eastern Europe or the Far East. The different collections are sold through 33 own shops in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and Germany or through concessions within department stores.

Growth stunted by old solution "Our complex company processes, from design through retail, requires a thorough IT-platform", according to Frits Helmstrijd director of Claudia Sträter. "We continued a pretty long time with the old DOS-application in which the processes have been managed as good as possible. But due to the lack of management information, the ceasing of support and the wishes of the many users we have started to look for a new IT-solution around the millennium".

Related processes in one solution Claudia Sträter preferred a standard solution with all the advantages of the old functionalities. "And this is what we have found with Pebblestone Fashion", says Frits Helmstrijd. "At the end of 2003 we came in contact with Pebblestone and we found that they met a lot of our requirements for a new solution with Pebblestone Fashion. Actually we wanted the new solution to fit into our business process and work exactly as we do now. With Microsoft Dynamics and Pebblestone Fashion this is possible. The many related processes like planning, production, sales (wholesale and retail) and logistics are united in one solution. Because of this and the use of the colour/size matrix we are able to process the thousands of variables in a faster and more simple way.

Improved company processes Since the autumn of 2005 Claudia Sträter uses Pebblestone Fashion. Frits Helmstrijd: "Because more information is stored than before, an employee of one of our stores is able to check the stock of other stores in case of a sold out article.

Nowadays our salespeople are able to enter orders on a notebook-pc. The order information is immediately sent to our sales system in which the order is processed.

Am open road for future growth "Because of the current information we are now able to produce overviews and analysis, if necessary in detail. Because of these possibilities, the demand increases. The planned growth of Claudia Sträter is supported by the availability of the management information. This, associated with the extended support of all company processes, give us faith for the future.