Du
pareil au même (or DPAM as it is often nicknamed
by its customers), meaning “six of one, half a dozen
of the other”, is certainly not the same as other
childrenswear retailers. Du pareil au même designs
and retails quality, creative children’s fashions
at low prices for children from 0 to 14 years. DPAM’s
core brand values are creativity, value for money
and regular assortment renewal. DPAM has a combination
of high street and out of town stores, and like
many modern fashion retailers, DPAM’s future lies
in international expansion where prospects for growth
can be measured in double digits.
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Expanding
through an affiliation system
DPAM first began working
with VCSTIMELESS back in the 1980s when
the company was founded in France. Since
then DPAM has expanded to over 340 stores
and is today present in more than twenty
countries across Europe, Asia, and the Middle
East, including retail hotspots like Dubai,
Tokyo and Kuwait. Closer to home you will
find DPAM stores in Lakeside and London,
and across Ireland. DPAM took its first
steps overseas by creating subsidiaries
in Spain and Italy in 2000 and since 2004
the retailer has accelerated its international
development plans using an affiliation system. "With
an affiliation agreement, the affiliate
rents and maintains the store and manages
its own staff. DPAM manages the store’s
inventory and replenishment, in-store IT
system and pays commission on all goods
sold", explains Thierry Magnard, IT
Director for Du pareil au même.
An international
culture
The international success of DPAM has been helped by two key factors.
Firstly the name which evokes French fashion and style. This has proven
particularly important in Greece, the Baltic States, the Middle East
and Asia. Secondly, the fact that product ranges can be easily exported
to new countries without altering collections significantly. This has
meant that the best sellers in Ireland are surprisingly the same as those
in Korea! Underpinning this strategy of international growth is the robust
multilingual retail management software suite, Colombus Enterprise from
VCSTIMELESS which DPAM uses to manage its head office and store operations,
both for its owned stores and affiliates, across the globe.
DPAM has worked side by side with VCSTIMELESS at each step of their international
development, using local teams to address country-specific requirements
such as regional tax and fiscal laws. The fact that DPAM and VCSTIMELESS
share a similar international culture has paid dividends. When DPAM implemented
the Colombus
Retail point of sale solution in Italy, for example, both companies’ Italian
teams worked hand in hand to install and configure fiscal printers which
are a legal requirement in Italy.
Global visibility
There are 50 Colombus users
at head office representing the buying, finance, logistics and sales
functions. The solution is the backbone of the company’s IT infrastructure
and is interfaced to some of DPAMs other management information systems,
including an Oracle-based warehouse solution, and logistics and stock
management systems. Colombus
Retail, operating in more than 15 languages in DPAMs owned and affiliated
stores across the globe, is continually sending data on sales and stock
levels directly to Colombus at head office, giving DPAM’s management
team vital data for informed decision-making.
"
Every 10 minutes, all sales transactions
recorded in Colombus
Retail are polled to the head office
from stores across the world”, explains
Thierry Magnard. Sales managers can monitor
sales in quasi real time, allowing them
to adapt products, assortments and promotions
on a store by store and country by country
basis. By comparing stock levels with actual
sales, the head office can automatically
dispatch the appropriate stock to each store.
Data exchange between the stores and head
office was previously a manual process which
led to a lot of inaccuracies. "The
impact of Colombus
Retail has been visible at all levels.
By maintaining ideal stock levels, lost
sales and costly inter store transfers are
avoided", acknowledges the IT Director.
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