Increasing Innovation

As one of the largest manufacturing companies in Asia, TAL Apparel Ltd., a closely held Hong Kong shirt maker, manufactures one out of every eight dress shirts sold in the United States. Its privately owned subsidiary, The Apparel Group Ltd. (TAG), based in Dallas, Texas, is a leading apparel manufacturing company that serves as TAL's design and product development facility.

TAL develops high-quality clothing for the world's top retailers, including J.C. Penney, Dillard's, May Company, Nordstrom, Men's Wearhouse, Saks, Ralph Lauren, Brooks Brothers, Marks & Spencer, J. Crew, Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger, Liz Claiborne, Calvin Klein and Kohl's.

Quality Control
In 2001, TAL began using Freeborders Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions to control then-rising costs, shrink product development cycle times, improve supply chain visibility and heighten quality. Today, Freeborders continues to help both TAL and TAG to collaborate effectively internally and externally with suppliers to reduce production costs and accelerate products to market that are more in-tune with consumer tastes. TAL collaborates with its raw materials suppliers, namely mills, to accurately source fabrics where 50 percent of the overall cost to produce sewn goods resides. TAG collaborates with parent TAL, using Freeborders Product Manager as well as Freeborders Fabric & Trim to get products designed, developed and produced rapidly.

Meeting the Challenge
Both TAL and TAG rely on Freeborders' collaboration software and processes to decrease their time to market and deliver innovative, trend-setting products to retailers. The two companies have effectively focused on raw materials management, which typically is the bottleneck in the product development process. This supply chain challenge is a constant, according to Harry Lee, managing director, TAL Apparel.

Lee says TAL's supply chain begins with an idea in the mind of a designer or developer. Linking those ideas to the most efficient development and sourcing route in the world from retail through fiber is where the challenge lies. "What we hear today frequently is the importance of speeding innovation to market," says Lee. "The product design/development chain is becoming more fragmented while demands on innovation and speed continue to increase. So, higher global complexity meets higher consumer demands."

Lee says Freeborder's Web-based software is a perfect fit for TAL because it links the front end design, development and sourcing process together to speed innovation to market. "Our uniqueness and speed-to-market in development revolves quite a bit around how fast we can identify, develop and commercialize the right raw materials," says Lee. Freeborders raw materials management solutions are unique, according to Lee, because of its catalog service that links the company with all of its textile mills, enabling instant global access to the latest innovations. "This means the potential for continuous innovation versus the difficulty of discontinuous innovation that trade shows promote," says Lee.

The Prior Process
According to Lee, "the needs of the market have changed and new methods to improve customer service, innovation and speed are required if you want to remain an industry leader."

Before discovering Freeborders, TAL relied on a confusing mix of phone, faxes and e-mail to get the job done. Lee says this outmoded process is still commonly used today and is nothing more than a "productivity and creativity drain" for the industry. "Imagine a multi-billion dollar retailer or brand running on no management systems whatsoever. That would be unheard of," says Lee. "Yet, for many large brands and retailers, they have a billion or more in raw materials costs with no raw material management systems."

Benefits Speak
While Lee would not disclose metrics surrounding TAL's return on investment, he says the key benefits of improved speed to market, increased innovation and reduced costs speak for themselves. "They will have a direct impact on our business," says Lee. "TAL's future growth will come from serving our customers better, making it easier for our customer to bring products to the market faster. With all the advantages described above, Freeborders will play an extremely important role in achieving our goal."