Zak! Designs Reports 200% Revenue Growth Following Centric PLM Implementation

Housewares company streamlines product development, improves project visibility and reduces item setup time with PLM integration

Centric Software® has published a customer success story featuring Zak! Designs, an international company specialising in licensed hardgoods, including drinkware and tableware featuring global entertainment brands. Headquartered in Washington state, USA, the company supplies products through major brick-and-mortar retailers and online sales channels.

As its business expanded and licensed product programmes became more complex, Zak! Designs sought to modernise its product development processes by creating a single repository for product data, improving operational visibility and supporting future growth without adding new product development staff.

According to the company, the absence of a formal product development system made it difficult to access consistent information and monitor project progress.

“Without a formal system or single source of truth for product development, answering any kind of question was difficult… everything was always a surprise,” recalls Raymond Shill, Vice President of IT at Zak! Designs. The company also aimed to standardise licensing approval processes and improve visibility into project bottlenecks.

Following the implementation of Centric PLM™, Zak! Designs integrated the platform with its ERP system, replacing multiple disconnected tools with a unified, real-time view of projects and development activities. The company also eliminated its previous item-numbering system, which it states saved approximately the equivalent of one-and-a-half person-years of workload over a year.

Zak! Designs reported that item setup time was reduced by more than 99%, bringing the process down to under one minute, while supporting 200% revenue growth without increasing product development headcount.

The implementation also enabled the company to replace whole SKU listings with complete Bills of Materials (BOMs) containing detailed component-level information, without adding additional staff.

“With Centric PLM, we now have a path for continuous improvement as we grow,” says Shill. “So far, that’s exactly what we’re seeing.”

“As Zak! Designs scales with global retailers and licensors, Centric PLM gives the agility and control that was previously lacking,” says Fabrice Canonge, CEO of Centric Software. “Complex workflows are digitalized and standardized to be able to respond faster to opportunities from retail partners—without proportionally increasing headcount.”

Centric Software stated that the complete customer success story provides additional details about Zak! Designs' implementation journey and the factors that contributed to its decision to consolidate product development processes using Centric PLM.