Leading swimwear brand arena has expanded its decade-long partnership with Centric Software® by implementing Centric Planning™ to strengthen forecasting accuracy and improve global merchandising agility.
Centric Software, known for its enterprise solutions in fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, and retail sectors, helps brands streamline product design, development, sourcing, pricing, and replenishment.
Arena, which manages more than 10,000 SKUs per season across B2B and B2C channels, has traditionally relied on spreadsheets for demand planning and assortment management. This limited visibility often created bottlenecks during critical forecasting cycles.
“With over 1GB spreadsheets, even inserting a formula can take minutes,” said Alessandro Astuti, Head of Planning & Allocation at arena, highlighting the inefficiencies of manual tools.
The integration of Centric Planning is expected to reduce operational delays, enhance early forecast accuracy, and optimize production timelines with suppliers across Europe, Africa, and Asia. “Even a 10% improvement in forecast accuracy would significantly reduce development costs, shipping delays, and improve customer service,” said Ettore Biafora, Head of Merchandising and Supply Chain Projects at arena.
Beyond efficiency, the system will support arena’s strategy to deliver more localized and channel-specific collections. “We expect to cut analysis time from one hour to five minutes,” Biafora added.
Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software, welcomed the expansion: “With real-time analytics and seamless integration, arena will gain the agility to make smarter, faster decisions.”