Pan World Brands Ltd

Pan World Brands is a clothing wholesaler based in Manchester who stock a number of well recognised quality clothing brands such as, Caterpillar Clothing, Regal Golf and Lonsdale. The ever-increasing range offers their customers a vast choice of merchandise, available for delivery within days and including forward ordering has lead to the rapid development of the business and to the fast growing turnover.

Pan World Brands started out a number of years ago as UCCL International, joining up last year with 3 Dimensions, which led to the change of name. The companies were operating two different accounts packages (Sage Line 50 and Pegasus Opera) but they arrived at the conclusion that Sage Line 50 was more suited to their needs for two reasons. Firstly, all the staff in the accounts were already familiar with this system and secondly, it was an ideal solution for a stock control and order taking. Also, Sage was an easy package to use, requiring minimal learning time and staff soon became familiar with the order processing and stock control.

As their customer base grew and the product range widened together with the added Colour/Size complexity, it was clear that they needed to re-examine their core systems. With the fast increasing database of customers and products they needed to find a product to cope with the increased volume and the requirement for more specific fashion-business management information.

As luck would have it the yearly Sage Visions Exhibition was happening soon and during the exhibition their Sage supplier had the good fortune to visit the Esperus Systems stand and saw the Genesis software package.

It appeared that Genesis would allow them to overcome their stock control and order processing issues while still using all the Sage Line 50's accounting ledgers. Not only was the Access/SQL central database large and quick enough to support their customers and products into the future, its compatibility with Microsoft and other office-based software gave them the ability to easily manipulate the data further. The colour, size and style matrix would allow them to obtain a wide range of reports and information from the Genesis software. What also impressed them was the fast stock/order entry by style matrix. This feature alone would save Pan World Brands a considerable amount of time when entering stock and processing purchase and sales orders. Just as important as the other features, we recognised that the system was clear and easy to use and understand even for computer novices.

After deciding that Genesis looked the right solution from the literature and was financially attractive, their Managing Director decided that, if during the presentation of the software the system did all that the brochure stated then Genesis would be implemented immediately. The presentation went beyond their expectations and installation was carried out the same day. This was a great saving of time and money since they were considering having software written for them which would have been a long, costly and risky exercise.

During the training and installation of the system they were impressed with the support and professionalism of the Esperus staff. This has continued in their everyday dealings with Esperus.

Jackie Bailey, Stock Management Controller, is exceptionally pleased with their decision to implement the Genesis system "Genesis has provided us with a very powerful stock control tool. We were able to use the Genesis analysis to monitor stock levels and obtain predictive reports to evaluate how each product performs with colour, size attributes. The savings we have made in reduced markdowns and the increased business from greater product availability has more than paid for the complete system in the first six months. Our sales staff found processing sales orders to be incredibly easy to use and efficient in operation. The screens are clear and provide all the information required to deal with our customers quickly and effectively, especially as the underlying database is very fast and now easily supports our peak volume periods".

Looking at Esperus Systems Jackie added, "As our business has grown, so have our needs. Esperus has been very quick to reply to all our queries; their unique set up allows them to pool feedback from all their customers and their answers to our original requests have gone far beyond our expectations. They have already delivered additional reports for sales analysis, unique to the Sage Line 50 integration, which shows the flexibility of the Genesis product".

Jackie's enthusiasm for the system was evident, adding "If you are looking to grow your business quickly without having to increase your operational costs dramatically, Genesis may well be the solution you are lookin g for, it certainly was for us".