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. |
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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