British luxury fashion brand Paul Smith taps Centra order management solution for D2C and wholesale push

Paul Smith has announced a partnership with Centra.

It overhauled its digital flagship in 2022, transitioning to a headless front-end designed by agency partner Limesharp.

However, beyond the product pages, the customer experience fell flat with a slow checkout while the Paul Smith team faced several challenges streamlining and scaling its business because of its existing e-commerce platform.  

Originally looking for an order management solution (OMS) to facilitate multi-source inventory and global ship-from-store capabilities, the team realised this would present additional challenges.

Hannah Bennett, Head of Digital at Paul Smith, says: “We were considering investing in an OMS software but realised we would still have to upgrade the platform and our development team would then need to build and support those features. We’re a fashion brand; we need to be integrating solutions not building and maintaining software.”

Following an introduction to Centra, it became clear it’s out-of-the-box functionality, across both its DTC and digital wholesale solutions, solved many challenges in creating limitless, agile and scalable digital channels. 

“When considering Centra, its OMS which integrates third-party logistics and supply chain was the immediate win, but the total package - from operationally being able to consolidate how we could manage wholesale, grow markets with loyalty and VIP programmes as well as introducing new languages and currencies much quicker than we could ever do before and all from one site and centralised system - sealed the win,” says Bennett.

The migration to Centra, which originally only focused on DTC, turned into a complete overhaul of Paul Smith’s entire digital business – including digitising wholesale on the Centra Showroom.

Paul Smith’s thousands of global wholesale partners can now access Centra’s inbuilt digital wholesale showroom, which modernises the buying process through a like-for-like DTC consumer shopping experience, including individual pricing, global tax calculations and shipping management. 

With all B2B orders now running through Centra and fast tracking the end-to-end process, Paul Smith can now redeploy development resources to focus on e-commerce development while its wholesale team can focus on enriching the buying experience for merchants. 

Out of the box product information management (PIM) capabilities enable Paul Smith to get products to market quicker, allowing its product data team more time to focus on creating richer product descriptions and reconfigure core product attributions. 

Additionally, its rapid multi-market scalability means Paul Smith no longer needs to create a new store view for new markets, removing the duplication of content, and improving the customer experience through localised currencies, language and payment options. 

Site speed and reliability has also improved, with Paul Smith experiencing no down time since taking its DTC channel live in April 2024, with the business now able to focus on maximising its sales periods without site crashes allowing maximum focus on improving commerciality.

Additionally, the replatforming has allowed the development team to move on from maintenance to enhancement, says Bennet.

“The team are no longer spending their time maintaining a platform.  That was a huge challenge as it would take two or three months a year to just upgrade and manage systems.  Now we are just focusing on new features and product enhancement rather than maintenance.” 

Looking ahead, Centra’s OMS will be used to implement a global Ship-from-Store solution across its bricks and mortar network that will enable its customers to receive their orders from the nearest store as quickly and sustainably as possible.

Martin Jensen, CEO at Centra, comments: “Paul Smith is Britain’s leading independent design company with more than 50 years of design expertise.”

“By partnering with Centra, Paul Smith now has a scalable and future-proof omnichannel retail operation that frees the brand team to focus on inspiring customers with its trademark maverick and colourful approach to design.”

2024 RTIH INNOVATION AWARDS

Omnichannel retail is a key focus area for the sixth edition of the RTIH Innovation Awards, which is now open for entries.

The awards, sponsored by CADS, 3D Cloud, Retail Technology Show 2025, and Business France, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

It’s free to enter and you can do so across multiple categories.

Key 2024 dates

Friday, 25th October: Award entry deadline 

Tuesday, 29th October: 2024 shortlist revealed

30th October-6th November: Judging days

Thursday, 21st November: Winners announced at the 2024 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony, to be held at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London.