Women’s apparel manufacturer consolidates B2B processes, streamlines EDI with Cleo

BUSINESS NEED

Based in New York City, Collection 18 is an apparel design and manufacturing company focused on delivering quality women’s accessories. Collection 18’s trendy hats, gloves, scarves, footwear, and handbags can be found in leading departments stores, including Nordstrom, Macy’s, and Dillard’s, and are available from specialty stores and chains, and mass merchandisers.

The growing apparel brand has been featured in Women’s Health, InStyle, Glamour, Teen Vogue and Essence magazines, as well as in seasonal catalogs from Anthropologie, Bloomingdale’s and Urban Outfitters. With brand awareness and demand growing every year, this Cleo customer for more than a decade sought to keep its EDI and other B2B data exchanges moving as fast as the company’s growth.
 

IT Challenge

The apparel brand exchanges a few hundred EDI documents, Microsoft Office files, and PDF files every day with nearly 40 trading partners, including Amazon, Dollar General, and Walmart. Additionally, Collection 18 requires secure communications with its third-party logistics provider and its freight-forwarding vendors.

Collection 18 has used Cleo solutions for more than 12 years after its ERP vendor, AMT, recommended using the company. Collection 18 began with an AS2 connection agent from Cleo, but also used a VAN to communicate with other trading partners. Costs associated with the VAN, however, were escalating, and Collection 18 was looking to consolidate its B2B communication costs. Additionally, the company was using a third-party point solution to process only 852 EDI documents, which include such SKU activity data as product descriptions, inventory levels, and sales rates.

An automated, single-platform managed file transfer (MFT) and B2B integration solution would help Collection 18 consolidate systems and deliver tens of thousands of files a year more efficiently.
 

The Solution

Collection 18 now leverages the Cleo Integration Cloud’s™ enterprise-grade file transfer capabilities for a more comprehensive MFT solution that supports its expanding business data flows.

“We require a number of different connections, including FTP, SFTP, and AS2,” said Viji Thomas, EDI coordinator at Collection 18. “Prior to Cleo, we were using multiple solutions for our communication or document exchange, but Cleo supports all these connections from a single platform.”  

Thomas also noted how easy it is to configure the Cleo technology given how much critical work the platform performs.

“Cleo is easy to set up and use, we’re able to integrate all of our EDI workflows using a single software solution,” Thomas said. “Cleo is an invaluable tool for us.”