Brightpearl’s Purpose Built Operating System Knocks Socks Off Jimmy Lion

Alvaro Gomis and Felipe Cortina were friends, flatmates and MBA students at New York University Stern School of Business when they had an idea… 

What if we created a high end fashion brand with a niche for colorful, exciting socks? 

With pricing professors and marketing experts at their disposal as part of their studies, the pair decided to do extensive research to work out whether their sock-themed business proposition had legs. 

Fortunately, all the research suggested they should run with it – and so they did. 

Almost immediately after graduating in summer 2014, they launched Jimmy Lion – a fashion-conscious brand selling quality, combed cotton socks featuring eye-catching designs that include everything from flamingos and foxes, to movie classics ET and Jurassic World.

Best foot forward

With a rudimentary first website, Alvaro and Felipe began manufacturing their range of bright, original socks via a factory in Portugal and then processing and shipping orders from the New York apartment they shared.

Ambitious to their core, the friends invested every last thread of their time, energy and money into establishing the brand – and their efforts paid off. 

Fast forward to Spring 2020 and the multichannel brand had established two flagship stores in Madrid, and one in Barcelona. It has also cemented a thriving online presence, with ecommerce customers across the globe and placements in some of the world’s leading department stores – including Selfridges in the UK, Galeries Lafayette in France, El Corte Inglés in Spain and Palacio de Hierro in Mexico.

The business was growing 100% year-on-year – but, found that operational challenges came hand-in-hand with rapid growth. 

“We were spending far too much on logistics and manual data entry,” said Jimmy Lion’s Co-founder, Alvaro Gomis. 

“We needed a software platform that could provide us with visibility and control over the entire business – something that could help us improve customer experience and offer a single source of truth that could help us manage our multi-channel, multi location business.”

Finding a better fit

Desperate for a solution, the brand signed up with Odoo. However, it quickly became clear that they needed a more robust, flexible and scalable operating system – and, after weighing up the competition, they switched to Brightpearl. 

Alvaro added: “We needed more than an ERP – we needed a ‘brain’ that could bring everything together.

“We instantly saw the value in Brightpearl because it’s purpose built for retail businesses, offering real-time insight into day-to-day operations which enables smart decision making.

“With traditional ERPs, you have to wait for integrations to be built – and usually pay extra for it. With Brightpearl, all the apps and connections we could ever need are already there – out of the box, ready to use from day one.”

With a brand new Shopify Plus store in the pipeline and listings on Amazon, Brightpearl’s native integrations to all the main player ecommerce platforms and marketplaces was a big win for Jimmy Lion – and so was the platform’s turbocharged implementation.

While ERPs typically take a year or more to get off the ground (and only have an implementation success rate of 25%), Brightpearl goes live for customers – including Jimmy Lion – in around 120 days (with a market-leading success rate of 97%).

A roaring success

“The implementation went very well – the integrations with all our channels are seamless – but even more impressive than the tech side of things is the human approach of Brightpearl,” said Alvaro.

“Someone from the Brightpearl team flew out to spend four days with our team before launch to make sure everyone knew the platform inside and out. It’s an intuitive, easy-to-use platform anyway – but having a real person on hand at every stage has made all the difference.

“Plus, the team ensured we went live in just four months, ahead of our peak period.”

Brightpearl has provided Jimmy Lion with one central hub that does everything – from automating tedious post-purchase workflows and warehouse management to accounting and CRM. And it’s provided fast and impressive results. 

“We wouldn’t be able to scale effectively without the centralized features of Brightpearl,” Alvaro said.

“For instance, we’re a seasonal business – we do a significant proportion of our sales in the run up to Christmas. Being able to accurately forecast our stock needs using Brightpearl’s Inventory Planner has been a huge help for us – we no longer have to spend hours on spreadsheets!

“In fact, everything we do now is around three times quicker than it was before Brightpearl.”

“Brightpearl provided everything we wanted – from reporting to warehouse management – all on one, centralized platform.”

As the post-pandemic dust settles, there are plans in place to expand the number of Jimmy Lion retail stores and grow the brand’s share of the online market, securing its position as a global fashion brand. 

Alvaro added: “Just like us, Brightpearl is always looking to the future.

“Its open API allows us to quickly and easily add new features and functionality. It means we can evolve and adapt to stay ahead of the game, just as Brightpearl evolves and adapts its features to support retail brands.

“We’ve got big plans – and Brightpearl will certainly be our long term partner.”