ERP Company Porini Sets Up Shop in L.A.
Italian software company Porini SRL (www.porini.us) hopes to make a bigger splash with American apparel and textile companies, having recently expanded its entry into the market with the formation of Porini USA Inc. in Westlake Village, Calif.
The 35-year-old company is well-known in Europe and other global apparel markets for its G-Tex enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which facilitates forecasting, product- development, sourcing, procurement, production and distribution processes along the global supply chain. Apparel businesses may not be aching for more ERP systems, but Porini executives think they have the answers to address apparel and textile companies of all shapes and sizes.
The company’s expansion into the North American market was facilitated by an agreement with Westlake Village–based Paragon Business Systems Inc., which offers similar ERP products. As part of that deal, Porini is incorporating Paragon’s Go ERP package into its product line to provide solutions for mid-size companies that prefer Unix with Oracle Corp. or Microsoft Corp. SQL servers. G-Tex is a scalable IBM AS-400 or Microsoft Windows NT client-server application geared toward medium to large organizations with sophisticated needs.
The agreement brings Paragon co-founder Kenneth R. Gould on board the Porini team as chief operating officer, as well as veteran sales manager Peter Jennings. The company recently hired former Chorus Line Corp. and KPMG executive Kirk Feldman to help with sales and support. Enrico Turconi of Porini Italy has become chief executive officer of Porini USA.
A company spokesperson said Porini is the first company to provide a total solution from concept to delivery because its sister company, Nedgraphics Inc., is a key CAD supplier offering products for apparel and textile design. Both companies are part of Amsterdam-based Blue Fox Enterprises NV, a publicly traded company that does about $90 million in business annually with 2,500 customers in 30 countries. The company’s key fashion accounts include Karl Lagerfeld, Givenchy and Christian Dior.
“With our product suite, we can offer world-class, industry- specific ERP applications, or if a company is currently getting by with its ERP but wants to improve specific processes, we can provide extended applications,” Feldman said. “Either way, we provide a path to a fully integrated system for the long term.”
Among Porini’s more popular applications are its Collection Development System, which features prototype management, product data management and costing, among other functions; Visual Plan Fashion, a production planning system aimed at optimizing workloads; and Forecast, a personalcomputing tool for budgets and sales projections.
Even though apparel companies remain cautious with their technology investments, they understand that tools that enable effective planning and enhance efficiency and speed to market are becoming more important in the current market climate, Feldman said.
Gould agreed. “When you’re in business, you look for synergies, and this is about as good as you can get,” he said. “As technology becomes more sophisticated, the industryspecific expertise that we can provide has become even more important.”
Looking forward, Gould said the company expects to have a big impact on apparel and textile businesses—and possibly even dominate the market.
According to Jennings, one of Porini’s advantages is that its products are developed for the apparel and textile industries, as opposed to some of its competitors’ systems, which were originally made for consumer goods.
“You have to look where the product grew up, and we grew up in the apparel industry,” Jennings said. “A lot of the toptier companies have systems using old technologies pieced together. They’re looking for someone who can replace pieces and parts but ultimately cover more of their total technology footprint with seamless information flow.”
