California Apparel News

Since Innovative Systems opened for business in 1994, some of the action-sports field’s biggest players have signed up to use its Full Circle software.

Users of the software include high-profile labels such as Stance, Neff and Alpine Stars. Even companies outside the action-sports arena have signed up for Full Circle, such as edgy lingerie line Agent Provocateur.

But it’s not always the big guys who need the kind of software Innovative Systems offers. That’s why the company decided that smaller apparel brands could benefit, too.

So the company introduced its Full Circle Lite software at the Agenda trade show held recently in Long Beach, Calif., said Amy Rasmussen, senior vice president of Innovative Systems.

Full Circle Lite will offer many of the features found in Full Circle, such as sales-order management, inventory management and EDI. But in a departure from its original system, Full Circle Lite systems will be hosted by the staff of Innovative Systems in an arrangement similar to a cloud-based operation. Users will pay a monthly subscription fee for hosting services and the software. For Full Circle, companies maintain the software’s operations on their own servers, and they purchase licenses for the systems.

Innovative Systems is not alone when it comes to thinking of the smaller companies. In 2010, Stitch Labs Inc. in Northern California introduced an inventory platform for small fashion businesses. This year, Stitch upgraded its platform to serve larger businesses.

Innovative Systems introduced Full Circle Lite because it felt there was a growing demand for management software for emerging companies, Rasmussen said. “They had dreams and visions that were going to scale globally, and they needed very reliable systems to help them grow as far as their dreams will take them,” she said.

Both the Full Circle and Full Circle Lite management systems are tailored to fashion businesses, said Kent Johnson, vice president of Innovative Systems’ client services. These software systems come with features that fashion companies require.

For example, there’s a size-scale management tool that keeps track of orders of different sizes of clothes held in inventory. Other software management systems often require that companies enter data separately on each individual style and category. With Full Circle software, workers can enter information about various SKUs in groups, which offers more efficient data entry, Johnson said.