Barbour waxes lyrical about new retail system

Outdoor clothing retailer Barbour has signed a £1.5m deal with retail software company Lawson for an enterprise ERP system.

The retailer, which is best known for it waxed country jackets, has been using a bespoke green-screen application created in the 1980s to manage stock levels and supply chain operations.

Barbour IT director Brenda Readman-Bell told silicon.com: "Barbour was a smaller company at the time. Today we have an enormous lifestyle range and it's a much bigger market. The software was running out of performance for what we needed to run the business."

The system runs sales, finance, supply chain and warehousing operations but Barbour now has multiple supply chains with a number of cycles, coming from a number of sources.

Distribution turnarounds have also sped up and the business has moved from a purely wholesale clothing supplier into a retailer in its own right, with 25 stores and concessions.

The deal with Lawson was signed in late 2008 and phase one of the implementation will be completed by the end of May. All functions will then be run through the Lawson ERP system, with the exception of some supply chain operations which will be migrated by the end of 2009.

Readman-Bell said: "The new system should improve the quality of information we are getting about our operations. Retail is a very fast-paced sector and we hope our replenishments will be faster. This will give us the confidence we need to move into new geographical markets."