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Backstage was chaos. Designers, makeup artists, hairstylists, technicians, and assistants moved around frenetically. Exasperated voices drowned one another out. Carts of clothes, shoes, and accessories rattled and squeaked as they raced among crowded dressing tables. Beautifully sculpted men and preening women prepared for their dramatic onstage entrances. Out on the spotlighted runway, classic sportswear adorned sleek models, who strutted in choreographed unison. Cameras flashed, music thundered, and celebrities peered while fashion mavens cheered Tommy Hilfiger’s spring lineup of art-made-real in fabric.
The glitz of that evening in September 2005 inspired some in the audience to shop. Those who were buying only for themselves or for their select gift recipients could visit the Tommy Hilfiger retail Web site, Tommy.com. There, they could browse and buy these latest creations and, if they chose, could keep on buying through the business-critical holiday shopping season. Others who were in the audience that evening went shopping on a far grander scale. These super-shoppers were buyers for major retailers, and the fashion show inspired them to order through their corporate networks millions of units of Tommy Hilfiger apparel—from shirts and skirts to blouses and blazers—worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Tommy Hilfiger was able to fill the orders, both large and small, because a long chain of business processes worked the way they were supposed to. From designing, manufacturing, and importing products to stocking the warehouses and shipping the boxes, the not-so-glamorous discipline of logistics helped move Tommy Hilfiger’s stylish clothes from the fashion runway onto customers’ bodies after the September unveiling.
But to Eric Singleton, Chief Information Officer(CIO) at Tommy Hilfiger, logistical issues like supply-chain automation and warehouse management are as stimulating as any fashion show. “When we bring knowledge from the manufacturing world, which is my background, to change a process in the apparel business, I can see a huge impact very quickly,” says Singleton. “That’s the exciting part for me. Changing a business is one of my great passions.”
Singleton demonstrated that passion earlier in 2005 by using information technology to change his employer’s business. He put his reputation and career on the line to execute a daring, ambitious project—relaunching his company’s retail Web presence and implementing extensive changes to the company’s computer systems—over a very short period. In effect, these changes ignited the replacement ofthe company’s entire IT infrastructure.
Singleton had to complete the first phase of that project in time for the spring lineup in September, a deadline that posed extraordinary pressure. If he had not succeeded, many jobs (his in particular) and perhaps millions of dollars might have been lost. “I cannot speculate about that potential disaster,” says Singleton. “But I will tell you that the project was a bold move, a bold push internally to commit to such a tight schedule and to completely abandon the company’s previous IT systems. What would have happened if my team had failed? Well, you always have a ‘honeymoon period’ during which the company will support you. After that, if you botch up, then out you go.” Fortunately, Singleton’s bold moves have usually worked out well.
Singleton began his career as a programmer. “I started out as a software engineer in the early days, the very early days, many years ago,” says Singleton. But he discovered a talent for managing large information systems and the people who run them. His first position as an IT director was for a state government; however, government didn’t move fast enough for him. “I made the move to the commercial sector, which more closely matched my talents and passion,” he adds. After several years as CIO of global engineering companies, Singleton started a successful IT consulting firm of his own.
Singleton found a fondness for fashion as his consulting company increasingly provided services for fashion and luxury product companies. “When I went out on my own, I started focusing on the fashion industry,” he says. “What’s exciting about that business sector is that it has typically fallen behind thetimes with state-of-the-art IT, so it provides the opportunity for remarkable change—not just two or three percentage points of productivity, but sweeping changes with big results.” Initially brought in as a consultant forTommy Hilfiger, Singleton was offered the CIO post instead—and a great opportunity to reinvent IT at the company.
Singleton joined Tommy Hilfiger in late 2004, bringing along his passionately held philosophy that only robust, well-integrated technology offers the industrial-scale efficiencies that modern companies need to compete and grow. One of his first assignments was to substantially update the Tommy.com retail Web site, but as Singleton explored the project, he saw opportunities for much more extensive improvements. In particular, he believed that the computers that oversee critical business processes such as manufacturing, distribution, invoicing, and inventory management—known collectively as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system—would also benefit from updating or even outright replacement.
“As consumers, we window-shop and we seea beautiful array of designs and fabulous clothing, but behind the scenes, there are veryclear processes that result in those products,” Singleton explains. “It starts with concepts and then moves to design, to the creation of samples, to selection and production, and eventually to distribution and retail sales. However, unlike the automotive, aircraft, or high-tech industries, for example, the processes in the apparel industry can be fairly inefficient.”
Singleton’s plan was to use sound engineering principles to update his new employer’s processes enterprisewide and then to use information technology to accelerate those processes. “Once you’ve gotten to that stage, you can tune the process to maximize the velocity of information as it moves through the company. That, in a nutshell, is the IT strategy of Tommy Hilfiger,” he says.
Or rather, that became the strategy after Singleton campaigned for it.
Tommy Hilfiger was eager to update the Tommy.com retail site, but the company had not asked Singleton to execute more radical plans. “Upper management urgently pushed to revitalize Tommy.com in time for the upcoming shopping season,” says Singleton. “My experience has taught me that when you’re brought into a company and given a mandate to make something better, the top executives are probably feeling pressure at that moment, so they’re amenable to new ideas. That’s the best time to make large-scale changes. I like to move quickly and on many fronts before sentiments shift. I’ve had the opportunity to work for some lightning-fast organizations and some legendary people, and those experiences shaped my view as a leader to strike fast and be bold—but not careless—and to proceed based on facts.”
Singleton wanted to apply the efficiencies ofinformation technology far beyond the ITdepartment. In his mind, updating Tommy.com, implementing a new ERP system, adopting more automated business processes generally, and even rolling out new computer programs onto employee desktops were all just several phases of one strategy. “Prior to my arrival, many viewed the purpose of the IT department as only to keep the machines running,” says Singleton. “IT was stuffed in a box, in the back room, because that’s how the apparel industry has traditionally operated. However, I knew that updating Tommy.com could set a precedent; its success could inspire greater achievements. Tommy.com was a microcosm of an overall strategy to push the whole company forward 10 years.”
At Singleton’s urging, Tommy Hilfiger standardized its retail Web site on Microsoft® database, operating system, commerce, and communication software. “I chose Microsoft products because they have an inherent architectural core that I can count on and that our developers can count on,” says Singleton. “On the IT side, these products provide an environment in which robust tools can be integrated very quickly.” And for this project, speed was essential.
The new Tommy.com went live in mid-July 2005. This gave Tommy Hilfiger employees two months to add clothing and other products to the site so that it would be fully stocked for the formal unveiling in September. “It was a success,” says Singleton. “It’s fair to say that as a result of the new Tommy.com going live when it did, it made a big difference in how Tommy Hilfiger was able to compete in the 2005 shopping season.”
The success of this phase of the project also allowed Eric Singleton to keep his job—and continue making his bold moves.
Corporate culture changed in response to the new technology products that Tommy Hilfiger implemented. For example, as an early step in deploying Microsoft server software, Singleton enabled Microsoft Office Outlook® Web Access, a program that enables employees to check e-mail over the Internet even when they’re out of the office. “I knew it was going to be great because e-mail is pivotal, but I don’t think I knew how great,” says Singleton. “It’s hard to describe the impact that one change had. We sent a clear signal that we could affect the entire organization overnight.” He followed this development with a string of productivity-enhancing programs, upgrades to desktop computers, and a corporate intranet.
With so many changes coming so quickly, corporate culture-shock might have been a problem; however, Singleton made efforts to minimize employee frustration by adopting consistent products. “You have to consider the employees,” says Singleton. “You have to make it easy for them. Tightly integrated products are easier to use, so our end users are more likely to grasp them intuitively. This is important because we wanted people to quickly adopt a wide range of software that would touch nearly every aspect of the company’s operations. Philosophically, that integration is what drove me to choose Microsoft.”
Next, Singleton tackled several logistical processes. “Logistics and supply chain improvements are central to what we’re doing,” says Singleton. “From my point of view, building a company’s computer systems is just like building a house: You think about how that house needs to function conceptually, you create a blueprint, and you put a foundation in place. Then, when you actually start building the house and assembling the pieces, everything rests on that foundation.” For the foundation of its business operations, Tommy Hilfiger chose Microsoft Business Solutions–Axapta® (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™ business software), a multilanguage, multicurrency enterprise resource planning solution with core strengths in manufacturing and e-business. Tommy Hilfiger built on this foundation with components for warehouse management; design, development, and production processes; point-of-sale systems; and data gathering (also called business intelligence).
Some of the components that Singleton added had to be created internally or purchased from third-party companies that write software specifically for the apparel industry. These components were developed on the Microsoft .NET Framework, an integral component of theWindows® operating system for building and running software applications and Web services. Singleton selected the .NET Framework as the basis for these components because it allows many different programs to work together and exchange information.
Another bold move followed. With the foundation and added components in place, Tommy Hilfiger was ready to have disparate business processes connected through information technology. “This is where it gets really fun,” Singleton explains enthusiastically. “For the first time ever, Tommy Hilfiger will be able to produce products in a digital environment. We will be able to design a garment in three dimensions on a workstation; create a functional, two-dimensional fabric pattern;and send the pattern electronically to our production system and then to our factories in Asia, Latin America, and beyond. We’ll be able to make samples, change them, and decide whether to put them into production.”
As a whole, Tommy Hilfiger clearly benefits from automating its business processes, but what about ordinary employees doing day-to-day work? Singleton believes that the new Microsoft-based systems will enable employees to communicate better. “Communication across any group is essential to maximizing productivity,” says Singleton. “My job is to open the lines of communication by making intuitive communication tools such as Windows, the Microsoft Office System, and Windows SharePoint® Services available to employees across the organization. Communication should be a seamless, effortless process: Employees just express their thoughts to an audience of one or of many. When that happens, employees experience less frustration, making them happier and more productive.”
Apparel companies compete aggressively. The industry is replete with popular brands from which consumers can choose high-quality clothing at good prices. To succeed, companies need not only beautiful designs, but also quick responsiveness to a volatile and fickle market. Singleton is confident that his IT changes are helping his company deliver great-looking fashions to market faster and more efficiently than ever before. “I do believe that processes play a vital role in the success of our business,” says Singleton. “Making these processes more efficient gives us a genuine competitive advantage against everybody else.”
Singleton measures the success of his big project both numerically and anecdotally. “We’re seeing improvement in classic metrics; however, the key measures are, without a doubt, the stories of employees whose performance and satisfaction have improved because of the enabling technologies that we’ve given them,” Singleton says. “For example, we did something this year that we’ve never done before: Tommy Hilfiger representatives brought actual PCs to market so that retail buyers could have more interaction with our buying process. So far, the reps have gotten very strong, positive feedback on these initiatives.”
Recognition of the project’s success goes all the way to the top. Tommy Hilfiger himself, the Principal Designer and Honorary Chairman of the Board of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, recently said, “Running the entire business on Windows will help us better employ our most valuable asset: the great people who work here. We believe that resourcefulness is the key to value and excellence. [Working with] Microsoft will help employees reach their full potential, thus enabling our business as a whole to do the same.”
Singleton echoes this sentiment, though he expresses it with characteristic boldness. “Tommy Hilfiger Corporation has the opportunity to break new ground in the apparel and accessories world,” he concludes. “We have worked vigorously to promote this idea. The world is changing, and it’s changing very fast. But our employees are going to not only catch up to their friends who work for some [high-tech] company, but also wave at those friends as we race past them. We’re going to the leading edge, which, frankly, is where I like to be.”
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