Kinco Selects Centric PLM™ for a Perfect Fit

Venerable glove manufacturing company boosts agility with PLM

CAMPBELL, Calif., May 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Kinco, the glove manufacturing company, has selected Centric Software^®'s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home décor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Based in Portland, Oregon and founded in 1975, Kinco is a second-generation family-owned company that produces premium gloves designed for everything from gardening, to snowmobiling, to thermal work gloves. They provide high quality and innovation at a fair price.

Nicholas Pai is in Purchasing and Sourcing at Kinco. He describes the business for those not directly in it. "Making gloves is surprisingly technical. Shoes have a standard size measurement for the interior of the shoe. Pants have standardized sizing. Gloves can be trickier because each piece has to be hand sewn, which a lot of people don't know." He continues to explain that there are also challenges in the materials used to make gloves. "There are simple cotton string knit gloves, nitrile and latex dipped gloves, leather gloves, and synthetic leather gloves. Finding consistency in sizing across the entire line is a challenge."

The company has 30 – 40 vendors. They make about 180 styles of gloves and have at least two suppliers for each style of glove in different countries to be prepared for disruptions. Pai says, "We source from six different countries. We have to have shipment timings, production output timings, different Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) codes for different materials, and glove types. It can get overwhelming. For example, the US decides to do a 25% tariff on China. Okay, how do we quickly find pricing alternatives with our other factories that could make these gloves? We need to answer these questions to be quicker, more agile, and also have a place where all of our material information lives."

Pai felt that getting a PLM solution was inevitable. "I think that every company in our size range trying to grow kind of hits a point where you just have to use a PLM." Kinco searched for providers and in the process, interviewed and did demos with six suppliers. "We've gone through enough experiences with software companies to realize that service to get you to where you need to be to run, is even more important than the software itself, sometimes." He continues, "In the end we went with Centric, because of its stability, its size, but also the really, really organized approach to onboarding. Currently, everybody in sourcing feels like they're drowning, especially with the troubles that we're having this year with things out of our control. We really needed to have a partnership with a company where they shouldered some of the onboarding work to keep us on track, which is really important."

Kinco expects numerous benefits from Centric PLM, like having all material and product information in one digital hub, but there were features that were non-negotiable. Says Pai, "We decided on three main necessities that we had to have: a costing tool, a tech pack tool, and a vendor scoring system. Centric had them and we said well, that price is worth these three things that it can do." He maintains, "When companies are onboarding PLM, I would tend to believe they usually do it when they should have done it a year or two ago, and they're at a place where they're feeling overwhelmed. The Centric product is a great product, but I think the support Centric brings is better than every other company that I interviewed. And that was the selling feature for us specifically."

Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software says, "I am delighted that Kinco has chosen Centric. We are humbled by the kind words about our company that Nicholas Pai has expressed; we pride ourselves on providing the highest level of service. We work closely with each of our customers—due to input from partners like Kinco, all our version updates are market-driven and based on real-world situations."

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Kinco (www.kinco.com)

Kinco has been making quality work, safety, garden, & thermal gloves since 1975. We are a dedicated, second-generation family-owned company that produces quality work gloves, and stands behind every product we make.

Featuring solid leather, knitted shells with latex or nitrile coating, warm thermal lining, strong Kevlar^® thread, waterproof PVC coating, 3M™ Scotchlite reflective material, and touch screen fingertips, quality is our top priority. We take great pride in setting high standards for our products, such as double stitched seams for heavy use areas on certain styles, reinforced leather or Kevlar^® materials, using

AquaNOT!^® waterproof liner instead of just a waterproof coating, MIRAX2 sturdy synthetic leather on the KincoPro™ Series, and using multiple cut resistant fibers for the Cutflector™ styles. Not only do we ensure that every style has the appropriate grade and thickness of leather, weight of fabric, and thumb styles to provide an ergonomic fit and longer wear, we also ensure the sizes of our gloves are carefully monitored for accurate and generous sizing.

The staff at Kinco is dedicated to you! We are enthusiastic, innovative, and passionate; and we work as a team to WOW you with our brilliant and understanding interactions. We stand behind our outstanding product and hope to create a healthy business relationship centered on our excellent glove program and our commitment to you.

Centric Software (www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software^® provides a Product Concept to Consumer Digital Transformation Platform for fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor, consumer electronics and consumer goods including cosmetics and personal care and food and beverage. Centric's flagship Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform, Centric PLM™, delivers enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, quality and product portfolio optimization innovations specifically for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric Visual Innovation Platform (CVIP) offers highly visual digital board experiences for collaboration and decision-making. Centric Retail Planning is an innovative, cloud-native solution powered by Armonica Retail S.R.L., that delivers an end-to-end retail planning process designed to maximize retail business performance. Centric Software pioneered mobility, introducing the first mobile apps for PLM, and is widely known for connectivity to dozens of other enterprise systems including ERP, DAM, PIM, e-com, planning and more as well as creative tools such as Adobe^® Illustrator and a host of 3D CAD connectors. Centric's innovations are 100% market-driven with the highest user adoption rate and fastest time to value in the industry. All Centric innovations shorten time to market, boost product innovation and reduce costs. 

Centric Software is majority-owned by Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions. 

Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition, including being named by Red Herring to its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015 and 2016. Centric also received various excellence awards from Frost & Sullivan in 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2021. 

Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software Inc. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 

SOURCE Centric Software