Building Scale On Top Of Complexity: Jain Group’s Tech-Driven Strategy

[All images provided by Jain Group]

In partnership with CGS, The Interline charts historic British business Jain Group’s experience using B2B software to achieve further growth. As a leading supplier of baby and children’s clothing, with many moving parts, in an industry currently fraught with uncertainty, Jain Group highlights how technology has enabled them to optimise workflows, efficiently manage workforce expansion, enhance communication, and maintain customer loyalty.

After a turbulent three years, retail is still in a state of unpredictability. However, in times of uncertainty, opportunities often emerge for organisations that are willing and able to invest in the face of uncertainty. Those opportunities exist in different areas of the value chain, and, for a particular type of business whose operations cover a huge amount of process ground, those same opportunities have the potential to stack and deliver compound value.

Founded in 1985, Jain Group is one of those particular types of business: a full-service, multi-model, multinational partner whose process coverage extends from design and sourcing through to direct supply, licensing, and private label development.

Jain Group began as a small family run business supplying babywear and childrenswear to wholesale and independent retail markets in 1985. Over 35 years later, the company has evolved into a fully vertical organisation with numerous strings to its bow. With operations in the UK and US, Jain Group offers a full range of private label services from initial design to manufacturing, and as well as sourcing and supplying retail customers, the company also produces under licence for a brace of recognisable names and intellectual properties.

The business has three divisions: the first, a supplier segment, with customers that include Inditex Group, Costco, TK Maxx and  a number of high street retailers that sell under their own brands. The second division being their licensing business, that has an extensive and ever growing portfolio of licences. These include classic literary titles, mainstream popular characters, and lifestyle and sports brands. The third division is their own private label business, where they have 12 of their own brands that they distribute across 26 different countries.

Despite this expansion, though, the company’s core values have remained largely unchanged since its inception and continue to be a cornerstone of their identity: customer respect and loyalty, and a commitment to creating innovatively designed, quality products.

To simplify this complex business model, Jain Group has essentially an entire microcosm of the fashion value chain existing under its roof. Which means that its multiple companies were able to visualise a wider spectrum of possibilities than narrower organisations, but was also exposed to a broader range of risk than others may have been.

This was something Jain Group felt keenly: its scale and complexity had outgrown the capabilities of its technology ecosystem, making those risks more pronounced, and making those opportunities harder to reach.

“We have a number of entities in the UK, we now have entities in the US, and we have a wide distribution network. Prior to adopting BlueCherry, things were very fragmented, and we were using different solutions for different business units and functions,” says Vivek Jain, Managing Director of Jain Group. “To help manage that, we needed a solution that could centralise all our data and enable us to act on it – facilitating streamlined, global-scale management of what’s become a very complex business.”

To make matters more complicated, post-pandemic (a time when market intelligence and insight became more vital than ever) the teams found visibility into market performance was limited, making it difficult for the product and executive teams to make informed decisions in time to respond to changing market conditions. “At that time, it took two or three people a full working week to pull together the data we needed to decipher the best sellers in the UK versus the US,” says Jain. “But now that’s done in a matter of minutes.”

It was clear that the business required a new support structure for growth – one built on technology – so Mr Jain took the bold step of replacing a significant portion of its legacy technology stack at a time when many organisations were pulling back on new investments.

Wanting comprehensive control of all the different facets of the business, Jain Group opted to implement the full CGS BlueCherry suite to achieve this aim.

“Swapping our outdated technology environment for the BlueCherry suite made accessing critical information so much faster. In contrast with the lengthy and slow process before, we could generate a report and have all of that information in front of is with a few clicks,” explains Jain. “Already, the platform gives me a 360 view of every aspect of our multiple business operations – and then it’s really easy to slice and dice the information how we want. It also allows us unified visibility, accountability, and action across all of the different divisions across all the different brands, and across all the different business units we operate. We truly have everything in one place.”

For Jain Group, the single vendor approach has yielded many benefits. The primary rationale behind the choice was the company’s use of bespoke product language, product hierarchies, and specific attributes that would otherwise have needed to be customised or configured on a per-solution basis. Opting for a separate provider for ERP system integration would have meant a substantial cost escalation – potentially doubling or even tripling expenditure, according to Mr Jain. What’s more, it would have required the involvement of two separate teams to manage integration and interoperability, whereas this entire data architecture work was managed through quick and easy configuration by the CGS team on the organisation’s behalf.

And this consistency between solutions and use cases has also allowed Jain Group to identify issues early and pinpoint areas of vulnerability. “Especially in the current economic climate, the cost of getting things wrong is higher than it’s been in a long time, so no company – especially one with as many different components and companies as we have – can afford to make mistakes or take unnecessary risks. Having a platform that delivers certainty and predictability, as well as giving us the ability to foresee problems has been a major part of our ability to thrive in a difficult environment,” says Mr Jain.

Even in this challenging retail landscape, Jain Group continues to display an intrepid and forward-looking approach, positioning itself for further expansion – but at the same time moving with mindful and deliberate intent. Mr Jain explains: “Growth is very much on our minds now – especially since we have the technology support from CGS. We want to scale headcount, but make sure that we do it in a thoughtful and efficient way, and being able to rely on the information, the functionality, and the capabilities of BlueCherry lets us focus on creating better products and serving our customers better – not on wrestling with disconnected systems.”

To embody this ambition, Jain Group is now actively pursuing licensing agreements that will allow the company to translate its new operational efficiency into closer partnerships and better products for some of the world’s most recognisable names – something Mr Jain attributes in a significant way to the organisations’ partnership with CGS “From the level of support we’ve had from them, and from our deeper understanding of how the platform works, and how we can use its power – and their partnership to advantage – it’s really exciting to know that CGS will be able to accommodate us as we continue to grow.”

Jain Group is always looking for new licensing partners, and imminently shall be announcing collaborations with two international lifestyle brands. 

About our partner:

For nearly 40 years, CGS has enabled global enterprises, regional companies, and government agencies to drive breakthrough performance through business applications, enterprise learning and outsourcing services. CGS is wholly focused on creating comprehensive solutions that meet clients’ complex, multi-dimensional needs and support clients’ most fundamental business activities. Headquartered in New York City, CGS has offices across North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.