Paris, July 5, 2007 - Lectra, world leader in integrated technological solutions dedicated to industries that use soft goods, has announced that Marèse has chosen Lectra's PLM offering for the fashion industry. Lectra Fashion PLM will allow Marèse, a French specialist in children’s wear design and retailing, to accelerate the development of its collections, in particular by assuring constantly updated information that can be shared at all times. 

Marèse will benefit from the integration and complementary nature of Lectra’s business applications and its management and organizational tools. Lectra’s pattern-making (Modaris) and marker making (Diamino) software, currently used by Marèse, will be associated with the new Workflow Management and Product Development applications and Kaledo, Lectra’s new design offering.

Founded 60 years ago, Marèse is now a reference in ready-to-wear clothing for children ages 0-to-12, with the brands Marèse, Repetto and Ooxoo. A product team including 15 product managers, designers, graphic designers and pattern makers creates and develops 1,300 new products per year. Manufacturing is mainly subcontracted to Asia and North Africa. 

The company’s goal is to accelerate collections development, set up a fast prototyping process and expand its direct and indirect distribution network.

”Our company is already very well organized and now we’re focusing our efforts on development speed, creativity and the quality of our garments.” said Marèse CEO, Olivier Doolaeghe. “Investing in advanced technology allows us to remain competitive and to satisfy our consumers." 

"We chose Lectra’s technology in order to improve all of our development processes,” he continued. “All of our planning is currently managed with a traditional spreadsheet, which creates problems for updating information and making it available to all the teams involved in development.” 

The Product Development application will help Marèse to centralize and share all product-related information throughout the development process. The company will also have access to this information for monitoring its margins closely and elaborating its sales analyses. 

The Workflow Management application will allow Marèse to pilot all of its collections management processes and accurately monitor a product’s state of progress in each phase. 

This value chain is completed by the implementation of Kaledo Collection and Kaledo Print. 

The new range of Kaledo applications, including Kaledo Collection for fashion design and Kaledo Print for designing printed textiles, provides designers with a visual and virtual environment adapted to their creativity and working mode. The automation of many repetitive tasks lets designers use the precious time saved to test many more creative ideas. 

Truly innovative, Kaledo Collection also makes it possible to structure the creation process and thus facilitate information exchange between the creative teams and their contacts. Design is integrated very early in the collections development process, since information is immediately usable in Lectra’s PLM applications. 

”We’re very pleased to have strengthened our partnership with Marèse,” said Bernard Karmin, Director of Lectra France. “The whole company will benefit from the value chain that our complete solution offers. Taken individually, our solutions already provide immediate gains; and when they are used together, the results are even more impressive.”

About Marese 

Created in 1943, Marese, one of the children’s clothing market leaders, has revolutionnized children’s fashion with its trendy and fun style. Marese offers two collections per year for children aged 0 to 12. Each collection is composed of 450 references for a volume of some two million items per year. 

For more information, please visit www.marese.com. 

About Lectra

Lectra is the world leader in integrated technology solutions that automate, streamline and accelerate product design, development and manufacturing processes for the soft goods industries.  Lectra develops the most advanced specialized software, cutting systems, and provides associated services to a broad array of markets including fashion (apparel, accessories, footwear), automotive (car seats and interiors, airbags), aeronautical, marine, and furniture. In the fashion sector, Lectra's expertise is in optimizing business process through fashion-dedicated PLM (Product Lifecycle Management). This integrated enterprise software covers the entire value chain, from design to manufacturing to managing the collections lifecycle. Lectra serves more than 17,000 customers in over 100 countries with 1,500 employees and $272 million in 2006 revenues. The company is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange).  

For more information, please visit www.lectra.com