WhichPLM founder discusses PLM, data management, AI and collaboration

AI-generated summary

PLM remains fashion’s most mature technology category, but The Interline argues that its expanding enterprise footprint and emerging AI capabilities are renewing its importance. Long embedded in major brands’ and retailers’ operations, PLM provides the product-data foundation for digital transformation. The article presents it as both an established operational backbone and a platform with substantial potential to generate additional value through broader connectivity and new ways of accessing information. PLM’s original promise was to create a single, durable, shareable product record covering style data, bills of materials, technical specifications, materials, colours, sizing, supplier scorecards and sampling workflows. Many large brands realised that vision through implementations that predate today’s dominant software-as-a-service and cloud-native models. Others have undertaken second or third PLM projects after earlier efforts fell short. The article acknowledges those disappointments but argues that companies’ continued commitment to the category demonstrates how difficult it is to operate without a single source of truth. Vendor claims illustrate PLM’s scale and widening scope. Bamboo Rose says its platform manages more than $1 trillion in retail goods annually, supporting planning, merchandising, design and development; its TotalPLM positioning also encompasses sourcing and supply chain activities. Centric Software advertises more than 13,000 brands using PLM as a foundation for enterprise ambitions, describing a “concept to commerce” reach. Its portfolio extends from core PLM to visual boards and AI-powered product experience management, or PXM. DeSL promotes a “concept to shelf” approach that replaces spreadsheets, emails and disconnected systems with centralised collaboration and decision-making, linking fashion-specific PLM with product information management, supplier management and colour workflows. The commercial case for these broader capabilities is reinforced by global conflict, changing consumer behaviour and volatile commodity prices. Research conducted by The Interline with Fashion By Informa identified profitability, risk mitigation and the ability to capture new market and margin opportunities as fashion professionals’ leading priorities. The article connects those priorities to PLM’s data, established practices and enterprise integrations. Decisions affecting margins and growth increasingly cross traditional system boundaries, making live product information relevant to early assortment planning and pricing as well as later channel allocation, content creation and consumer experiences. Advisory firm Kalypso is presented as supporting this broader role for PLM through services grounded in decades of implementation and digital-transformation experience. AI adds urgency to that expansion. While the article acknowledges that natural-language interfaces, MCP/API connectivity and agentic AI may not benefit every software category equally, it argues that PLM is a particularly strong candidate because it combines mission-critical information with consequential decisions across multiple functions. The Interline considers this an especially useful setting for a copilot, although the expected benefits remain an editorial assessment rather than demonstrated performance results. Adjacent providers also contribute: Made2Flow’s links to PLM allow design, development and sourcing users to reference and act on lifecycle impact data within relevant workflows. Early findings from The Interline’s 2026 AI survey suggest that fashion professionals see the most mature AI applications at the beginning and end of the product journey—in creative inspiration and design, and in content creation and marketing. The article identifies an opportunity between those endpoints, where decisions depend on supplier information, costs, calendars, compliance records and certificates. Its illustrative use case involves a non-traditional PLM user asking an integrated assistant which styles under development use fabric from a tariff-exposed supplier, then identifying tested, certified alternatives and assessing their effects on margins and schedules. This is presented as a grounded contemporary application, not a documented customer deployment. The article concludes that the central question for brands and retailers is no longer whether they need PLM, but which platforms offer suitable next-generation capabilities and connectivity across the full product lifecycle. Digital Product Passport regulations and difficult market conditions strengthen the case for accessible, consistent product information. For both first-time adopters and companies replacing legacy systems, the opportunity lies in extending a mature foundation rather than abandoning its original purpose.