Luxury Fashion Goods Wholesaler Scales its Hong Kong Business with NetSuite OneWorld

Press Release 

Lfplaza Grows from a Startup to a $300 Million HKD Business Across Southeast Asia in Just Five Years

Hong Kong—Aug 31, 2017

Oracle NetSuite, one of the world’s leading providers of cloud-based financials / ERP, HR, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that Lfplaza Group, a wholesale distributor of luxury and designer fashion clothing, bags, shoes and accessories, has scaled its business dramatically since deploying NetSuite OneWorld shortly after its launch in 2012. Based in Hong Kong, the company relies on NetSuite for financials, inventory management, CRM and marketing, as well as multi-subsidiary and multi-currency management for the Hong Kong, Australian and U.S. dollars, Chinese renminbi, British pound, Japanese yen, New Taiwan dollar and the Euro. NetSuite’s unified cloud business management platform has given Lfplaza scalability and agility as its business has soared from the startup phase to $300 million HKD (about $38.4 million USD) in revenue in just five years.

Starting out, Lfplaza had in place an entry-level accounting system from a Chinese software vendor. After evaluating several competing solutions, Lfplaza quickly settled on NetSuite OneWorld as an ideal fit for its objectives of an integrated system that could support rapid growth. NetSuite OneWorld today powers end-to-end processes for Lfplaza’s sales of goods from more than 100 brands to a network of over 600 wholesale clients and about 40 regional multi-brand boutiques across Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

“NetSuite forms the core backbone on which we’ve rapidly grown our business,” said Jack Tsao, Lfplaza CEO. “We’ve been able to scale dramatically without adding too many staff. We’re very glad we started early with NetSuite as it gave us room to grow.”

As a cloud-based system, NetSuite enables Lfplaza to avoid the high capital expenditures of servers and software needed with traditional on-premise business systems. Ease of use, efficient workflows and high visibility into mission-critical data have allowed the 100+-person company to minimise administrative and operational costs and instead focus new hires on revenue-driving sales and marketing activities. Easy access to NetSuite across Lfplaza’s 10 wholesale stores, its head office in Hong Kong and three subsidiaries (Hong Kong, China and Macau) enables the company to ensure staff work from the same set of timely, reliable data.

“The advantages with NetSuite are felt across the business,” Tsao said. “We would be hiring more staff if we didn’t have NetSuite. It’s definitely been a very worthwhile investment.”

Implementation and optimisation by NetSuite Solution Provider Fern Limited, in Hong Kong, has helped Lfplaza make the most of its NetSuite OneWorld solution as usage evolved from inventory to accounting and CRM. Benefits that Lfplaza has realised with NetSuite include:

·         Real-time inventory management. NetSuite gives Lfplaza real-time visibility into tens of thousands of SKUs, particularly important as new products are constantly added. It also helps Lfplaza account for subtle variations in products, such as shiny vs. matte leather for the same handbag.

·         Business reporting. Lfplaza makes extensive use of NetSuite’s reporting and analytics capabilities to track revenue and product sales by brand, type of goods, gender, regions and other dimensions. Insights derived are vital to Lfplaza’s ability to adapt the business and product lineup as needed.

·         Agility in a fast-paced market. NetSuite has helped Lfplaza achieve business agility, better manage brand and customer partnerships, and optimise inventory and pricing in the fast-paced and rapidly changing luxury fashion market.

·         Multi-currency, multi-subsidiary management. NetSuite OneWorld lets Lfplaza easily transact in currencies including Hong Kong, Australian and U.S. dollars, Chinese renminbi, British pound, Japanese yen, New Taiwan dollar and the Euro, and manage three subsidiaries with efficient financial consolidation.

·         CRM capabilities. NetSuite CRM gives Lfplaza sales staff a unified record of all customer account, interaction and order history information to help drive sales and provide a superior customer experience.

“The fashion inventory moves very fast, with increasing velocity and sophistication every year,” Tsao said. “With NetSuite OneWorld, it’s very easy to adapt, customise processes and stay current, exploring all the business channels and marketing opportunities out there so we can continue to scale.”

The case study put the workforce at 120 but during the interview the CEO said it was 60. Not sure which is correct.

Contact Info

Suzanne Myerson
Oracle
+61 414 101 583
suzanne.myerson@oracle.com