Perry Ellis International Discusses Innovation

Gina Avila, the Executive Vice President of Design and Merchandising, and Joan Kolski, the Senior Vice President of Merchandising for Perry Ellis International, visited Friday’s Retail Seminar class to talk about the history of Perry Ellis International and its culture of innovation. Their focus as a company is to offer men’s and women’s clothing, many of their most notable brands tied to golf attire featuring Callaway and athletic brands like Penguin. Both Gina and Joan spoke about the company’s commitment to the worldwide issue of fast fashion and the pollution it causes in our environment. One of their solutions was to change the way they operated by designing in 3-D rather than 2-D like they used to. They now operate in this 3-D space designing apparel for fit without having to create actual samples and wasting fabrics. In the past, they sketched their designs and then created tangible samples using patterns that had to be manually developed by the production team. This created waste, especially when they had to alter designs. Additionally, the shipping costs of getting samples into their offices were in the millions which are now negated since going digital. Although the company uses live models in a limited way, they rely heavily on the digital avatar, allowing them to cut down on most of their alterations before they ever even make a sample. PEI has switched to digital catalogs to send to their vendors as well. They said they saved over a million dollars in paper and ink costs by switching along with the benefit of becoming a more sustainable company. Finally, Gina discussed how the Metaverse is the future of retailing and the current impact on their company. Perry Ellis International plans on creating designs that people could use to dress their avatars in the Metaverse. They believe that it is important for retailers to evolve like this to get ahead of the curve.