On a steady growth trajectory since inception, ADDIX Sportswear is literally built for speed. It manufactures all of its products onsite, where its sublimated process includes printing, transferring, cutting, and sewing plain white fabric into innovative apparel designs.

“The major difference between ourselves and our competitors is that we do it all under one roof,” said Jarrod Whaley, Vice President of Factory Performance Teams, “whereas most of the industry outsources production overseas.”

Keeping its operations under one roof also helps ADDIX Sportswear adapt quickly to business shifts and take advantage of new opportunities. In March 2020, for instance, the company was quick to react and adapt amid the COVID-19 pandemic by introducing MEDDIX, a manufacturer of custom PPE wear to serve the healthcare, institutional food, retail, school sectors, etc.

As demand for PPE grew and supplies dwindled, ADDIX stepped up to the plate and started producing face masks, face shields, face gaiters, and other PPE products for its customers. As part of that mission, the company made more than 500,000 facemasks, gowns, shields, and related items.

After years of using roughly 20 different software platforms plus a homegrown arrangement that was heavily reliant on Google Spreadsheets, ADDIX Sportswear went in search of a unified, cloud-based solution that would support its growing business.

“We wanted to be a bigger company and expand into multiple different, strategically-placed locations,” said Whaley. “To achieve that goal, we needed a system that could handle that growth and scale.”

The company also wanted to get all of its leaders and managers working from the same data playbook, versus bringing their own spreadsheets, key performance indicators (KPIs), and business metrics to their weekly leadership meetings.

“We all had our own metrics to gather and present, and those numbers came out of the multiple different systems we were using,” Whaley recalls. “We’d print them out, bring them to the meetings, post them on the wall, and go over them as a team to see how we were doing.”

This approach not only consumed much time and energy, but it also was extremely inefficient (and not always accurate). “If we were meeting on Wednesdays, we’d  have to start the collection process on Monday,” Whaley said. “By the time it was posted on the wall and being discussed, the data was already two days old.”   

Ready for a change, ADDIX Sportswear began looking for a unified, cloud-based software solution that it could use to run its manufacturing operations, customer relationship management (CRM), financials, and ecommerce storefront and backend.

It considered NetSuite, Prodsmart, Katana, and various homegrown options before selecting NetSuite Cloud ERP. “NetSuite checked just about all of the boxes,” said Whaley, “and definitely more boxes than the other software options did.”

Today, ADDIX Sportswear is using NetSuite to handle all of its manufacturing processes and CRM needs. ERP Success Partners developed several customizations for the company, including a mass completions functionality that allows operators and supervisors complete multiple work orders with the push of a single button.

“Going to every single work order and having to enter the completions individually would have been a huge time suck for employees,” Whaley explained. “Automating the mass completions process has had a major, positive impact on our productivity and efficiency.”

Whaley said ERP Success Partners also provided extensive support throughout the implementation process. “The ERP Success Partners team was awesome; they met with us every day for 2-hour sessions to go through training, user adoption, and other aspects of the setup,” said Whaley. “It was a grind, and they absolutely met our scheduling needs.”

With an eye on implementing SuiteCommerce sometime in 2022, ADDIX Sportswear is enjoying the benefits of having a single database for leaders and managers to work from. “Instead of posting metrics for our leadership team to see where we’re winning or losing, we all have it right at our fingertips on a real-time dashboard,” said Whaley.