Primark selects CADS’ Retail Services for supply chain efficiencies
In 2019, leading fashion retailer Primark selected CADS Retail Services for a two-year project to enhance productivity and reduce costs in store planning and sales floor equipment procurement.
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Architectural specs & standards portal
Primark selects CADS’ Retail Services to deliver supply chain efficiencies in a two stage, two year project for their store planning and sales floor equipment procurement process.
Stage one
The first stage of Primark’s two-year project was the creation of ‘Primark Guru’. Primark Guru is an architectural specification and standards portal developed and delivered by Prosper, CADS’ design and architectural practice.
Working in close partnership with Primark’s internal store development team and CADS’ retail planning experts, the portal was built using the Elecosoft IconSystem. The platform centralises and manages design standards across the retailer’s global estate.
Prosper’s 30-Year partnership with Primark
With over 30 years of experience and more than 100 Primark stores delivered, Prosper’s deep understanding of brand and operational standards made it the supplier of choice for this major retail programme.
Creating a unified store development environment
The second phase of the Primark Guru project to create a unified environment for the store development process. By linking the architectural specifications, equipment manual and store plans Guru enables and ensures design compliance for Primark’s brand worldwide.
The architectural specs and standards portal is used across the retailer’s diverse and dispersed supply chain to ensure consistent adherence to design and equipment specifications during the fit-out of its 370 stores across 13 countries.
CADS' Retail Services improve productivity and drive cost savings
Phase two of the project was to link the Primark Guru specification’s database to StoreSpace® software from CADS’ sister company, StoreSpace Insights.
Comprehensive store planning capabilities
This created a comprehensive store planning solution to enable Primark’s store planners to use the equipment profiles from Guru to plan their store. Primark also wanted the ability once a store was planned, to quickly and accurately run a report of all the display equipment needed for that store, down to component level detail.
The automation of store planning and equipment reporting
Working in partnership with Prosper and Primark’s Equipment and Specification Manager, Quentin Bossom, CADS Retail Store Planning Team was able to identify the best way of integrating the equipment specifications held in Guru with the StoreSpace® software. The integration process was bolstered by CADS depth of practical experience in retail planning.
Pete Humm, Head of Retail says –
“As a long-standing supplier of architectural design services to Primark, we were delighted to work alongside the team to join the dots of existing data sources, resulting in the automation of the store planning and counting process.”
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Tell me moreNow we can quickly and efficiently automatically count and report on space usage within Primark stores, including linear merchandising capacities at store and floor level.
Joining the dots between equipment and planning
By joining the dots between the comprehensive specs and standards data with the space planning, StoreSpace® software provides a streamlined and rigorous equipment call-off process which previously took 4 hours to manually count. The process also means that the team does not deliver excess equipment to the site, eliminating the significant cost of returns.
In-store access to floor plans and equipment profiles
Guru overcomes international language barriers and internal jargon. It does this by connecting all equipment through the universally understood store floor plan.
Store staff can use this to double-check equipment details while in-store. They can click through from the floorplan to the equipment profiles held on Guru, on a tablet or smartphone.
In 2020 Primark Guru was recognised within the broader industry as groundbreaking innovation and was a finalist in the 2020 Construction Computing Awards in the collaboration project of the year category.
Model stores are the future
CADS’ Retail hosted workshops with the Primark team and architects to simplify the process and fully train all parties on the system. Primark Guru is the central location for AutoCAD floor plans, StoreSpace® planning tools and instore display equipment specification sheets, all in a single accessible system.
It brings together essential information such as architectural construction details for both front and back of house areas, along with specifications for retail fixtures, equipment, and signage.
Primark’s smart digital working continues with the goal of using StoreSpace® model store functionality to enhance the planning process. This approach will move beyond central floor equipment to incorporate the details of the architectural shell.
Commissioning CADS' multi disciplinary retail services
CADS has delivered laser scanned measured surveys and as-built retail surveys for Primark’s store acquisition and refurbishment projects for over 10 years, delivering accurate 2D CAD drawings to support design and planning. Since 2019, we’ve expanded our partnership to include retail space planning services, helping Primark optimise store layouts and improve supply chain efficiency across their retail estate.
Primark streamlines store development with four integrated CADS Retail Services
Through this partnership, Primark now uses four CADS Retail services – “Primark Guru” architectural specification portal by Prosper Design, CADS Retail planning expertise, CADS Surveys retail measured survey services and StoreSpace® software. This centralises design standards, automates store planning, and accurately forecasts equipment needs.
Quentin Bossom, Equipment and Specification Manager, Primark
We knew there had to be a way of linking together our equipment specifications and architectural standard details with our floor planning processes. Our internal teams working with CADS Retail team and Prosper has allowed this to happen. Now we can quickly and efficiently automatically count and report on space usage within Primark stores. This includes linear merchandising capacities at store and floor level.
Our procurement teams can use a simple web-based reporting tool. The tool provides a component level call-off directly from our store plans via an online portal. This has saved an incredible amount of time, cost, waste and improved accuracy for us throughout the planning and loose equipment procurement process. Overall this has contributed to the creation of profitable store layouts.
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