Arena Dives into AI-Powered Forecasting and Assortment Strategies with Centric Planning

Centric Software® is pleased to announce that arena has selected Centric Planning™ to drive forecasting precision and global merchandising agility. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell, and replenish products such as fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home, and related goods like cosmetics & personal care, as well as multi-category retail to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

The move builds on Arena’s 10-year relationship with Centric Software, which began with the adoption of Centric PLM™. The combination of PLM and planning will give arena greater cross-functional alignment, transparency across teams, and visibility from product development to market execution.

With a product portfolio spanning competitive swimwear, accessories, and apparel, Arena manages more than 10,000 SKUs per season across B2B and B2C channels. As the company expanded its collections and geographic footprint, Arena needed a better way to localize assortments, reduce manual workload, and improve planning visibility.

“As we grow, the business is becoming bigger and the variables more complex,” says Giorgio Farinelli, Chief Operations Officer at arena. “Centric Planning is the natural next step in our evolution to improve the company, the process, and the analysis we need to do.”

Prior to selecting Centric Planning, Arena relied heavily on spreadsheets and static reporting tools to manage demand planning and assortment decisions. This limited visibility created operational bottlenecks during high-stakes forecasting periods.

“We work with 1GB+ spreadsheets and inserting a formula can take up to five minutes,” says Alessandro Astuti, Head of Planning & Allocation. “It’s frustrating and impacts the team’s focus and motivation.”

arena’s team sees Centric Planning as essential to improving early forecast accuracy—a critical step for optimizing production timelines with suppliers across Europe, Africa, and Asia.

“If we can gain even 10% better accuracy on the first forecast using Centric Planning, it would be a great success,” says Ettore Biafora, Head of Merchandising and Supply Chain Projects at arena. “The more accurate we are early on, the better it is for the collection development and the entire value chain. We can avoid development costs, delays in shipping, and improve the quality of service we deliver to customers.”

Centric Planning will also accelerate Arena’s strategic shift toward more localized and channel-specific collections. By replacing manual Excel-based analysis with an integrated system, the merchandising team will have faster access to insights needed to make timely decisions in fast-moving market conditions.

“We used to spend hours running spreadsheet analyses,” Biafora explains. “With Centric Planning, we expect to move from one hour to five minutes—and that makes a huge difference when deciding what collections go to market.”

“I like to say Centric Planning is like a third arm that will help me with my daily job,” says Biafora. “Instead of battling with Excel, now we have something that can power our process and make it faster and more accurate." 

“We’re thrilled that Arena has chosen Centric Planning to transform its assortment management,” said Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “By leveraging real-time analytics and seamless system integrations, Arena will gain the clarity and agility needed to proactively make smarter, faster decisions.”