Leading Publication Recognizes Otabo Fine Custom Fit Shoes as the Progressive Manufacturer of the Year
SAN MATEO, Calif. and NEW ORLEANS – March 16, 2005 – NetSuite, Inc., today announced that NetSuite e-commerce customer Otabo Custom Fit Shoes has been named the Progressive Manufacturer of the Year by Managing Automation, a leading manufacturing publication in the industry. Otabo, a fast-growing shoe manufacturer that produces custom-fit footwear, was chosen ahead of six other finalists for its demonstrated mastery of the new set of core competencies and disciplines set forth by Managing Automation (for more information about the award, please visit http://www.managingautomation.com/maonline/magazine/read.jspx?id=2588696&page=1).
One of the keys to Otabo's success is the technology that enables the company to do what was impossible before. Otabo, at the time of its launch in March 2004, standardized its shoe manufacturing and retail business on NetSuite. In fact, the company uses the full array of NetSuite features, which includes sales, marketing, customer relationship management, inventory control, kits-and-assemblies, shipping, ecommerce and financials.
As a Web-based application, NetSuite enables efficient communications between Otabo's headquarters and manufacturing plant in Pompano Beach, Fla., and its retail partners throughout the nation. All of Otabo's retail locations are linked to the company's Florida headquarters, facilitating order processing, customer service, and communications with retail partners. New sales locations can be quickly integrated with the manufacturing facility, no matter where they are located.
Otabo, which was honored today at the Managing Automation Progressive Manufacturing Summit & Awards event in New Orleans, is featured in the March 2005 issue of Managing Automation. A panel of Managing Automation editors and manufacturing experts evaluated nominations based on the new set of core competencies or disciplines, which includes mastery of each of the following: business model, innovation, customer, supply chain, data and integration, and education and training.
"Without NetSuite, we could not have launched our operation as effectively," said Howard Shaffer, founder and president of Otabo Custom Fit Shoes. "Our manufacturing processes are designed to be very scalable, so that we can easily grow from producing 300 pairs to 30,000 pairs a day. Not unlike our manufacturing capabilities, NetSuite is also very scalable. Because we're relying on a single source of information that scales whether we have nine stores or 900, we are expanding the company rapidly."
For eight years, the men and women of Otabo have been working to create, collect and invent the technologies necessary to bring shoe making and the customer together again. Combining technologies from other industries, other countries, and from its own invention and design, Otabo has built a unique process for delivering the finest custom shoes personally engineered for its customers – one shoe for the left foot, another for the right. For more information about Otabo, visit www.otabo.com.
"NetSuite is designed to maximize efficiencies across the enterprise and provide our customers with the most advanced business software application available," said Zach Nelson, president and CEO of NetSuite. "Otabo's win today confirms NetSuite's ability to bring companies to a level of success unavailable to them with other business applications."
NetSuite enables companies to manage all key business operations in a single, integrated system, which includes customer relationship management; order management and fulfillment; inventory management; finance; ecommerce and Web site management; and employee productivity. NetSuite is delivered as an on-demand service, so there is no hardware to procure, no large, up-front license fee, and no complex set-ups. Finally, NetSuite's patent-pending "real-time dashboard" technology provides an easy-to-use view into role-specific business information that is always up-to-date. |
