Mammut Sports Group

Great achievements have the power to make us dream: climbing the highest mountain, running the longest trail, skiing the steepest slope; people passionate about outdoor activities share a love of nature and a humbling respect for the dangers inherent with any extreme sport. Every endeavor, therefore, calls for acute mental and physical preparation and the right equipment. “Exerting any effort in very high altitudes requires reliable and high quality sporting equipment,” Felix Kündig, CFO, Mammut Sports Group said. “Mammut Sports Group is a premium brand that has been focusing on the well-being and safety of nature lovers for over 150 years. Our apparel, footwear, climbing, safety and sleeping equipment have accompanied the most daring exploits of some of the world’s top athletes. 

Two words that frequently come to mind when describing Mammut Sports Group’s products are innovation and functionality. “While our products are well-suited for use in extreme situations, many of them are also chosen by people for everyday use. This is because we embed our materials with innovative technology to improve their resistance to heat or cold, to regulate perspiration or to make our garments more comfortable,” he said. “The functional nature of our products is one of the qualities our customers value the most,” he said.
 

Mammut Sports Group manages a highly diverse product portfolio. “We produce different families of articles and in the past we managed all our stock keeping units (SKU) in numerous Excel files, which was time consuming and error-prone,” Jeannette Sandmeier, PLM process and project manager, said. “Juggling between so many files eventually became complicated and information was hard to find. We decided to consolidate all our product information in one unique system to improve coordination and to have better visibility within our product catalogue.” 

The company implemented Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE® platform and its industry solution experience My Collection to manage its different products. “My Collection is the right solution because it respects our business processes and is robust enough to manage multiple categories of products,” Sandmeier said. “Every employee now enjoys easy and secure access to all our libraries, as well as purchasing, development and production data thanks to this industry solution experience.” 

Mammut Sports Group’s quality control office in Asia can also access the system to download the latest version of a product’s specification package to perform on-site factory inspections. “They need real-time access to the latest version of this package as it contains the characteristics of every item and serves as a guideline during inspection, for example for the measurement of different size scales for garments. Without the right information they wouldn’t know if errors were being made during manufacture or not,” Sandmeier said.
 

Twice a year Mammut Sports Group develops the line assortment for its summer and winter collections. This usually consists of a combination of carry-over products with new color versions or trims for a specific season; updated products, which are slightly modified versions of successful earlier products; and new products. It then defines the set of colors, materials and trims that can be used for the following season. “By defining this list in a season library within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we narrow down the possible colors and materials that our designers are authorized to work with during product development. It’s a great way to control complexity and to mitigate errors,” Sandmeier said. 

The design and development team then creates a BOM (bill of materials) that will help to evaluate the cost of a product determined by its fabrics, trims and other accessories like zippers and buttons, which, in turn is used to define the retail price of each item. “The 3DEXPERIENCE platform contains all the necessary information required to create a spec-pack that we send to our suppliers and which contains all our products’ specifications. This includes the BOM, with details of specific colorways and consumptions,” Sandmeier said. ”It is their only source of information.” 

Designers and product managers can more easily benefit from previous designs for carry-over and update products. “With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, it is now easier to find and reuse existing information and to simply make minor modifications. The time we save is considerable,” Sandmeier declared. 

Approximately 80 people at Mammut Sports Group use My Collection. Users agree that many tasks, which were once complicated, are now simpler. “For example, the BOM is easy to work with; only a few clicks are needed to replace colors, fabrics or to modify or add new materials, such as trims,” Sandra Schneider, apparel developer said.
 

Social responsibility and the ecology are important to Mammut Sports Group and to its consumers. The company is a member of two sustainability-oriented organizations: the Fair Wear Foundation, which audits and controls working conditions at its suppliers in Asia and Europe and Bluesign Technologies, which, according to Kündig, “controls the chemicals and dyeing processes of our plants to make sure that what remains after the process is pollution-free. Since their findings are stored in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, our material management department can access the information to see whether a fabric or trim is Bluesign-approved or not. It helps us stay true to our mission to respect the environment. This would be much more difficult without the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.” 

The company also sells protective equipment that must be officially certified as such by health and safety organizations. “In order to claim that our equipment complies with international standards, we need to ensure that all our licenses and certificates are up to date and valid,” Schneider said. ”Instead of doing this manually, we commissioned Dassault Systèmes Industry Services (DSIS) to extend our solution so that it automatically verifies the validity of our certificates. Thanks to the success of this extension, we have consequently contracted with one of the DSIS experts for one day of consulting per week for various other activities. They include production maintenance, software customization, and helping us with functional change requests. We can rely on Dassault Systèmes Industry Services to take care of IT support. This way, we can focus on what we do best,” Sandmeier said.
 

Mammut Sports Group is confident that the products they design, develop and source with the support of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and My Collection industry solution will meet the demanding standards of their consumers for innovation, performance and social responsibility. 

Mammut Sports Group invites its customers to enroll in its Mammut Alpine School to discover its products in more detail through a combination of theoretical classes and practical mountaineering expeditions. “We explain the technology behind our products and even take our clients interested in alpine sports on hiking or climbing adventures so that they experience firsthand what they can do with our products and what our products can do for them. It’s also a great way to reinforce our relationship with them,” Kündig said. “Whether for every day use or while climbing a mountain, we aim to provide our customers with the best possible experiences,” Kündig said. 

Mammut Sports Group’s business model has evolved over the years transforming the company from a purely wholesale entity to one with its own name-brand stores. “Entering the retail business would enable us to present our entire collection and to be in direct contact with our customers, which would provide us with deeper insight into their needs and preferences,” Kündig said.