icebreaker reimagines it services

About icebreaker

Founded by Jeremy Moon in 1995 in New Zealand, icebreaker pioneered the ethical and sustainable production of natural performance apparel. Now a part of the VF Corporation, icebreaker continues to challenge the status quo while championing natural, transparent, and responsible ways to do business. icebreaker looks to nature for the answers and for innovative ways to do more with less. icebreaker is sold in more than 5,000 stores in 50 countries through wholesale, Touch Lab retail stores, and e-commerce platforms.

After years of technology sprawl, it was time to consolidate

Nicola Spurdle, Director, Digital Technology, icebreaker, said, “One of the biggest technological challenges icebreaker faced was that we wanted to move faster and innovate more. We saw a way to achieve this by aggregating our services to a local, strategic partner that would integrate into our business and help drive our digital agenda end-to-end.”

With seven incumbent infrastructure vendors, icebreaker faced daily delivery complexity and engagements tended to be siloed and transactional.

Nicola said, “icebreaker wanted to spend less time reactively managing seven vendors across many time zones.

Having multiple vendors also meant our security and operational insights were fragmented. We wanted a single source of truth so we could look across our environment and better understand our current state and future opportunity.”

With a complex operating model and no single source of truth, icebreaker moved to consolidate its relationships and appoint a single managed service provider (MSP) to engage as a strategic partner. This would lower costs, simplify the operating model and support icebreaker’s future focused agenda.

Accelerated innovation

The icebreaker and Capgemini partnership is already delivering on the promise of innovation. A wider team of experts, best practice standards, increased reliability, and improved security posture have been early wins.

Nicola said, “As a subsidiary of VF Corporation, it was important for icebreaker to be able to provide comprehensive security analysis. Being able to drive that conversation through deeper security insight is a huge benefit. This will let icebreaker focus on continuous improvement and future value.”

Switching to Capgemini managed services has also achieved significant cost savings. Nicola said, “Aggregating seven vendors into a single partner saved hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This has helped overall business profitability while also enabling us to drive an increased focus on improvement and innovation.”

As the future unfolds, icebreaker will continue to focus on sustainability and security and continue the focus on agility and improvement.

Nicola said, “icebreaker and Capgemini share common values: people first, honesty and openness, and a common focus on innovation and sustainability. The cultural fit of icebreaker and Capgemini is critically important to the success we have experienced and to our strategic partnership.

My advice to others is to take the leap of faith. It was difficult to end many long-term vendor relationships and move to the promise of a new aggregated service. However, with the operational, cost saving, and innovation benefits we are realising I now wish we had done it sooner.”