Clothes Unlimited, founded by Horace Christoff in the 1960s, is a clothing retail and manufacturing company with several well-known brands and retail locations across the U.S., Canada, and other countries. The company has initiated various strategies to improve operations, including store consolidations, market expansion, and data warehousing efforts, though a data warehousing project was ultimately cut from the fiscal year's budget. The taskforce responsible for the project felt relieved by its discontinuation, highlighting challenges in aligning technology with specific business objectives.

1. Clothes Unlimited

2. Company Overview
• Founder: Horace Christoff
• Founded: 1960s
• Clothing retail and manufacturing company
• Contains several of nations leading apparel
marketers and brands

3. Famous Clothes Unlimited holdings
• Delphi’s: A chain of moderately priced departmental
stores
• Sally Fourth: Leading women sportswear brand
• Kimmerling: Women’s leading fashion and corporate
wear
• Wanda’s Wardrobe: Retail store and mail-order catalog to
teen girls and in their early twenties
• Connor’s Closet: Retail store and mail-order catalog to
teen boys and in their early twenties
• The Baby’s Room: Chain of retail stores for babies,
including both home décor as well as clothing

4. Clothes Unlimited: Enterprise overview
Entity Retail Locations Regions
Delphi’s 272 United States, Canada,
United Kingdom, Sweden
Wanda’s Wardrobe 488 United States, Canada,
Latin America, Japan,
China
Connor’s Closet 164 United States, Canada
The Baby’s Room 290 United States, Canada,
Latin America
Sally Fourth Distribution Network: 22
U.S. outlet stores
United States, Canada,
United Kingdom,
Germany, Sweden,
Netherlands, Switzerland
Kimmerling Distribution Network: 16
U.S. outlet stores
United States, Canada,
Latin America, Hungary,
Ireland

5. Clothes Unlimited Enterprise Overview
• Each of the divisional presidents reported up to Christine
Christoff
• Her initiatives received by investors
• Announced the following series of initiatives
 Consolidating warehouse operation
 Increasing same-store sales with all divisions
 Closing unprofitable stores
 Moving more aggressively into European markets
 Expanding direct marketing
 Focusing on data warehousing

6. Clothes Unlimited Enterprise Overview
• A comprehensive communications program
• A series of companywide meetings using
teleconferencing
• All items represented significant new
initiatives
• Manage each of these initiatives through
multidivisional taskforces and subgroups

7. Data Warehousing Taskforce
Member Title Taskforce Role
Jim Hayes CIO, Delphi’s Leader
Juanita Gonzales VP Technology Applications, Dolphi’s Applications Lead
Victor Korn Senior Programmer, Wanda’s Development Lead
Stephen Cary Analyst, Wanda’s Analyst, Discovery Process
Sue Pollack System Manger, Connor’s Analyst, Discovery Process
Sindu Wajami DBA, Connor’s Analyst, Discovery Process
Kevin O’Farrell Technical Architect, The Baby’s Room Development Team
Karen Furth Applications Specialist, The Baby’s Room Development Team
Mary O’Donnell Analyst, Sally Fourth Analyst, Discovery Process
Joel Stephenson Analyst, Kimmerling Analyst, Discovery Process
Bill Reilly VP Marketing, Delphi’s Business Representative
Sren Sojak Customer Service Manager, Connor’s Business Representative

8. CRM Implementation

9. Discovery Process

10. Data Warehousing process

11. Challenges

13. Systems
• Confusing array of tools and technologies
across CU.
• Most systems are poorly documented.
• Data processing should be centralized.

14. Data Warehousing Project
• We should initially limit ourselves to one
division one country.
• We need a business focus authority.
• We need fix budgets for our efforts.

15. • Mr. Hayes augmented their ideas with a few of
his own and prepared the presentation for
senior management.
• He tries his best to present the work of his
Data Warehousing Taskforce.
• Senior management cut the project from it’s
coming fiscal year budget.

16. Conclusion
• Hayes personally took some of the
responsibility for the downfall of the Data
Warehousing Taskforce.
• The taskforce was actually relieved by the
news of project discontinuation.
• Team members could now go back to their
responsibilities in their respective divisions.
• None of them wanted to worry about corporate
initiatives ever again.

17. Results
• A technology project always requires a very
specific business charter.
• Technology projects cannot drives changes in
the business.
• The scope of any data warehousing projects
can quickly get out of hand.
• Building systems to support CRM capabilities
is a difficult business.

18. THANK
YOU