Backbone

My Tech Packing Go To

Comments: It's mostly positive. There's great support and customer service.

Pros:

This program makes building tech packs easier than spreadsheet programs or other web PDM programs I've used. I enjoy how easily the BOM populates and grading with ease.

Cons:

Creating the tech pack PDF is tedious. And if something needs to be changed you have to go through the entire process again... not fun if it's only one small change that needed to be made. That's the biggest downside to this program. The other is that sometimes updated specs in the sample page do not copy over to the main spec and grading pages.

Good for housing TechPacks

Comments: V1 was simple and easy even though it had missing functionality, it was workable. Housing complete TP in one place. Having a Trims and Materials library to ensure BOMs are standardized, Specs and Grading are more consistent, all comments and images are in one place. This is how and why I use BB. I am not overly excited about V2. The change to the user experience was so drastic and seemingly not an improvement.

Pros:

V1 was more intuitive, simple for TechPack build. Housing sketches, BOM, spec and comments. Easy to use. V2 color palette is nice. Set up is easy, but still not efficient to pull into styles and BOMs V2 Line Sheet is a nice concept but still need to build a lot in AI to pull in

Cons:

V2 is glitchy and cumbersome. It is trying to do more than V1, but not doing it to the level of it being more efficient and useful. No secure log ins to share only specific information with brands or factory. Still missing a lot of functionality. For example: complete costing with Margin and landed cost views, Forecasting materials, Forecasting production, inventory management, Lab dip status and review, Product Lifecycle planning, etc

Backbone review

Pros:

Searching for a product is fairly easy. Customer support is quick, even though I don't always get the answers I'm looking for. They are very courteous and try very hard to support their users. I appreciate that. I do like in the spec sheet being able to see the grade rule along with actual measurement. Makes setting up a graded spec easy.

Cons:

- There is no log. There is no way to see a previous spec sheet or previous BOM if someone else makes updates or if someone makes a mistake. - There is no notes section. Backbone only gives a bad workaround asking us to use the fit and revision section for TP notes. - Compare samples section is non-functional and difficult to view/comprehend. Vendors do not find it useful. - Many bugs that we are often asking Backbone to fix. - Work flow is very, very slow. Uploading pictures seams easy, but deleting out old pictures is time consuming. - File section is very unorganized and difficult to view all saved files.

Backbone - The Future of PLM Management

Comments: My experience is nothing but amazing! I am a core user and believe Backbone is the future of PLM!

Pros:

I like how easy it is to manage my projects. I have worked in other platforms and i have found that Backbone is the easiest most efficient program. I have saved so much more time!

Cons:

I wish some of the features from 1.0 were moved forward for 2.0: 1. Utilization tool that you could download as a pdf based on your program and filters was super helpful. 2. Selecting color in summary and then in each component is a nightmare! Sometimes I working with 4-5 different colorways and not being able to select multiple colors at once can be frusrating. 3. Managing Labdips on a component level would be nice. Right now I just have a google doc. Keeping in one place would save time. 4. Comments tool box size in Feedback and revisions - way too small for me to type all the information in. Also having an auto save would be amazing!

Great for small teams.

Comments: This has been huge for our business to get us out of spreadsheets and old PDF's, and into an organized system for our products. It's made tech pack creation and updates super efficient, and enabled accurate COGS tracking. The program is intuitive to use and dynamic, unlike many larger, more archaic PLMs. We feel able to scale for some time with Backbone, even as we expand into new product categories.

Pros:

We did implementation in record time and it's very intuitive to use, which makes onboarding interns and new hires super simple and low touch (very valuable for a small rapidly growing team). We've also felt very heard on development/new feature requests, and that the platform continues to grow in value as it develops.

Cons:

We initially sourced it for inventory/purchase order integration and two years later, this feature still hasn't been implemented. We were also interested in Shopify integration with inventory. The software is also often glitchy when searching products, uploading files, and making changes to BOM's.

Good Value PLM

Comments: It's been pretty easy to work with Backbone. The customer service is prompt and cordial and we love our rep. The price for the system is also unbeatable, but you do get what you pay for. If you are looking for a first time PLM system, this is a great place to start. It UX is very straightforward and most anyone with some tech savvy can quickly pick up on the functionality and adopt it in as little as a month.

Pros:

Creating products is very simple and the interface is very intuitive. It does not take long to train a new hire on how to use this system. The cost for the program is very affordable, and I would recommend it for any startup or company seeking to launch their first PLM integration.

Cons:

There are several features that we were told were in the roadmap 2 years ago that have not been rolled out. Vendor integration is not something that currently exists. The "supplier login" feature does not seem to be as simple as we were told it would be. Additionally, there seem to be consistent glitches within the system that prevents things from running as smoothly as it should. We would love to see an easier ERP integration for costing, style and color assignment, but the only option currently available in that regard would require a complete backend buildout by a 3rd party IT company or if you had someone on staff to easily write code for that feature.

A great solution for teams working on garment product management

Comments: Simply put, Backbone allows our product team that is located on different sides of the country to work collaboratively on garments in a really meaningful way, and ultimately produce a tech pack that looks really tight. Its one of those pieces of software that make the cut to become an essential tool to running your business.

Pros:

Backbone seems to be unique in that it really focuses on tech packs, and all of the parts of the tech pack (materials, suppliers, colors, etc). Other garment PLM solutions tend to include much bigger and in my opinion, sprawling solutions that include purchasing, inventory management, inter-factory communications and a bunch of other services that we already take care quite well on our own. As a result, Backbone delivers on exactly what we need, at a more reasonable price.

Cons:

There are some parts of Backbone that still feel like they are in development. But to their credit, the product is regularly updating with solid improvements, and they are very, very receptive to input. I think also it's important for a new user to understand that Backbone has to work for a bunch of different kinds of products and companies, so some flexibility is required.

Elope review

Comments: I’ve had a very good experience with backbone everyone helps when you have an issue and I feel like it fits well for my organization

Pros:

I like the custom ability with a custom field. Anytime you have a problem you can generally solve it by adding a custom Field.

Cons:

It can go a little bit slow especially when you have large files you’re trying to upload or you were trying to get a lot of information on a product in an item master. I also wish that it had notifications and actual project management so that every thing could be managed right with her backbone

Apparel PLM System

Comments: The Backbone team is great to work with and super quick to respond.

Pros:

Ease of use / navigation. Easy to learn the system.

Cons:

Sometimes the system can be a little glitchy. Tech packs cold be laid out a little better so they are easier to read.

Backbone doesn't disappoint!

Comments: Exceptional!

Pros:

The product is very user friendly and Backbone's customer service is extremely responsive.

Cons:

There are still bugs that pop up but the team at Backbone is quick to work through them. There were also some features that were discussed as we were implementing this system that have still not come to fruition (app, images in component level)

Backbone - the foundation of our product lifecycle

Comments: I REALLY appreciate the consistent cadence of touch bases with my customer service team as well as their prompt reply to one-off questions I have had over time. They have been super helpful at guiding me on ways to work through questions and set best practices around system functionality.

Pros:

Integration with our existing business was relatively easy because we were starting with Backbone as we started our first production season, so we did not have to manage a massive data migration into the system. Having the training tools to learn the system functionality as I was setting up our business was great - the training documentation and videos provide the perfect balance of high level explanation and detailed focus.

Cons:

One missing function in Backbone is a color tracking app. We are exploring ways to include and track lab dips within the platform. If there was existing functionality to dynamically track lab dips on a component level, that would be amazing! Not sure if that would integrate the color palette app with the component app or if an entirely new app would be needed to solve for this need. I wish there were more ways to search for products and components besides name and item code/style number. We have adapted by including specific info in our component names and we use the filters as a work around. It would be nice for the auto-generated item codes to default to ALL CAPS and not include 0/O or I/L/1 to avoid confusion.

Fairly new user

Comments: The use of component creation, palettes, BOM, spec sheets is very easy and there are a lot of short-cuts that make data entry easy. It is also configurable - i.e . the way it prints out, and is shared with factory/supplier.

Pros:

love the drag and fill in for spec sheets (like excel), love that there are images in the components and palette pulls in, love the ability to print different configurations of tech packs, love the drag and drop in the BOM area, love the customer service that is super responsive and the video's for help with how-to

Cons:

several places don't show lists in alphabetical order, several places show the "name" only while others show the "code" only, sometimes the "search" only picks certain fields, some of it is just getting used to what areas do what functions and what the "work-around" is to do what you need. don't like that the images are not easy/intuitive to update, correct... I find it simpler to download a new illustrator each time.

Simple to use interface and time saving features

Comments: I have used

Pros:

A big plus is how visual the interface is, and as a Designer, it is what makes this so much easier and more pleasurable to work in. It's super easy to clearly annotate images, and automatically link components to the BOM, another feature that saves me so much time and makes our tech packs very clear for our suppliers. Work automatically saves unlike other PLM software, which I love - no more lost BOMs or annotations!

Cons:

I like to work very quickly and efficiently, which is why I love Backbone for the most part. I do find a few glitches within the BOM function where it can be slow to move my headers, or for the data to populate. Overall this is a very minor thing and we have regular communication with the Backbone team and they plan to improve this.

Backbone 1-2 year User Review

Pros:

The conveniency and easy features. I started working for Southern Shirt while still in college and I had never worked with a PLM system before. Even though I was a first time user, it was easy for me to understand and on top of that the free training sessions really helped.

Cons:

My least favorite is how the spec system is set up. What I mean by that is when I download a tech pack and add a sample stage, it does not download all of the tabs. So for like size sets, where we get every size we make, we have to go and download each file and combine it into one CSV file. It is a bit time consuming having to do that for each product we get multiple sizes in one sample stage.

Worth every penny!! The best system available!

Comments: Amazing!! [SENSITIVE CONTENT] is my rep and she is super responsive and always totally solves the issue for me and my team. I've never had to wait longer than an hour to hear back from her and she's always really sweet and pleasant to work with.

Pros:

I literally decided to take this position because they were using Backbone. I had seen a demonstration at my previous position and really wanted to use it there. They thought it was too expensive and stayed with a really archaic system that crashed often, took up to 18 minutes to PDF a tech pack, and didn't have half of the great functions that Backbone has. It is so intuitive I only needed to sit with a coworker for 10 minutes to be ready to use. It saves automatically, so I have literally never lost any work. It is so fast and PDF's a tech pack in less that a minute all of the time. It has the option to load point of measurement sketches for each point of measurement simply, just drag and drop the image.

Cons:

I wish there was a back end option for the production team so we could all share the same data.

easy to use, but slow / time consuming than other programs

Comments: with all the Cons I listed, it's still the best, easiest system I've ever used. I prefer using backbone but really wish it had those features. (TP review, group TP generating/printing)

Pros:

Easy to use. almost self-explanatory, visual. ability to upload AI or PDF files with multiple pages.

Cons:

not able to review TP before downloading. also the fact that you can only generate 1 TP at a time. it's very time-consuming and can be annoying during crunch time to generate multiple TP individually. it really needs "TP review" as you did in version 1, also a group TP generating and printing feature, which we asked for since backbone version 1, and was told multiple times that version 2 will have it. but it still doesn't have it, and not sure if it will ever have it. the website slows down from time to time, especially around 5-6pm EST.

Headwear Design PLM for Imperial Sports

Comments: The ability to create consistent tech packs in an organized and detailed manner is outstanding.

Pros:

Once the initial setup and load-out was completed, it is very easy to use and maintain. I most appreciate the way I'm able to build detailed tech packs in a consistent manner.

Cons:

I wish there was an ability to arrange tech packs within a shared folder in an alphabetized or numerical order.

Great user interface

Comments: Most problems were solved or found a workaround. Some functionality is just not compatible with us so that had to be moved to other software. We only use it for PLM. We do Quality Control in house and that is not compatible with the limited measure function.

Pros:

It's like iphone software for garment industry. Easy to train on, easy to use, easy to customize. Essential part of our technical design department.

Cons:

The occasional bugs and software issues set us back on some work. Many functions are not useful for us, some useful functions were taken away. To each their own I guess. This is probably best software for smaller amount of product variants.

SSCO Review

Comments: Started off with minimal features and a buggy interface but it has steadily improved since being launched and has more features and tools to help make it work with our other software that manages inventory and our books

Pros:

Using blocks and components to quickly build tech packs

Cons:

Not being able to undo updates to size specifications. I would like to have a save button instead of it saving automatically when new values are entered so all potential size updates can be applied and then saved at the end when all adjustments are confirmed.

Pretty intuitive to use

Comments: Pretty great!

Pros:

Easy to use and get help with training or requests. simple layouts. Has most features that I need every day and I like that updates come out frequently.

Cons:

There are some tools that don't have full functionality that I'd like. We don't quite have the money to pay for many users so we have not utilized the full scope of the reporting/costing side of PLM.

Still Learning

Comments: In general, I am still learning this software and just starting to use it - but so far it has been great and a major improvement to the systems I have used at my current and former companies before. I'm extremely excited to continue to use Backbone, as I feel it will make it tremendously easy to stay organized and for various team members to access the same products.

Pros:

In general, I feel this software is user friendly - it has a well designed user interface that both looks good and is clear and easy to navigate. I really like that this software utilizes images along with information in its catalogues like Components and Palettes. As a designer, the visuals make it easy to use and reference at a glance what different trims, colorways, etc. look like. Importing images from other programs like Adobe Illustrator is also extremely easy - an issue I've had with other programs.

Cons:

I am still learning how to use it, and so far haven't come across many cons yet.

Great Software

Comments: I have had a great experience with Backbone software and team. They are supportive and help with integration as much as you need. They help recommend ways to better utilize their system and customer service is very responsive.

Pros:

I love the ease of use of this software and how it integrates with the current workflows we already had established. I also really like that they are constantly adding features and listening to their users about ways to make the platform better.

Cons:

Right now, tech pack generation is time consuming and repetitive. If there is one error you have to regenerate the whole tech pack after the error is fixed, even if it is still within the same parameters as the previously generated tech pack.

Great for Product Design

Pros:

For my design uses, Backbone is great for creating construction details and entering size specs. There is little need to jump back and forth between illustrator and PLM since you can add and delete construction callouts right on the PLM system.

Cons:

There have been quite a number of bugs our team has experienced with the system. Specifically with size specs information not saving immediately and item master functionality

Backbone Flexibility

Comments: Love how easy it is to share info with remote team members as well as supply chain partners.

Pros:

So happy we adopted Backbone for our PLM software. It is very intuitive and easy to navigate. The BOM is simple and straight forward. The continued enhancements they issue have been excellent

Cons:

Don't like having to create separate product packages for regular and plus size garments. Also would like the ability to freeze certain columns when reviewing a size spec and making updates. Would love some sort of "Change Tracking" data to review

Please make the program more intuitive

Comments: Its my day to day program, has been of great use so far.

Pros:

How easy it is to navigate the segments.

Cons:

That it does not automatically link files, that it reduces the quality of an uploaded image, that the edit process through images has very limited tool options, that the cropped tool was removed.