Activewear is apparel with a fabric layer on top. The size run stretches from XXS to 4X, the fabric is the largest cost on the balance sheet and arrives months before the season, the attributes and certifications a retailer asks for live on the style, and core replenishment has to run beside seasonal drops on one pool. AIMS360 was built on apparel matrices and native EDI, and Beyond Yoga ran on it through the growth that ended in a $400M sale to Levi's in 2021.
Parent industry: Fashion & Apparel ERP →Whether you sell a core legging in twelve sizes and four permanent colors, a seasonal capsule, or a full performance line with outerwear and accessories, the catalog structure and the fabric behind it are the first things the system has to get right.
A black legging in twelve sizes and a limited colorway share a style number, a mill and a size chart, and almost nothing else operationally. The core legging is a replenishment item: it never goes out of stock in the core sizes, it is reordered on thresholds, and its fabric is bought on standing mill commitments. The colorway is a drop: it has a defined life, a planned quantity, a markdown path, and a fabric buy that was a bet on demand.
Both draw on the same fabric inventory, the same production capacity and the same available to sell pool, and the failure mode is always the same. A drop consumes fabric or units a core replenishment was counting on, and the brand goes out of stock on the size that pays the bills to fund the colorway that might not. Or the reverse: a conservative planner holds fabric for core and the drop sells out in a week with no fabric to chase it.
AIMS360 runs both demand shapes on one catalog. Core styles on replenishment thresholds by size. Drops planned against fabric that has landed. Fabric held by lot and roll as raw material, consumed against cut tickets, costed through to the finished unit. And one available to sell pool across DTC, wholesale and EDI, so a Nordstrom purchase order and a Shopify flash sale cannot both take the last size medium.
Extended size matrices with a UPC per variant. Fabric content, weight, stretch, compression, moisture management, UPF and finish on the style record so retailer item setup, product page and tech pack read from one source. GRS, bluesign and OEKO-TEX certifications on the item and the supplier with expiry dates.
Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Anthropologie and FP Movement, Dick's Sporting Goods, Shopbop, Target and Amazon, mapped in house to each retailer's own specification. Extended size runs allocate against purchase orders the same way. GS1-128 labels and the 856 from one scanned shipment. No per document fees.
Mill purchase orders and fabric receipts by roll and lot. Cut tickets that consume the right fabric and roll landed cost through to the finished style. Core replenishment thresholds by size beside drop planning against landed fabric. One available to sell pool across Shopify, wholesale, EDI and studio accounts.
The sequence an activewear brand runs, and where each step lands in AIMS360.
Activewear sells through three channel shapes that behave differently: department and specialty, sporting goods, and the brand's own site. Most brands start DTC, add department store wholesale, and reach sporting goods last, and each account runs a different program on the same units.
Department and specialty. Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and Macy's carry activewear on the same bulk and dropship programs described on their pages. Anthropologie and the URBN family, including FP Movement, run three separate programs on three separate systems, and its page covers all of them. Shopbop is a bulk wholesale account.
Dick's Sporting Goods is the sporting goods channel, with a one hour ASN window, thermal GS1-128 labels and a published compliance schedule. Its page covers the document set, the routing guide and the chargebacks.
Mass and marketplace. Target and Amazon carry the volume end of the category on their own programs.
Beyond those, the same native EDI reaches the rest of the 350+ retailer network, and studio and gym wholesale runs as small B2B accounts on the same order book.
Performance fabric is bought from mills on minimums and lead times that run well ahead of the season, and in most activewear brands it is the largest single cost on the balance sheet. A nylon spandex knit with the right weight, stretch recovery and moisture behavior is a specification the brand develops over years, and the mill relationship behind it is part of the product. That fabric has to be held as inventory by lot and roll, consumed against cut tickets, and costed through to the finished legging, or the margin on a colorway drop is a guess until the season closes.
Then the attributes. A legging is not a pair of pants with a size run. It carries fabric content, weight, four way stretch, compression level, moisture management, UPF rating and finish, and every retailer item setup, every DTC product page and every tech pack wants those values from the same source. Held on the style record they flow. Held in a spreadsheet they get retyped, and retyped wrong.
Sustainability sits on top of both. Recycled nylon and polyester, Global Recycled Standard, bluesign and OEKO-TEX are now table stakes for the department store and specialty accounts activewear sells through, and they are asked for at the SKU and supplier level with expiry dates. A certificate that expired in March does not help a Nordstrom onboarding in June.
The last piece is the size axis. Activewear led the move to extended sizing, and a brand grading XXS through 4X on core styles is managing more variants per style than a conventional apparel line, with per size fit data and per size returns behavior underneath. That is a data model problem before it is a fit problem, and a system whose matrix strains past XL is the wrong system.
Activewear brands usually arrive at an ERP search from one of three places. A Shopify first stack with an inventory app, which handled DTC until the first Nordstrom purchase order arrived with an EDI requirement attached. A general apparel ERP that handles the size run and has nowhere structured to put fabric attributes, certifications or roll level fabric inventory. Or a horizontal ERP that can be configured for all of it, at the cost of a systems integrator and a year.
The question to ask any system is whether fabric is inventory or a note, whether attributes and certifications live on the style record, whether the size axis holds 4X without workarounds, whether core replenishment and seasonal drops can coexist on one pool, and whether EDI is built in and mapped to Nordstrom, Dick's and Anthropologie rather than bought from a separate provider. AIMS360 was built on apparel matrices and native EDI for 40 years, and Beyond Yoga ran on it through the growth that ended in a $400M sale to Levi's.
For a structured comparison against specific systems, see the comparison pages and the ERP buying guide.
Founder and operator. One number for what you can sell across your own site, Nordstrom, Dick's and the studio accounts, and channel margin by style that includes the fabric cost that went into it.
Design and product. Fabric specs and certifications on the style from the first sample, so the tech pack, the retailer item setup and the product page are written once.
Production and sourcing. Mill purchase orders and fabric receipts by roll, cut tickets that consume the right lot, and landed cost that lands on the finished unit rather than in an average.
Planning. Core replenishment thresholds by size on the styles that never go out of stock, and drop quantities planned against fabric that has landed rather than fabric that has been ordered.
Warehouse. Scan and pack across an extended size run, GS1-128 label and 856 from the same scanned units, and returns processed back into sellable stock by size.
Finance. The 810 comes off the same shipment the ASN reported, chargebacks logged against the original order with evidence attached, and fabric on the balance sheet valued by lot rather than by estimate.
AIMS360 fits activewear brands from the first Shopify store through the point where the business runs multiple mills, a wholesale book across department and sporting goods, and a core replenishment program, up to roughly $400M in revenue.
One that treats activewear as apparel with a fabric layer on top, rather than as generic apparel or as a hardgoods catalog. It needs a size and color matrix that stretches to XXS through 4X without breaking, fabric attributes and certifications on the style record, a replenishment model for core leggings and bras that runs beside seasonal colorway drops, one available to sell pool across DTC and wholesale, and native EDI into the department, specialty and sporting goods accounts activewear sells through. AIMS360 is built on that model, and Beyond Yoga ran on it through its growth to a $400M sale to Levi's in 2021.
Yes. Beyond Yoga ran on AIMS360 and was acquired by Levi Strauss and Co. in 2021 for about $400 million. It is one of the consumer brands built on AIMS360 listed on our case studies hub, alongside True Religion, Retrofete, Los Angeles Apparel and Generation Love.
On the style record, not in a spreadsheet beside it. Fabric content, weight, stretch, compression level, moisture management, UPF rating and finish are held against the style so they flow to retailer item setup, the DTC product page and the tech pack from one place. Certifications such as Global Recycled Standard, bluesign and OEKO-TEX are held against the item and the supplier with expiry dates, which is what retailers like Nordstrom and Dick's ask for during onboarding.
Yes. The size axis on the style matrix is as long as the brand needs, with a UPC per variant and per size fit data where the brand carries it. Extended sizing is a data model problem before it is a fit problem: a brand that grades XXS to 4X on core styles is managing more variants per style than a conventional line, and the retailer purchase order allocates against every one of them.
As two demand shapes on one catalog. Core leggings, bras and basics in permanent colors run on replenishment thresholds and never go out of stock in the core sizes. Seasonal colorways run as drops with a defined life and a markdown path. Both draw on the same fabric inventory, the same production capacity and the same available to sell pool, so a drop cannot quietly consume the fabric or the units a core replenishment was counting on.
Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Anthropologie and the URBN family including FP Movement, Dick's Sporting Goods, Shopbop, Target and Amazon, natively over EDI as part of the 350+ retailer network. Dick's and Anthropologie have their own pages covering their programs in detail, and mapping is done in house to each retailer's own specification with no per document, per transaction or kilocharacter fees.
That is the normal path for the category and the model AIMS360 is built for. Shopify orders, wholesale purchase orders, retailer EDI and studio and gym accounts all draw on one available to sell pool with allocation rules, so a strong week on your own site cannot oversell a Nordstrom purchase order, and a big wholesale commitment cannot quietly empty the sizes your DTC customers reorder.
Yes. Performance fabric is bought from mills on minimums and lead times that run well ahead of the season, and it is often the single largest cost on the balance sheet. AIMS360 holds fabric by lot and roll as raw material inventory, consumes it against cut tickets and work orders, and rolls landed cost through to the finished style, so a colorway drop is planned against fabric that exists rather than fabric that has been ordered. See ERP for apparel manufacturers.
The full apparel platform: style, color and size, production, retailer EDI, wholesale and DTC. Activewear runs on it with a fabric layer on top.
Scrubs and compression wear share the performance fabric discipline and the extended size runs.
Technical apparel, the same specialty and sporting goods retailers, and the golf sub-industry beneath it.
Performance footwear sells through the same accounts and shares the size run depth problem.
Bring a core legging style and a seasonal drop to a demo and see fabric by roll, an XXS to 4X matrix, a Nordstrom purchase order and a Shopify order all drawing on one pool. Thirty minutes, on your own catalog.
