Agile Business Transformation: Lever Style Promotes Change-Readiness with Low-Code and AI

Categories like transportation and hospitality have been disrupted in the last decade with the entrance of players like Uber or AirBnb. Global clothing manufacturer and supply chain provider –Lever Style – has set out to be this equivalent in the retail industry.

However, disruption is difficult when producing a garment – unlike ordering a driver or booking accommodations – is a non-linear process. Furthermore, Lever Style differentiates by offering greater product variety than their competitors. This introduces more complexity at every stage of the value chain.

To fulfill their long-term ambitions, Lever Style needed faster and more flexible technology to support their unique business processes. In 2024, they adopted the Mendix low-code platform as part of a multi-year digital transformation strategy.

Lever Style has since delivered 10 low-code applications that are reducing manual work, phasing out legacy systems, and accelerating the integration of AI into their business processes.

Leading Through Change

Lever Style offers technical design, prototype development, raw material procurement, and delivery logistics for world-renowned brands including Theory, ALLSAINTS, and Skims.

Lever Style has always done things differently. Where the rest of their industry typically holds a portfolio of low-mix, high-volume products, Lever Style can provide its customers more tailored product options with their high-mix, low-volume capabilities.

“We are an asset-light, multi-region, multi-category business platform. We optimize demand from brand-to-brand and order-to-order,” said William Tan, CEO of Leverstyle.

Their long-term vision is to ‘platformatize’ their business. “We want to be the go-to platform for modern fashion brands to create, test, and scale apparel production seamlessly, globally, and intelligently,” said Tan.

It’s not just Lever Style’s business that is shifting. Evolving customer demands, geopolitical relations, and regulatory requirements are regularly impacting operations.

Leverstyle took stock of their technology landscape in 2023 and found their systems were “digitized, but not digitalized.”

Several off-the-shelf tools (OTS) had been acquired over the years. However, the majority were not being fully utilized as they could not adequately meet the business’ working requirements.

The team estimated that they were leveraging only 10 to 20 percent of these systems in most cases. Instead of a consolidated landscape of end-to-end, interconnected systems, teams relied on many disparate tools and Microsoft systems to carry out day-to-day work.

“Our processes and efficiency had reached a certain bottleneck. We needed to find a better solution to fit the actual operations of our business and allow us to increase our efficiency on a large scale,” said Junfeng Liang, Head of IT at Lever Style.

A Platform for Innovation

To achieve true digital transformation, Lever Style sought to create a connected technology network. At the center, they needed a development platform that was agile, flexible, and adaptable.

Liang considered traditional programming languages but saw the potential roadblocks. “Java is a very mature technology stack, but it posed two challenges for us. First, the underlying standards would not always be consistent. Second, the development cycle and timelines are relatively fixed and long,” he said.

At the end of 2023, Liang began evaluating a host of low-code platforms to meet the required rapid development capability. Lever Style conducted a proof of concept with both domestic and international low-code players to create an electronic database of one of their garment factories.

The vendors came back with their results – and although Mendix wasn’t as specialized within the retail industry – the development experience and final product stood out from the crowd.

Ultimately, Lever Style selected Mendix due to its:

• Leadership status and reputation in the industry.
• Global network of support and talent.
• Superior visual development capabilities.
• Scalability of its underlying database structure.

Data-Centric Digital Transformation

In 2023 Lever Style had already set multi-year roadmap – or ‘digital blueprint’ – for the coming years.

“In order to scale effectively and efficiently we need a technology stack that is built to fully support our business model. That sparked the digital transformation that we are undergoing today,” shared Tan.

He summarized their approach as:

• Year 1: Focused on data integrity and constructing their data warehouse, bringing together data from many systems and establishing a single source of truth as a foundation.
• Year 2: Establishing an in-house development capability and leveraging descriptive data to make these applications more intelligent and predictive.
• Year 3: Fully embracing consolidated data, incorporating AI and machine learning to provide prescriptive action and guide the future of their business.

The Lever Style team began working with Mendix during year two. In parallel, AI tools were becoming more mainstream and accessible.

Flexible and Adaptable Applications

Since partnering with Mendix in mid-2024, Leverstyle has delivered 10 applications that are optimizing a range of business processes.

With Mendix, their team has successfully delivered applications that cover:

• Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)
• Vendor Portal
• Fabric Library
• PDMD Workspace
• Task Engine
• Integration Center
• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Help Center
• AI Invoicing
• Capacity Management System

“We’ve built many tools from the ground up at a very fast pace – and with a high level of quality,” said Liang.

Rapid Response to Global Tariffs

When the United States government implemented new and increased tariffs in 2025, Lever Style had to act quickly. To minimize the tariffs on their products, they needed to get their free on board (FOB) orders quicky into deliver duty paid (DDP). Lever Style used Mendix to develop a custom module within their SRM application to expedite this process.

“With Java it would have taken several weeks to develop a tool that we needed immediately. It only took us one week with Mendix to have all the features developed and ready for our business,” said Liang.

The Lever Style team said that achieving something similar with anything off-the-shelf would have taken far longer and been more expensive.

Improved Process Efficiency and Transparency

One of Lever Style’s most valuable applications to date is a digital Fabric Library. Historically, their fabric development teams carried out operations in communication siloes.

Certain groups were more familiar with certain vendors, and there was limited transparency into the variety of materials that could be sourced across their vendor ecosystem.

The Fabric Library application brings material and vendor data into a single source of truth. Now, Lever Style has a complete view of their fabrics – both in the past, present, and future – along with data points like price adjustments and consumption.

“We had never had a tool like this in the past and it hindered the efficiency of our entire fabric development team,” said Liang. “By having a digital platform with transparency into all of this data, we have greatly improved the efficiency of the fabric sourcing process.”

Lever Style has also digitized how they assess vendor performance with their Vendor Scorecard app. In the past, teams would track this information with spreadsheets and emails, making the data inconsistent and difficult to manage.

“With Mendix, we quickly built a centralized application that gives real-time visibility into vendor KPIs, communication, and order status – all in one place. It’s improved accountability, reduced delays, and given our teams better tools to collaborate,” said Tan.

From Off-the-Shelf to Fit-for-Purpose

In cases where Lever Style is not fully maximizing investments in their off-the-shelf systems, Mendix introduces an opportunity for a full replacement.

Today, Lever Style is leveraging about ten percent of their current product lifecycle management (PLM) system. Its setup does not match how their business works and is too tedious for daily users.

“We will use Mendix to deliver a PLM that matches the DNA of Lever Style and is designed to fit their day-to-day operations,” said Liang.

Actionable Insights with AI-Enriched Applications

Lever Style’s third phase of transformation hinges on making data actionable by embedding AI into their processes. “Embracing AI is both a challenge and an opportunity, because there is a lot of learning on how to use it most effectively,” said Liang.

In 2025, one of Lever Style’s flagship applications will be an AI-enriched vendor portal. Today, orders are sent to their garment factories by email, phone, or WeChat in an unstructured way. This introduces compliance risks and creates bottlenecks in order efficiency.

The Vendor Portal will offer real-time communication between Lever Style’s suppliers and garment factories. Keeping vendor data and orders in one place provides a wealth of data that can be mined and actioned on for future business decisions.

“We will use a digital approach with Mendix combined with AI to greatly improve the efficiency of our entire ecosystem,” said Liang.

Resilient Supply Chain Operations

In just under two years, Lever Style has significantly accelerated their digital transformation agenda with low-code. Liang summarized the key benefits of Mendix as:

• Increased standardization, ensuring that application development remains consistent as they balance internal resources and partners. Projects can start and finish adhering to the structure put in place at a platform level.
• Rapid prototyping, where the team can build, test, and iterate at a higher velocity and intensity than was ever possible before, allowing for new releases on a weekly basis.
• Improved user satisfaction, where new applications are more UI-friendly in terms of both data docking and database design.

“Mendix is a tool that can help us do more with less. We can connect very fast to our data warehouse, AI, and even our legacy PLM. It’s fully visual, which helps us deliver much quicker, and we’ve already received a very good response from the business,” said Liang.

The Lever Style team also shares advice for other leaders to be successful as they embark on their own transformation journey:

• Digital transformation starts with the business. Get as close as possible to your stakeholders and understand their unique processes and challenges before introducing solutions.
• Rapid iteration is a requirement. For Lever Style, getting to an MVP quickly and iterating on a weekly basis is the best way to stay close to their business users throughout development. Liang advises to get something tangible into their hands and ask for feedback regularly to the right outcome fast.
• Be brave, but land cautiously. When it comes to innovative and emerging technologies, leaders must be ready and open. However, emerging technologies should not be seen as trends. In cases like AI, Liang advises that they will be in your tech stack for years to come, so still consider the long-term implications. 

There will always be pressures – environmental, political, or economic – outside of Lever Style’s control. By using Mendix, their leaders are promoting greater stability with a platform that is ready for whatever changes come next.