Sustainable jeans and sneakers manufacturer chooses Microsoft 365 to stay one step ahead

When you wear a pair of 1083 jeans or sneakers, you know exactly where the fabric was dyed, where the seams were sewn, and where the shoelaces were made. The goal of 1083 is to create clothing that looks great and contributes to a circular economy, an approach that prioritizes recycling and reusing materials to combat waste, all while creating new jobs by supporting the textile industry close to home. “1083 is the distance between the two most distant cities in France,” explains Thomas Huriez, President of 1083. “Our mission is to manufacture jeans and sneakers at a distance of less than 1,083 kilometers from our customers.”

When the company started in 2013, Thomas was one of two employees along with his brother Grégoire Huriez, cofounder of 1083. “At the beginning of the project, it was quite simple to manage the IT landscape,” says Grégoire. However, as the company began to rapidly grow, so too did the complexity of managing IT and communicating with a growing workforce. “We encountered difficulties with everything related to file sharing and communication,” says Grégoire.

The answer for a small business on the rise was to invest in Microsoft 365 Business Premium and enlist the help of Be-Cloud, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network. Today, 1083 is working more efficiently, enjoying enhanced security, and Grégoire and Thomas are better able to focus on the core tasks of running a clothing brand rather than the complexities of managing IT. “With Microsoft 365, we’re able to connect with each other faster, from anywhere, and accelerate our work,” says Thomas.

“With Microsoft 365, we’re able to connect with each other faster, from anywhere, and accelerate our work.”

Thomas Huriez, President, 1083

Focusing on growth: Engaging a partner to deploy Microsoft 365 simplifies IT

In a short time, 1083 has grown from a two-person enterprise supported by a crowd-funding campaign to a business with 100 direct employees located across France. “At the beginning, I was responsible for the IT plan,” says Grégoire. The Huriez brothers soon began searching for a solution that would empower them to pursue growth rather than the painstaking process of managing IT. “Be-Cloud and Microsoft 365 Business Premium helped us manage our IT needs in a more flexible, agile way,” says Grégoire. “The move has allowed us to build and grow quite easily.”

“Be-Cloud and Microsoft 365 Business Premium helped us manage our IT needs in a more flexible, agile way. The move has allowed us to build and grow quite easily.”

Grégoire Huriez, Cofounder, 1083

Partnering with Be-Cloud gave 1083 a chance to pursue training on new Microsoft tools, including Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Excel, and OneDrive. “We set up trainings for each of our teams to help them get the most out of the tools,” says Grégoire. Very quickly, Grégoire and Thomas noticed that employees had an intuitive grasp of applications like Teams. “All of our employees are fairly comfortable with these tools,” says Grégoire. “They allowed us to take a step forward collectively as a business.”

Streamlining communication: Replacing disparate tools improves collaboration

Moving to Microsoft 365 exposed the company’s employees to a more streamlined way to communicate. “Focusing on Teams as a single tool for communication and collaboration made work much more convenient,” says Thomas, who notes that a clothing brand like 1083 must balance the needs of many distinct business segments, from e-commerce to manufacturing. “We needed standardized tools for all of those functions to communicate well with each other across the business.”

“Focusing on Teams as a single tool for communication and collaboration made work much more convenient.”

Thomas Huriez, President, 1083

In the past, 1083 employees used disparate tools to communicate with one another, including text messaging, WhatsApp, and email. Grégoire cites the move to Teams as a defining change in how 1083 employees get work done. “We interact more easily with Teams, and exchanges between departments about things like fleet management, room reservations, and planning happen faster and are more fluid now,” he says. Real-time communication between geographically dispersed areas of the business—for instance, weaving mills that are nearly 300 miles apart in Romans-sur-Isère and Rupt-sur-Moselle or clothing workshops in the cities of Paris and Lyon—helps employees collaborate and answer questions faster, keeping the business moving forward. “Using Teams for communication instead of phones or emailing each other helps employees connect directly with the right people to solve problems and saves time,” says Grégoire. “Microsoft 365 tools help us interconnect all of our activities,” agrees Thomas.

Microsoft 365 tools are also helping support a bourgeoning hybrid work strategy at 1083. “We connect with each other faster now,” says Thomas. “We experienced it firsthand during the COVID-19 crisis. We were able to do a lot of video meetings and share information more easily. Teams accelerated our work.”

Keeping security front and center: Remaining compliant and highly secure with Microsoft

Microsoft 365 tools like Teams not only help colleagues at 1083 communicate more effectively and drive business outcomes, but the tools’ embedded security features help ensure that communications are highly secure. “Security is a major concern for us and for GDPR compliance,” says Grégoire. “It was very important for us to be sure that our data would remain in France and remain our property,” continues Thomas. “Microsoft and Be-Cloud reassured us considerably that while the tools themselves are open and interoperable, our data would remain secure.”

Today, 1083 uses Microsoft tools to simplify security and care for customer data. With Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and Intune, a part of Microsoft Endpoint Manager, onboarding new employees is easier than ever. “When someone joins the company, we create an account through Azure AD,” explains Grégoire. “We manage all devices using Intune. New users’ devices are also enrolled, which makes it easy to download all the tools they need and start being productive as quickly as possible.”

Be-Cloud also enjoys a streamlined experience when managing 1083’s security, using the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse admin portal to gain a holistic view of its customer’s environment.

Investing in the future: 1083 explores other Microsoft tools to expand on its success

Following the initial success of its Microsoft 365 adoption, 1083 is now expanding its use of the platform and exploring other tools to help the business grow even further. “The Viva platform is interesting to us because it provides employees a page with company news,” says Grégoire. And the company has also used Microsoft 365 tools to set up a leave management system to streamline the process of requesting leave time. “The leave management system we created with Be-Cloud and Microsoft tools helped us take a step forward in managing our employees’ leave in a more efficient, digitized way,” says Grégoire.

1083 started with a simple mission that will never go out of style: bringing consumers closer to the clothes that they wear. Today, the company is using leading-edge tools from Microsoft to support employees and keep the focus on that ongoing mission. ”More and more people have started to embrace the need to consume less and consume better,” says Thomas. “Microsoft tools help us keep up with that growth and continue reacting to what customers want.”