Location/Region: Buenos Aires, ARG
Industry: Textile Printing Services
Apps implemented: Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Accounting, CRM and Dashboards.
Software
Replaced: Excel
Size of the company: 20
Hosting type: Odoo Online
Moving from intuitive growth to real business control is one of the biggest challenges for industrial SMEs. For JB Plotter y Sublimación, a textile company based in Buenos Aires, Odoo became the platform that allowed them to organize their operations, gain daily visibility into their numbers, and sustain tangible growth.
JB Plotter y Sublimación is a company dedicated to providing services to apparel manufacturers, with a primary focus on textile sublimation. Its core activity is fabric printing, but its value proposition goes far beyond the production process itself.
One of its main differentiators is having a highly efficient graphic design team that supports clients throughout the entire process: from the initial idea to the final delivery of the sublimated fabric rolls.
"We provide 24/7 support from the main idea until the order reaches the client. In addition to services, our company also sells fabrics under the same model: design, sublimation, and delivery to the end customer."
The story of JB Plotter y Sublimación began approximately nine years ago, in a small room at Juan Manuel’s parents’ house. At the time, while studying graphic design and feeling professionally stuck, he decided to invest in his first small plotter to start his own business.
Growth was gradual but steady. At the beginning, production was minimal: “I printed one meter per day, five meters per week,” he recalls. Today, the leap is evident: the company produces around 70,000 meters per month, the result of sustained work and the strengthening of a team that now includes around 20 people, both direct and indirect.
Before Odoo: growing without visibility was a risk
During the early years, the main challenge was not selling but controlling the business. As the company began to scale, the lack of tools became critical: there was no clarity on how much was being sold, how much was being purchased, or what the actual available stock was.
Management was done manually, almost entirely relying on Excel, which made the process tedious, unreliable, and difficult to scale. “We were juggling spreadsheets,” Juan Manuel explains. In many cases, decisions were made without precise information, trusting that the numbers would “more or less” add up to pay salaries, buy supplies, and continue investing in machinery.
The turning point came when the company began to formalize, hire more people, and structure itself as a corporation. At that moment, Juan Manuel understood that continuing to operate without a system could put everything they had built at risk.
"I can't open an Excel file to know who owed me money. I need to log into a system and see how many orders we shipped, how much we invoiced, and how cash flow is doing,” he explains. The requirement was clear: to control sales, customer accounts, stock, and purchases from a single place, and to reduce dependency on one person to understand the state of the business.
Much more than a system: a new starting point
Juan Manuel learned about Odoo through references from colleagues. During a business management program at Colegio Austral in Buenos Aires, he shared a WhatsApp group with other entrepreneurs, including representatives from larger companies.
When he raised his need for a flexible platform that could quickly adapt to a textile SME, Odoo emerged as a direct recommendation. That combination of adaptability and scalability was key to the decision.
Implementation began approximately three years ago. As often happens, the start was challenging: disorganized information had to be migrated from Excel, customers loaded, stock organized, and sales systematically recorded.
From the outset, the approach was clear: start with the basics. “We’re a small textile SME; we need to cover the basic needs first,” Juan Manuel explains. With the implementer’s support, the system was configured in alignment with the reality of the business, without forcing unnecessary processes.
Odoo in daily operations: control, connectivity, and efficiency
Today, JB Plotter y Sublimación actively uses several Odoo modules that have become the core of its daily operations. The main apps include Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Accounting, and Dashboards.
In sales, Odoo made it possible to have accuracy on invoicing. “I need to know every single day how much we’re invoicing,” Juan Manuel states. This visibility is key for decision-making in a changing economic context.
On the accounting side, the impact was immediate. Today, it would be “almost impossible” to track debts, customer account balances, and supplier payments without the system. Odoo centralized this information, eliminating dependence on scattered records.
In purchase and inventory, the change was structural. Previously, supplies would arrive and be recorded informally. Today, every purchase is directly linked to stock, making it possible to know what is available, how much there is, and what is actually needed.
"Today, everything is connected to everything: purchases, stock, sales, and accounting. That completely changes how you run the company."
One of the modules with the most future potential is Dashboards. Although he acknowledges that he is still in the learning process, Juan Manuel highlights the value of having consolidated and visual information, as long as you know which indicators to look for.
What’s next: New Services and More Odoo
Looking ahead, JB Plotter y Sublimación continues to bet on innovation within its industry. The company is currently finalizing the development of a new direct-to-cotton printing service, a technology that already exists but is still in an early adoption stage, both from the service and customer perspectives.
At the same time, the next challenge with Odoo is to deepen the use of the Manufacturing app, to build a more efficient production chain and fully leverage the module. The idea is to continue incorporating functionalities progressively, supporting business growth without losing control.
"The challenge now is to keep growing without losing control: adding new services, such as direct-to-cotton printing, and continuing to deepen the use of Odoo, especially in manufacturing.”
The experience of JB Plotter y Sublimación shows that organizing operations is not only for large companies. If your business faces similar challenges, the path taken by JB Plotter y Sublimación can be the first step toward a more solid, connected, and future-ready operation.
