The Emerging Designer Project joins students and industry professionals, allowing them to utilize enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to support emerging designers. This project provided access for small businesses and designers to industry-standard software that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive. In addition, students acquired real world experience,  learning about business operations and technical applications in the design world. For this project, students met with Noah Waxman–an emerging shoe designer–under the supervision of Production Management faculty member Neil Hicks in the FIT/Infor DTech Lab. Waxman designs and manufactures shoes in the U.S. and in Europe and sells through wholesale, online, and retail channels, while managing a warehouse in New Jersey to fulfill orders. The students worked with Waxman to identify the software functions required to run his business smoothly, then worked with Infor to tailor its ERP software to meet Waxman’s needs.