While the New York collections kick off this week parading the fashion trends for next spring, technology companies and futurists are developing cutting-edge technologies to change the runways and retailing of the future.
Technology experts foresee a day when we’ll all get scanned at the mall or the airport and be able to use that data to order custom clothing online from any company that will fit perfectly and cost only slightly more than buying off the rack.
They envision more empowered and engaged consumers, ones who either work closely with companies to realize their vision of the perfect product or who network with other like-minded individuals to create the world they want. In so doing, they inspire corporations to make products more closely aligned with their needs and wishes.
If there’s a theme here, it’s communication. That same trend is also helping companies behind the scenes to coordinate their global operations more easily, quickly and efficiently.
Thanks to the Internet, companies and customers are becoming better connected to themselves and each other.
Mass Customization
More than a decade ago, former IBMer turned business consultant and author Joseph Pine argued that companies had to differentiate themselves by offering customized products at mass-production prices. Levi Strauss was one of the first apparel companies to embrace the concept with its Personal Pair jeans in 1995.
Levi’s no longer offers the program, but recently a surprising number of apparel companies have begun to offer customized or personalized apparel for only a slight premium over their regular products. This summer, Tommy Hilfiger and Target joined Lands’ End and J.C. Penney in offering custom shirts, chinos and jeans over the Internet with the help of Archetype of Emeryville, Calif. Nike and Timberland allow consumers to design their own sneakers and boots over the Internet or, in the case of Nike, in the store. Zazzle is an Internet company where customers can create T-shirts using their own or licensed artwork and photos.
“In many segments it is cheaper to produce on demand or at least as efficient,” said Frank Piller, an associate professor of management at Technische Universitaet Muenchen in Munich and a visiting research fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management who studies mass customization and user-centered innovation. “Markets are becoming more heterogeneous and consumers in the U.S. want customized goods.”
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So far, most examples of mass customization in the U.S. are small pilots within a mass-production-oriented organization, he said.
Not so at Selve, a German company with stores in Munich and London, which offers stylish and traditional custom shoes starting at about 150 pounds (or $275 at current exchange rates) and boots at 275 pounds (about $500). Customers are measured with a 3D foot scanner and also try on sample shoes to get the fit they want. Then they choose a style, a heel shape and colors. The shoes are manufactured in Italy and take about three weeks to make.
What makes the company’s process different from traditional custom shoe making is that it matches its customers’ feet to its large library of shoe lasts rather than crafting individual lasts from scratch for each consumer, said Piller.
At Dolzer, another German company, men can get custom shirts for as little as 50 euros, or about $62 at current rates, and suits for about 200 euros, or $250. The company, which started in 1963, has 600,000 active customers, according to Piller. It only recently began using pattern-making software and computer-controlled laser cutters, but has always been able to offer low prices because it doesn’t keep any stock, he said. Garments are made up in Germany or Slovakia.
Piller’s comments were echoed by Robert Holloway, chief executive officer of Archetype, which helps companies set up mass customization apparel programs and consults on sizing. Archetype’s retail customers can afford to air ship directly to the consumer from factories in Asia and Latin America because they don’t hold inventory or deal with shrinkage, said Holloway. “Inventory handling is about 3 percent at most companies,” he added.
Archetype runs the supply chain for its retailers and helps them set up modular manufacturing at their existing factories. The company takes customer information about size and fit preferences from a questionnaire on the retailers’ Web sites and uses it to create an individual pattern for that customer. Then Archetype sends the pattern electronically to the factory. The garments are cut out one at a time, and a group of four to eight sewers assembles each one from start to finish.
“The throughput is quicker but it’s more expensive,” Holloway said.
The Italian government recently set up an experimental shoe factory, called EuroShoe, in Vigevana, Italy, that specializes in mass customization, said Piller.
Automated Patterns
OptiTex Ltd., [TC]2, digital fashion ltd. and Lectra are developing software that automatically generates a basic two-dimensional flat-pattern sloper from a 3D body scan. The software can be used to speed the pattern-making process for production or custom clothing.
Osaka, Japan-based digital fashion ltd. plans to sell its LookStailorX through apparel CAD system manufacturers under license. The system will cost 1.5 million yen, or $13,640.
For makers of rtw, LookStailorX comes with two pre-installed body types in nine sizes, said Yasuhiko Sugihashi, a marketing and sales executive of digital fashion ltd. Pattern makers can check the fit of a garment on screen, which can help save time in fitting and sample making. The system can simulate the drape of fabrics and show a cross-sectional view of a garment lying on a virtual 3D body, so the pattern maker can see where the garment appears to be too tight or loose. (Virtual draping systems from such companies as Browzwear and OptiTex offer similar capabilities.)
Custom clothing companies can measure their customers with a 3D body scanner from Hamamatsu and export the body measurement data to LookStailorX.
[TC]2, a nonprofit maker of 3D body scanners, and OptiTex, which makes 3D and 2D software for pattern making and virtual draping, are taking a slightly different approach. Their system, which is in beta testing, creates a 3D “skin” based on a body scan and unwraps it into a 2D flat sloper by adding darts. After the basic sloper is produced, a designer can modify the style and ease of the pattern to create a garment.
The system can be used to scan a company’s fit model or to scan a customer for custom clothing, said Jim Lovejoy, [TC]2 director of supply chain analysis. It could also be used to create mass customized clothing over the Internet. For instance, a company’s virtual fit model could be altered to be closer to a custom customer’s actual or presumed measurements by, say, adding five pounds to the model, Lovejoy said. VF Corp., Brooks Brothers and J.C. Penney have tried the software.
Lectra is also working on software that creates 2D flat patterns from 3D body scans, said a company spokeswoman.
Engineered Color
Companies such as Liz Claiborne and Dillard’s are starting to use color management software and color measuring instruments called spectrophotometers to speed the color matching process. Instead of overnighting multiple color samples back and forth for approval, a dye house, designers and other suppliers can collaborate over the Internet using standard measurements. The process does not replace physical samples entirely; at least one swatch will usually be sent for final approval to make sure it coordinates with the many materials that might make up a garment or a collection.
Some customers have reduced their color approval process from four weeks to seven days by using color management software from eWarna, said Richard Lawn, ceo of the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based company.
“You want designers to be able to communicate color more precisely, and it’s easier to do that with numbers rather than saying you want [a color] more bubblegummy or a little sadder,” he said. “There’s this guy saying I want 10 percent sunnier, and there’s this guy in Hong Kong saying what does he mean? And if you tell a dyer 10 percent, they’ll think you mean 10 percent more dye. Just having the numbers to say 0.5 percent redder, that’s a big help.”
Color Solutions International, Datacolor, GretagMacbeth and Lectra are other companies that make color management software and engineered color standards.
Life Cycle Management
Product life cycle management software originated in the aerospace industry and is now being applied to fashion. The software is still in its infancy, but has been eagerly embraced by apparel makers. Companies such as Tahari and J. Jill are replacing disconnected spreadsheets scattered throughout various departments with unified software that provides one place to store, view and retrieve the information a company needs to coordinate the design and production of a garment. Business Management Systems, Freeborders and Parametric Technology Corp. are among the companies that make such software specifically for the apparel industry.
“What [we’re] trying to build here at J. Jill is a very open collaborative process that creates as much early visibility and consensus planning as we can create,” said Steve Pearson, J. Jill executive vice president for merchandising, product development and supply chain in Quincy, Mass.
User-Influenced Design
The Internet is making it easier for companies to involve consumers in the design process. Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, said he believes digital cameras and social networking sites — where users can post profiles and network — could naturally lead to groups of people creating or imagining new fashions and trends online together.
“Fashion is built on shared awareness,” he said. “Anything that changes shared awareness changes fashion.”
At Threadless, an Internet T-shirt company based in Chicago, visitors vote on favorite T-shirt designs submitted by graphic artists. The most popular ones get printed and are available for sale, and the artists get $1,000 if their design is chosen. The site also contains a networking and blogging section where visitors can post comments, information about themselves, and pictures.
Nine West is one company that is already using the Internet to solicit customer feedback about proposed designs, said Peter Boneparth, ceo of Jones Apparel Group, earlier this year at the Retail Systems conference in Chicago.
Muji, a Japanese company famous for its innovative design and packaging (it makes products as varied as notebooks, shirts and shelving), collects thousands of customer comments a week, said MIT’s Piller. Muji salespeople are required to keep special notebooks for customer feedback and to submit the comments each week to headquarters. In its catalogues, products that were developed based on user feedback are specially identified. In a recent catalogue of 650 items, 190 were based on user feedback, said Piller.