Released in The Interline’s DPC Report 2023, this executive interview is one of a sixteen-part series that sees The Interline quiz executives from major DPC companies on the evolution of 3D and digital product creation tools and workflows, and ask their opinions on what the future holds for the the extended possibilities of digital assets.
For more on digital product creation in fashion, download the full DPC Report 2023 completely free of charge and ungated.
Key Takeaways:
- Fashion brands have a critical opportunity this year to harmonise digital design and development processes, as a lever to streamline production and support innovation.
- To deliver a meaningful return on investment in DPC initiatives, fashion firms must weave digital design into their core operations – moving beyond mere tech adoption, and building out more strategic transformations that deliver value through greater efficiency and market relevance achieved through speed and informed decision-making.
- The ongoing scaling-up of DPC strategies is increasing the need for high-quality digital materials. Solutions like SEDDI Textura aim to address this by simplifying and lowering the barriers to fabric digitisation.
What do you believe are the greatest opportunities that are realistically achievable, in 2024, through investment in DPC talent and tools?
I think the greatest opportunity in 2023 and 2024 is for companies to effectively bridge the gap between digital product creation (DPC) and digital product development (DPD) processes, to really take advantage of the efficiencies and competitive advantages digital processes offer.
Digital product creation and digital product development are two complementary processes. They are both essential facets of our industry’s transformation, with digital product creation accelerating innovation and digital product development reducing time-to-market and enhancing accuracy, quality, and sustainability.
At SEDDI, we recognize the value of these processes and deliver software that covers both ends of the spectrum, from digital textiles to virtual try-on. We believe that by seamlessly linking digital product creation and digital product development, brands can achieve greater speed, sustainability, and innovation while delivering high-quality, market-ready apparel and products.
Like most technology segments, digital product creation will be undergoing new scrutiny in the current fashion and retail climate, with a higher bar to clear in order to justify continued investment. Whether it’s speed to market or sustainability, how do you believe the industry should be aligning DPC strategies with overall business objectives to secure a return on investment and to future-proof the way they work?
Adoption of digital design processes isn’t just a technological shift; it’s a strategic imperative. First and foremost, fashion and retail businesses should recognize that digital product creation alone will not justify continued investment. The vast majority of digitization benefits come from DPD where we can reduce the waste of physical samples and get to market faster. Digital product creation and development processes together need to be woven into the fabric of an organization’s DNA to see the ROI. This means cultivating a culture of innovation, and embracing digital first processes as a long-term commitment, not just a short-term fix.
What it’s fixing is inefficient, disparate, physically-reliant processes that are creating waste in the apparel industry in terms of time, money, and sustainability concerns. We have reached an inflection point where it’s becoming painfully apparent that in order to stay operational, profitable, and importantly, relevant in this changing world, retailers and brands need to embrace change. This change means transitioning to digital at each stage of the supply chain and lifecycle of a garment—from digital textiles, to 3D apparel engineering, and in time, true virtual try-on.
Moreover, adoption of digital design and development processes should be seen as an enabler of faster and better decision-making. The wealth of data generated through digital first processes can be harnessed to gain valuable insights into consumer preferences and market trends. This data-driven approach allows businesses to make informed choices quicker which is essential for increased competitiveness, and makes it possible to more clearly align DPC and DPD strategies to business objectives and develop meaningful ROI.
The more 3D and DPC strategies scale, the greater the demand for digital materials that accurately represent their physical counterparts, and that bring brands and their upstream partners closer together. Meeting that demand, though, is a tall order, with high bars to clear in pricing, scalability, and speed. How is your Textura solution aiming to help the industry overcome those hurdles?
It’s true, now that DPC is gaining traction, the demand for fast, reliable access to the foundation of digital apparel—digital textiles—is growing. Digital textiles don’t often receive the spotlight in conversations around 3D design and development, but ask any 3D or technical designer and they’ll tell you—your garment’s digital twin is only as good as the digital twin of your fabric.
SEDDI Textura leaps over industry hurdles, one by one. We built the platform to address the key concerns of accessibility, interoperability, and speed. To remedy speed and scalability challenges, it only requires an affordable desktop scanner and SEDDI Textura’s AI-powered platform to digitize fabrics at scale. And because the platform is cloud-native and sharing-enabled, it solves collaboration challenges between brands and suppliers instantly. Even if a supplier or mill doesn’t have a paid account, they can collaborate with brand partners on a free plan.
Since all of SEDDI’s products operate on a software as a service model, we are able to offer accessibly priced, flexible subscription options that work for both brands and suppliers. It took a team of incredibly intelligent PhDs, engineers, and developers 5 years to reach this point, but SEDDI Textura is here, and it delivers the foundational need for the industry to succeed in DPC and DPD.
One of the key promises of working in 3D has always been the ability to quickly visualise ideas, improvements, and iterations. A strong example of that is the placement and customisation of artwork and graphics – which is a fast-growing market segment – where adjusting placements and visualising the results can cut sampling time down to minutes, and help avoid waste and inaccuracy. How does your SEDDI Author solution cater to that market? And how do you approach bringing together the brands that have a heavy emphasis on graphics, and the supply chain partners who need that absolute accuracy in technical specifications?
This is a great example of an area where digital product creation and digital product development intersect. Through years of 3D garment engineering development that has produced apparel simulations that are accurate down to the seam and stitch level, SEDDI Author ensures that what brands and custom apparel suppliers are creating digitally, translates into exactly what is produced physically.
The customization of artwork, logos, and graphics is a hallmark of our SEDDI Author platform. With a high-level of accuracy, brands can tailor their designs to meet their unique requirements, and supply chain partners can leverage the production-ready final proofs that are created to ensure that these customizations are executed with precision.
One small mistake can equate to a huge amount of waste for brands that deal with graphic apparel. Misprints and excessive physical samples can be avoided, and collaboration and speed to market enhanced, with SEDDI Author’s collaborative, cloud-native platform. Additionally, the platform is so easy to use that anyone in an organization can leverage it—even sales teams that want to show customers accurate visualizations of final products in real-time.
Three cornerstones of any solution or ecosystem that aims to bring stakeholders together are ease of access, speed, and affordability. How has this influenced the way you price and deploy your solutions? What’s your strategy to secure adoption throughout the value chain?
The three cornerstones you’ve mentioned—ease of access, speed, and affordability—are fundamental to the success of DPC and DPD technology and processes. With SEDDI Textura, we wanted the foundation of digital product creation and development to be accessible for brands and suppliers to work into their existing digital budgets, as well as to be highly interoperable to quickly ease that transition.
Brands and suppliers that are just delving into digital design and development, or simply want to test different solutions, can even use SEDDI Textura on a free plan. However, the real power of the platform is unlocked to help brands scale textile digitization and implement seamless collaborative workflows with value chain partners in our paid subscriptions, where we offer unlimited digitization. This model is far more cost effective than other solutions in the market, which upcharge for physics and require expensive hardware. All SEDDI Textura plans, even our free option, offer unlimited users to encourage wider digital product creation and development adoption across the industry.
How would you describe the ideal 3D / DPC pipeline – category-specific or generalised – and what barriers are currently preventing it from being built and widely adopted? What pieces still need to be put in place for fashion to stand the best chance of achieving what you define as the full-scale vision for DPC?
The ideal digital product creation and product development pipeline would take a holistic, end-to-end approach where stakeholders in different links of the chain can execute a common understanding of the design vision. Digital product creation conceives and visualizes the product and then seamlessly hands off to digital product development. Digital product development rapidly transforms the design concept into well engineered product meeting cost and calendar targets.
Brands need to understand where ROI comes from in the development process and demand technology solutions that deliver the return. Too often today 3D is seen as added work for the development teams. While there are good tools for digital product creation, robust solutions for digital product development are missing. Having the right end to end technology stack, with platforms that work with one another, are uncomplicated, and inexpensive for brands and suppliers to adopt, is crucial for success.
Additionally, the ideal pipeline should be accompanied by comprehensive training and education programs. It’s essential to equip individuals and teams with the skills and knowledge needed to harness the technology effectively. This investment in human capital is a not-to-be overlooked piece of the puzzle to complete the vision of a digital first industry.