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:
- Despite economic challenges, there is a significant opportunity for companies to leverage DPC talent and tools to optimise processes and reduce costs. Investing in experts who understand both fashion processes and 3D capabilities can result in immediate benefits, rather than waiting for a distant future vision.
- Successful digital transformation requires deep integration into the fashion supply chain, requiring collaboration between brands and their upstream partners. As brands diversify their sourcing bases, maintaining quality control and setting standards for digital materials will be critical.
- The ideal 3D/DPC pipeline involves a smooth transition to digital processes – from fabric selection to manufacturing – with limited reliance on physical samples. Continued education, communication, and advocacy are key to overcoming barriers and realising fashion’s full DPC potential.
What do you believe are the greatest opportunities that are realistically achievable, in 2024, through investment in DPC talent and tools?
In the current economic downturn, many companies are reverting to traditional processes due to budget cuts. However, some recognize the necessity for change in these critical times. Major brands are actively transitioning to a digital supply chain to enhance value through their DPC workshops.
Amid economic challenges, this year presents a fantastic opportunity to closely examine the utilization of 3D processes and how companies can eventually reduce costs. Rather than aiming for a vision 5-10 years ahead, companies can apply 3D solutions today. Probably the biggest investment here lies in experts who are both intimately familiar with Fashion processes as well as 3D tools and capabilities to identify areas where cost can be saved using 3D.
For digital product creation – and wider digital transformation – to really take hold, it needs to become deeply integrated into the supply chain, and brands and their upstream partners will need to decide on how the workload of digitisation is managed. As a technology supplier, you’re right in the middle of that conversation, so what’s your take on how that supply chain integration is progressing?
There is no doubt that digitization must happen at or close to source.
Many brands complain that vendors are adopting technology too slowly and that the return on investment (ROI) is not meeting expectations. However, upon closer examination, we can identify an underlying issue. A very dominant problem is the lack of brand commitment to request fewer physical samples. Thus, most of the time 3D stays an “add-on”, and unfortunately the traditional processes stay untouched.
Another unobvious issue is that some brands just do not know which vendors digitize. Therefore, Vizoo started to provide a supplier listing to our brand clients to have more transparency on onboarded T1 and T2.
The silver lining: in 2023 we sold most of our technology to manufacturers and mills. They are either getting equipped through a brand request or, do want to get ahead of the game and invest for their own business case. Forster Rohner (Switzerland), JML and MAS Holdings are perfect role models how suppliers are pushing the brands to digitize. Digital materials are in fact a perfect example for an integrated digital supply chain. The beauty is that the ROI sits on multiple ends.
A lot of brands are working to diversify their sourcing bases, which means that materials (and by extension digital materials) are coming from a wider range of sources. That could raise some concerns when digitisation capabilities are so unevenly distributed across the value chain, so how do you think about quality control and setting standards for the fidelity of material capture?
The discussion of quality is becoming a very frequent one amongst our clients and it shows us how digitization is taken so much more seriously than a couple of years ago. Having said that, outsourcing always requires clear communication, processes, and quality standards.
Brands scaling DPC experience that precisely communicated quality expectations and guidelines are a foundation of a successful working relationship in the digital space.
At Vizoo we have introduced easy-to-use assessment tools which help to judge the drape and overall appearance of a fabric. These are already successfully utilized by several brands and vendors. Moreover, we will provide a similar approach to assess quality and other visual aspects like reflection and transparency in 2024.
All those tools are focused on efficiency, to avoid putting any more extensive workflows on the vendors shoulders.
There are, of course, conflicting opinions on where material libraries – both physical and digital – should reside, whether it’s in PLM, a dedicated digital materials platform, or something homegrown. How do you work to make sure that materials can be easily used once they’re digitised, instead of ending up in data silos?
I do not believe that we will have this single global platform of digital materials. Currently, there are multiple approaches, either from platform providers or even self-developed solutions from brands and vendors. Our client JML offers their full material base on their own digital library for example, but we also do have many clients relying on swatchbook and similar tools. Another approach is a digital fabric fairs like the performance days who is grouping all their exhibitors offering on their digital fair platform.
This topic will still develop. However, to date I do not see this as a showstopper going digital.
The only two crucial points for companies in this phase are to choose a solid and ideally open-source format for their materials, like U3M, and to make sure that whatever platform they utilize it has an API and can be accessed using tools like REST API. This way they do not end up with a dead or closed-off format and can always migrate 3d materials to a new library if necessary.
At a more foundational level, why do you believe accurate digital materials are so important to the strategic objectives of fashion brands today? And how does that translate into a mandate for capturing those materials to the highest possible standard?
A lot of brands are incredibly detail-oriented when assessing their 3D images – most of the time far beyond their needs. I do believe that it is important to define the use case of the assets first, and then to specify the quality which is needed to achieve this. Nevertheless, bad material quality is one of the most common reasons when companies are not convinced of 3D. It is a significant risk for DPC to fail in the POC (proof of concept) phase if the final renderings look like a video game graphic from the 90ies instead of a photo-realistic image. German fashion brand s.Oliver point out in our joint case study that only with Vizoo materials they drastically raised the internal acceptance for 3D assets.
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?
A physical fabric swatch is displayed at a brands supplier meeting or fabric trade show. Through QR codes designers can access the 3D material of said fabric and use the data right away for their ideation in 3D. Fabric selection happens completely digitally. Only then, a selected small set of physical fabrics can be ordered.
The original 3D material is of such a quality that the brand can use the assets directly for their internal database and communication, Design, Prototyping, Fitting and up to eCommerce and other consumer facing tools – all can happen with little support from the physical side.
Communication with manufacturers happens completely in 3D with very limited sets of physical samples.
And this is not even a far and remote vision: with the tools and technology available all this is possible today. The barriers are:
- Transitioning to the new processes. Fashion employees are always busy, work 110% and barely have time to fulfil existing deadlines. This makes the interim phase of training new digital processes and implementing them extremely difficult. Also, we are talking about processes that have been in place for decades already so naturally people are hesitant to adapt to new procedures.
- Convincing leadership and other departments. I often see that 3D teams are its very own tiny, isolated island within companies and have a difficult time convincing departments like Design, Marketing, Sales to embrace 3D but also struggle with communicating the benefits to their leaders and even C-Level management. Without support from all 3D has a tough time.
We need to continue our collaboration with universities to have more Fashion people with the required skillset already available to go digital, but we also need to market & communicate the benefits more, both internally in a company and externally. Employees need to be encouraged to deliver benefits for the entire value chain, instead of only their siloed department benefits. 3D needs to “burst” its bubble and become the mainstream tool for the Fashion industry.
