Hearts And Minds: How DPC Is Slowly, But Surely, Becoming Standard Practice – And What That Means For the Supply Chain

Digital Product Creation (DPC) is now an integral part of the fashion landscape, with many brands, retailers and suppliers using DPC-ecosystem tools day-to-day, and some of the biggest names in the industry making gigantic bets on replacing physical sampling with digital. As The Interline explored recently, Kalypso’s 2023 DPC survey revealed that “most” product leaders in retail, footwear, and apparel are now engaged in a 3D or DPC strategy – with nearly all major retailers and brands in both the US and EMEA having made some level of investment in DPC. And this research mirrors our own findings from The DPC Report 2022, which demonstrated that 3D and digital product creation are now equal in market scope and size to long-established enterprise technology segments like PLM.

So the business case for DPC – as a connected ecosystem to digitally create, manufacture and sell products – is one that the industry at large has tested and verified in discrete areas, even if it hasn’t yet connected all of those areas into a cohesive, end-to-end cycle with a true digital twin at its heart. In those specific lanes, though (design, development, prototyping, sampling, sales, marketing and more) DPC offers proven efficiency, which translates into faster time-to-market, and reduces reliance on physical samples that generate higher costs and create more waste for the environment to try and absorb. A net benefit to speed, creativity, and sustainability is a potent combination.

But elsewhere in the value chain, is the case for DPC as clear-cut?

Much of the conversation around DPC has, so far, been conducted from  the perspective of brands and retailers, in some cases drowning out the  voice of the suppliers – even as fashion is placing more of the burden of digital asset creation on those partners.. Some of this could just be the nature of how suppliers operate, with information exchange staying within industry circles; the actions of manufacturers and material suppliers rarely make headlines the same way that brands’ initiatives do. But if fashion is going to successfully take DPC out of its “design, development, and marketing” box, and extend the value of digital assets into production and real product definition, it’s going to be vital for those companies to have an equal seat at the table.

So, in addition to the manufacturer perspective you’ll find elsewhere in this report, I spent time with Alexander Levin, Head of Digital (UK) at Li & Fung – a company with a rich history, spanning over 100 years, and a name that  has become synonymous with the globalised supply chain. To put that into context: the Hong Kong-headquartered multinational group specialises in managing supply chains of high-volume, time-sensitive goods for retailers and brands worldwide, delivering a diverse range of products from a network of over 4,800 factories in over 40 production countries. If any company has a broad, blended perspective on the penetration of 3D and DPC workflows into the supply chain, it’s likely to be Li & Fung.

Levin recalls seeing steady, incremental progress that suddenly ramped up when the joint tipping point of technology maturity and external disruption was reached in the last few years..

“It’s come a long way in the last five years alone,” he told me. “Pre-COVID, people in the supply chain were still hesitant about DPC, although they were definitely intrigued by it. A barrier was that many were set in their traditional ways of working.”

But as the wider industry also found during the earliest days of the pandemic, a technology class that was once an interesting curio quickly became essential.  At that time, being able to create digital assets was not a luxury but a matter of survival; travel was impossible and usual chains of production were disrupted.

“COVID hit, and the supply chain shut down,” Levin said. “All sides were clamouring for 3D because they simply couldn’t get physical samples.”. And beyond sampling, the sudden closure of physical showrooms, crucial for certain B2B business models, hastened the shift from the “nice-to-have” idea of a digital showroom to an immediate and essential business requirement.

Luxury brands with operations in Italy and Asia – where much of the supply chain resides, as well as where Covid hit the hardest – faced some of the most severe challenges at that time. And almost overnight, DPC went from being conceptual to a tangible and indispensable asset, with average maturity rising 89% between 2020 and 2022, reports Kalypso’s DPC survey.

Time and cost savings, fewer errors, and more usability

Today, despite ongoing disruption being the prevailing mode of fashion, DPC has become better understood as an ecosystem, not as a single solution. And because of its fragmentation and complexity, as well as because fashion companies are no longer in emergency mode – the nature of demand for specific tools has scaled back slightly from a pandemic-era high.

“Overall, the demand for DPC is still there in the supply chain, and it’s still growing, but it’s not growing at the rate that it was when digital was the only game in town,” Levin told me.. “On top of that, every buying team has a different appetite for DPC based on how long they’ve been in the industry, their age, what they’re comfortable with.Because at the end of the day, they are accountable if something isn’t a true facsimile or something else related to the technology goes wrong.”

This raises a key point: while there are undoubtedly suppliers who are taking the lead on adopting 3D / DPC tools for their own purposes, or to improve their competitive position, overall DPC adoption in the supply chain is still heavily influenced by brand and retail customers. And if those brands are not placing full trust in digital assets in their own in-house decision-making processes, it’s unlikely that their suppliers will have the cachet to change their minds – especially when any breakdown of the process will likely end up being laid at the manufacturer’s door, the same way it typically is in purely physical sampling and production workflows.

The supply chain market for DPC, then, is a mix of those who have pushed forward with strategies based on their own initiatives or the urging and support of their customers, , and others who are still in the process of navigating its adoption, and who are perhaps taking a “wait and see” approach to determine whether this stage of the 3D gold rush in fashion is going to be sustained.

As Head of Digital, Levin has had the challenge of spearheading  Li & Fung’s extended network in full-scale adoption of DPC. And in that capacity, he has found that the route to success lies in finding a middle ground between articulating the long-term, transformative potential of DPC, and the practical reality of ensuring that deployment doesn’t interrupt existing workflows too much. “A lot of my work has been winning hearts and minds. And I’m pleased to say that momentum is building every day. Slowly but surely.”

In that combined argument for emotion and raw efficiency, Levin has found that having a physical sample, and at the same time, a digital alongside it, running both workflows in parallel, allows manufacturers to more easily visualise the benefits and articulate those benefits to their customers. Then, one day down the line when in a pinch, there will be  much more willingness from both parties to engage with and trust the digital asset because of the high level of pre-existing familiarity. And from there, the trust and confidence in digital workflows grows.

And that trust is also easier to secure than ever, thanks to the greater maturity of the DPC toolset, and the higher fidelity of the average output. That, in combination with the macro environment in terms of climate change and financial pressures, advancements in hardware, and the speed at which one can do things in 3D means that brands, retailers, and suppliers are all buying in more than ever.

“To give an example that sums it up, in the past, when I was doing this kind of work, it would take ages,” said Levin when I asked him about how attitudes to 3D design, development, and simulation in particular had evolved alongside the maturity of the software itself. “Whereas now I can produce the same type of work in a few minutes, and at a higher quality.”

The Holy Grail for Digital Assets

On the factory side, the response to having more powerful, intuitive, accessible and accurate tools has been largely positive. There is a lot of interest today in replacing manual, iterative, and analogue steps with digital ones, and Levin explains that he regularly engages in conversations with suppliers about the kind of hardware they should buy, and what sort of training they need. “We are all working towards the holy grail of DPC,” Levin continues. “Where you build something on your particular 3D system and it automatically creates the pattern for you. Then, one would be able to easily send that file to the factory, and they’d be able to use it without difficulty. From there, they then could use that pattern and put it all together.”

This holy grail, where the 3D file serves as the product definition and actually drives production, still may be a bit of time away, but many of the foundations are falling into place. “It’s very, very early days, this sort of interoperability with regards to the factory side,” says Levin. “But an encouraging sign is that when we create tech packs to send to factories, we more often than not include the 3D cards. This provides an immersive view, where all the details are very clear.” For some factories, the team sends turntable renders, allowing the supplier to see a slow moving video file that gives a view of every angle of the item. This has been really effective and leaves less room for interpretation errors than a flat image. “There are more and more factories getting trained up in CLO [and other tools],” says Levin.

So while fashion is not yet ready to design, develop, test, and manufacture solely based on a digital asset, Levin (and other brands and suppliers that The Interline has spoken to off-the-record this year) believes that things are moving in the right direction to elevate the DPC maturity of the entire industry by providing greater connectivity between the sourcing and supply base, and its brand and retail customers.

Motivations for Progress

One of the lessons that COVID taught the wider fashion industry is that if something needs to be done seriously enough, it can happen; necessity is a powerful motivator. In that case it was  creating a  DPC strategy – fast – and implementing it as effectively as possible. So the next step in the DPC journey for brands, retailers, and suppliers is less a question of whether something is possible and more a question of motivation. Why is it desirable – even necessary – to change the current dynamic?

On the macro level, there are plenty of factors for motivation. Geopolitical tensions in multiple regions, inflation, the rising cost of living, the ubiquity and growing power of AI, and extreme weather due to climate change. Mix them altogether and fashion is facing a heady brew of multi-faceted risk, and it may be enough for the industry to move swiftly and decisively toward a future where DPC, and better standardisation of formats and interchanges too, becomes integral to operations and sustainability efforts across the board.

“I anticipate in the next 18/24 months, we will see even more growth in 3D and DPC for suppliers,” says Levin. “That’s part of what we’re doing now, achieving greater interoperability of technologies for suppliers. And we’re making great progress.” At the moment, Li & Fung is also working with some clients on a pilot project where they build the garments in 3D and sell them before manufacturing. This could be a way to gauge production volumes, and by doing this there is no overproduction and no issue of markdowns. “You don’t have to sew a single stitch until you’ve got the first sale,” says Levin. “There will need to be a fast turnaround time for that manufacturing, but it’s something I see on the horizon, and just generally I see things getting faster. I see more decision making power being given to the supplier, slowly but surely.”

Sustainability through Digitisation

Giving greater power to the supplier is something that is critical to the development of digitisation of every sector in Bangladesh (a key manufacturing hub for the fashion industry) as part of the nation’s push for greater usage of digital technologies. And hand in hand with digital transformation is sustainability – something that is moving beyond being siloed and is now forming an integral part of  brands, retailers, and suppliers’ business models, especially in the fashion industry’s manufacturing hubs.

An initiative that has been monitoring the situation on the ground that exists between brands and retailers and their suppliers is Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB). The objective of the initiative is to map the export-oriented, ready-made garment (RMG) industry across all garment-producing districts in the country; providing accurate, credible and updated information to all industry stakeholders to enable efficiency, productivity, accountability, and transparency.

Professor Matin Saad Abdullah, Technical Lead at Mapped in Bangladesh offered a suggestion as to how things will need to change to see a real difference in manufacturing nations like Bangladesh, that will result in both better usage of DPC and better practices environmentally and socially. “While traditional supply chain digitisation focused on the product lifecycle, from raw material input to final sale, with the objective of improving product quality and minimising production waste, true transformation requires a shift in this approach. This shift means going further and adopting a new kind of supply chain digitisation that achieves full transparency across all stages.”

This goal is certainly commendable, but is much said than done. A substantial challenge is the disparity between the limited data available from brands when it comes to their supply chains, and the kind of comprehensive data necessary for impactful change. “To bridge this gap, companies must aggregate data from multiple, independently verified sources, which is essential for gaining a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the digital transformation’s true impact on supply chains,” says Professor Abdullah.

This understanding will be what helps benchmark the industry to understand progress around sustainability and digitalisation and how much more work needs to be done. This kind of data driven approach will be critical to putting pressure on each of fashion’s stakeholders to do better when it comes to making sustainability a priority and taking genuine steps to achieve it.

This understanding will serve as a benchmark for evaluating the industry’s advancements in sustainability and digitalisation, mapping the extent of progress and identifying areas requiring further attention. This type of data-driven approach is indispensable in compelling the stakeholders along fashion’s value chain to elevate their commitment to sustainability, and taking genuine steps to achieve it.

Hesitancy to Harmony

The driving force behind DPC’s evolution is not confined to brands or retailers alone; suppliers have long been part of the DPC conversation, and are expected to soon play a big part in overcoming challenges in integrating 3D assets, connecting with manufacturing processes, and building team capabilities. Everybody – even those that are hesitant – still recognise this is the future of the industry. We need to move faster, we need to move cheaper, we need to move with less. To limit or eventually eliminate carbon footprint. We need to have fully integrated systems that go from designers working in 3D, that creates the pattern that will then link in with the factory to do overlay planning. Then after that through to e-commerce and other spaces for the consumer.

This won’t happen overnight, but with all stakeholders playing an active role in DPC’s adoption across the value chain  – the future of fashion is heading in the right direction, with deeper digital transformation of the production process and greater collaboration with the valued partners who bring ideas to life physically as well as digitally.