Now is the time to change the way you innovate, design, manufacture, and market products with shorter time to market and effective product design “Working within the budget”. Those businesses that are still on the fence not adopting 3D might find themselves left behind in the ever evolving Fashion Industry. A recent study has shown that 52% of the fortune 500 companies in 2001 have not survived today, as they did not embrace and adopt them self to new technologies.

The 3D technology in the Fashion industry includes 3D design tools, 3D printers, and 3D materials.

Today’s fashion industries Challenges

• Fashion industry is a 2^nd most polluting industry in the world after energy. Fashion brands and retailers needs to help fight pollution and reduce the amount of carbon emission we produce on earth.
• Imagine reducing the amount of physical samples by 65% and how much that would reduce your CO2 footprint, by reducing the amount of shipments to and from your vendor.
• Without 3D, a prototype would take weeks to manufacture, every time a change was made, another few weeks of time would be added to the process.

Let’s talk about the ways in which 3D can drastically help the fashion industry.

1. Speed To Market

• One of the biggest advantages of 3D technology is Rapid Prototyping, it is the ability to design, manufacture, and test a customised part in as little time as possible.
• The design can be modified without adversely affecting the speed of the manufacturing process.
• 3D enables better designing and real-life scenarios to gain the right feedback at the right time on design, color and fabric of the garment.
• With 3D printing techniques, a business can design a part, manufacture it in-house on a professional 3D printer, and test it, all within a few days (and sometimes even less).
• For small production runs and prototyping, 3D printing is the best option as far as speed is concerned.
• Rapid prototyping virtually eliminates the need for per-production tooling and speculative manufacturing while helping them shorten their time to market.

2. Sustainability & The Environment:

• With 3D fewer things are being shipped across the globe for sampling and thereby a lot of fabric as well as fuel I saved.
• With 3D a lot of fabric is saved by eliminating the physical prototypes thereby reducing the carbon footprints cause by the fabric.
• The 3D technology is not just sustainable in terms of the environment but also for the business as it will save the cost of multiple physical samples and their supply chain.

3. A Great Fit:

• Nothing beats a great quality garment that fits like it’s supposed to. With the use of innovative 3D technology a garment with the right fit can be designed.
• By saying goodbye to live models, time consuming dress forms and multiple size set and fit samples, the following can be achieved:
  • Improved software, body scanning and experienced 3D artists, are able to produce very accurate and custom 3D mannequins and avatars.
  • These innovations can even help you produce custom garments in the same amount of time as regular ones. With the help of animated mannequins you will be also be able to tell how the piece of clothing will behave during movement.
  • These animations and 3D mannequins will also massively aid you in your B2B sales process.

4. Cost Reduction:

• The fashion apparel industry has grown to a $1.3 trillion giant (2017). It is estimated that $6-8 billion is spent on physical samples in the fashion industry every year.
• Imagine what fashion brands could do with all that money, only if they found a way to decimate their spending on those physical samples.
  • Maybe they could invest that money in their innovation efforts? With proactive steps and investments, fashion brands can start working with 3D design software, or work together with a 3D solutions provider.
• Adidas, for example, has managed to reduce the cost of physical samples by 1.5 million between 2010 and 2013.

5. Stay Relevant:

• In the age of fast fashion, social media and instant gratification, it is increasingly important to get your product on the market as fast as possible. Fashion trends come and go and if you want to play into these trends, a faster time-to-market is paramount.
  • Let’s assume it takes you 12 months, which is not uncommon, to get a pair of jeans through the design and production process and onto the shelves. Those jeans might not be as relevant as they were a year ago, when you designed them.
  • Implementing 3D into the design and production process could drastically improve your time-to-market and help you stay relevant. If you design your collection in 3D, you could cut down on time it takes to communicate and approve the garments.
  • Therefore you don’t have to wait on your producer on the other side of the world and you are able to share digital samples amongst stakeholders for approval. Showing decision makers the final product, right at the concept stage.

Conclusion

Fast prototyping support means “faster product evaluation”. Faster product evaluation means “faster time to finalized designs”. Faster finalized designs means “faster time to production and to market”. Faster time to market is a tremendous competitive advantage.

Design, Make and Sell has been the traditional way fashion industry has been following for years now, with 3D technology it will be Design, Sell and thereby reducing the cost of inventory and also avoiding stocks from previous seasons. Brands can market their products with consistent 3D images that can be added to their website. 3D will also enable and allow Digital Product Creation.

Soon with all the technologies fashion brands will be able to move much faster than we can ever imagine and the day is not too far when we can actually download our clothes. 🙂