Digital Product Creation, or DPC, is becoming one of the primary ways fashion brands gain competitive edge. DPC uses the latest design technology, allowing designers to work in a versatile digital space. In today’s ever-competitive environment, switching to a digital workflow is no longer a “nice to have”, but has become a necessity to stay ahead of their competitors.
How Digital Product Creation Helps Fashion Brands
Time efficient
One significant benefit of DPC is reduced design and development time. Design variations could be digitally simulated very quickly prior to producing physical samples and bulk productions. Designers are able to visualise the design in various colours and fabrics/materials and iterate until they get the perfect version of their design concept to be sampled physically. This leads to a lower lead time, and a faster go to market time.
Costs efficient
One of the major concerns among fashion brands today is increasing development costs with sample cost as one of the major cost contributors. On average, a unit sample cost is twice to three times more expensive than a unit production cost. This is especially true for small to medium-sized brands where production quantity is relatively low. Adopting DPC where fewer physical samples are created, enables brands to reduce sampling costs significantly. Based on research done by Optitex,$6 – 8 billion is spent on sample production annually. If we were to reduce 30% of sample production, we would have saved up to $2.4 billion. Other costs that could be saved by adopting a digital workflow is logistic cost of sending physical samples and fitting comments to and from the suppliers, physical fitting costs (often conducted with a live fit model), and product photograph costs for e-commerce purposes.
Efficient fit sessions
Another benefit of digital product creation is the ability to conduct virtual fitting. Adjustments can be made to the digital pattern and sample to ensure a better fit before creating final physical samples. Major fit problems would have been identified during the virtual fitting session reducing the need to carry out multiple fit sessions with physical samples. This is feasible today with advanced fabric simulation technology that is able to capture the physical properties of a fabric.
Increased sustainability
Fewer physical samples also means less waste. An estimated 92 million tons of waste comes from the fashion industry annually. By creating digital samples to iterate design visions in the earlier stage of the design and development phase, fashion brands are able to reduce the waste by at least 50% in the development process. In addition, adopting DPC enables brands to use the virtual samples to facilitate a pre-order or on-demand business model, without initial physical production. Fashion brands are able to better gauge the demand or produce only the quantities ordered, reducing waste from over-stocking, increasing profitability and improving cash flow.
DPC is the future
With so many benefits provided by DPC, we’ll see more and more fashion brands adopt this digital workflow. It is important to note that adopting digital workflow does not mean that physical samples are going away completely. Digital workflow allows brands to have more options with fewer steps before the physical samples are created.
If you are a fashion brand and would like to embark on a digital workflow to reap its benefits, but need help in the implementation without disrupting your day-to-day activities , contact us at [email protected]
Comments