When talking about the clothing industry, we often think about fashion brands, designers or retailers. However, uniform or workwear manufactures and ODM/ OEMs are another big part of this industry. The definition of workwear is the clothing worn for work, especially work that involves manual labour. A uniform is a type of clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. (The Express Wire) The impact of COVID-19 has led to a series of digital transformations in this industry as much as in fashion retail. The major changes are driven by the process of advanced 3D technologies and the rising demands of 3D within their client bases. What and how can 3D technologies improve these manufacturers’ working process? 

Characteristics of clothing manufacturers

Clothing manufacturers need to be especially agile as there are so many demands placed on them. Frequent communications between different parties means that there needs to be a good system in place to facilitate this, and constant design changes need to be easily shared across the board. The short lead times involved means that all this needs to be done as quickly as possibly.

Only the fittest and leanest organizations survive in the race for manufacturing quality apparel in the desired time by working efficiently, cost-effectively, responsively, and flexibly. (S. Das, A. Patnaik, 2015)

What can 3D technologies provide?

Due to the characteristics of clothing manufacturers, digital transformation with 3D technologies is perfectly suited to them. Here is one of our client examples:

One of our clients is a premier specialized manufacturer of active clothing and team sportswear. Our collaboration project with their design team starts with digitizing their basic pattern designs with our Scanatic™ DC Suite, and fabrics, prints and logo with our Scanatic™ Nuno Fabric Scanner and Nuno3D Service. After the basic materials are all digitized, we upload all the materials to our Scanatic™ StyleBook Service that aggregates all 3D assets on the Scanatic™ for Fashion Platform for easy access and integration. 

With the modular design options that were carefully planned out and programmed into the master design during the Scanatic™ DC Suite stage and hosted on the Scanatic™ StyleBook Service, employees of the manufacturer from different departments can easily access all the materials and create new SKUs with various combinations of fabrics, prints and logos predefined by their designers. The 3D assets can be used by the product department for design reviews.  The 3D assets can be further sent to Scanatic™ RenderStock Services for virtual photoshoots turning these 3D assets into photo-realistic and high-quality images that can wow their customers in a sales pitch or digital marketing campaigns. The most impressive part is that they don't need to create a lot of physical samples to achieve these goals.  

Effective communication & Agility

Unlike the traditional process where communications depend highly on physical samples and 2D images making the process lengthy and slow, transforming into a 3D workflow allows manufacturers to review designs in 3D 360 angles. 3D visualization is also effective in a client pitch section since clients often change the design back and forth and also would like to see the results before they make any decisions.  

Also, with the 3D capability, manufacturers are able to create variations of style, fabric and trims options in advance and instantly present different SKUs with mixing and matching all the 3D elements together. Unlike 2D images, customizations are more easily displayed in a 3D environment. 

3D visualization and prototyping is already an established process in many industries such as architecture, automobile and consumer electronics. Articles regarding interior designs have shared how a 3D modeling workflow has changed collaboration and led to better, faster decision-making. Using 3D prototyping to drive more effective and faster communications has been proved in other industries and we believe will do the same for the clothing industry. 

The whole picture of digital transformation workflow

Although 3D/ digital transformation is now a common knowledge for the clothing industry, a total transformation is still a rather rare case. Most companies are investing more in the retail side with AR/ VR applications which enhance the consumer's experience. However, 3D can definitely help more than just that. 

“Even if 3D exists, in my opinion it is not as streamlined and optimized as it could or needs to be. Being able to leverage the same data that are being used for design, decision making, and manufacturing, and utilizing it for sales and marketing, may it be simple image creation, or for the creation of a configurator will significantly reduce lead time, time to market, and cost.” Thomas Teger – CPO and Co-founder of swatchbook, inc talks about this in the article “From 2D to 3D – and why 3D is more than a pretty picture”. 

TG3D Studio has considered this from day one. We don’t just focus on a certain part, but the whole picture of digital transformation in the fashion workflow. Our solutions range from the foundation: design, product development and manufacture, to the end: retail and e-commerce. Best of all, our solutions are all seamlessly integrated with each other and some with external software. The 3D assets that you create in the development process can easily be used in your e-commerce shop or social media platforms. The customer data that you acquire in your retail stores can also easily be used to optimize and forecast designs in the future seasons. 

To learn more about TG3D Studio’s solutions, please contact us at solutions@tg3ds.com