The benefits of 3D digital product creation for fashion

In the past few years, the digitisation of fashion design has proved to be a game-changer. Using cutting-edge tools such as CLO3D and Browzwear among others to make designs and modelings in 3D. Brands are now taking notice of the advantages of digitalising their material libraries to speed up design, providing all teams and suppliers involved in the product creation and selling with a faster-enhanced product development process and competitive advantage over their competitors.

In this fast-paced and changing environment we’re living in, we can expect the growing digitisation of fashion product development, supply chain and production included. Major brands such as PVH, Adidas and The North Face are starting to switch their business models, beginning with the shift to 3D design and digital sampling, trying custom, made-to-order models where consumers will be able to configure products their own way, changing colours, patterns and materials using platforms in their e-commerces and even in their physical stores for product configuration and customisation.

3D Digital Product Creation

• Agile product development for quicker time-to-market
• Save time and resources
• New realm for creativity and design interactions
• Enhance showcasing and marketing campaigns
• Avoid massive sampling and photoshoots

It all starts with a team of highly skilled 3D designers capable of creating true-to-life hyper-realistic product images. Once you have digitally created images that are digital twins of your physical products, you have limitless ways and limitless time to take full advantage of these digital product representations. Digitally creating a product requires as few as a scan of the raw materials and fabrics to be used in the garment and a sketch, so the programs can learn about the fabric texture and other physical characteristics so it can reproduce it digitally, giving the product a realistic touch and a virtual life.

When you have a digital twin of your product you don’t have to produce it physically to start selling it in digital channels across all of your point-of-sales; even in brick-and-mortar stores, since you can have interactive screens that enable your customers to visualise and even interact virtually with your product in loco. That means, ultimately, that you can explore new and innovative ways to show and sell your product without having to create thousands of samples for product photography to show it in your e-commerce or catalogs and create marketing campaigns to promote it, no matter what channels you use.

3D Digital Product Sampling

• Substantially reduce time-to-market
• Reduced sampling cost and inefficiencies
• Increased control and consistency on styling and fit
• Co-create in real-time with partners requesting changes or edits and requests for visualisation.
• Readily available repository for rapid reference
• Improved accuracy in the product design process across cost & commercial viability

Sampling is a primary and fundamental process for fashion design. However, it is also highly costly, wasteful, and lengthy. Usually, the sample journey takes about 11 stages which take many months to get from concept to final shipment, and at each stage there are crucial approvals and tasks to be completed. With a fully digital workflow, the apparel product to production process gets decreased to three stages, namely: Design Phase, Evaluation Phase & Quality Audit Phase.

The digital design process in 3D has many advantages for sampling compared to the physical process. Despite the fact that both use similar techniques, such as drawing and sewing, the digital way doesn’t require any fabric to be cut or stitched to produce a garment once you have the fabric scanned. The process from sketch to on-body tailoring can take as little as one day and as much as 4 days based on the complexity of design, number of layers and category.

Designing with 3D technology has the potential to significantly cut the time and waste necessary in design since it’s possible to edit pieces in a short time period without shipping physical samples. And this sums up the obvious point about it: the expenses you get according to the process will be covered by the growth of your profit margins due to the cut in physical samples waste and expensive photoshoots.

3D Digital Product Selling

• Boost your customer engagement with unique and engaging marketing campaigns.
• Activate on-demand production and inventory-less strategies, connecting point-of-sales to production.
• Streamline the 3D products to start populating digital worlds, such as social media platforms, video games and virtual shows and experiences.
• Empower your customers to be co-creators of your products by offering them the possibility to customise them, and that will reward you with increasing loyalty.

The adoption of 3D design combined with a digital product development strategy brings out so many possibilities and advantages to the fashion industry that it must be embraced by every single brand sooner or later. The ability to generate quick and limitless editions, as well as to create completely virtual hyper-realistic goods so similar to the physical samples that can look even more authentic than a photo of the item.

3D assets and multiple parts of the 3D design are very unique and important pieces to the future of the fashion industry, and it’s not just because of the way that sampling and e-commerce visualisation will be transformed. It opens up the possibility to create engaging and interactive ways to connect with customers and get them more than just the usual, providing them with experiences that get them closer to a futuristic and technological stage of fashion.

3D unlocks endless possibilities for visualising ideas, new constructions, fit or any design you can think of. The range of possibilities is huge, including AR experiences such as virtual clothing try-on, virtual stores and showrooms that can be applied in both physical, virtual, or even hybrid spaces. Financially, 3DPC allows to significantly improve time-to-market and reduce sample costs; according to research from ARsenal by CGTrader, they found that 3D is on average six times more cost-effective).

Final overview

Creating in 3D allows buyers to start the process without relying on physical samples and logistics, avoiding waste of materials and financial resources, and accelerating time-to-market. Additionally, there’s greater value for brands that take a step forward and streamline their digital product into production. Having access to digitally-savvy suppliers and manufacturers allows brands to produce on-demand, which means that production only starts when an order is placed.

To summarise, by integrating 3D digital product creation into your product development plan you will be able to achieve the following improvements:

1. 40% increase in conversion rate when the product is represented in 3D instead of a 2D photograph and 30% more likely to be purchased. According to Shopify,
2. Interactions with products having 3D/AR content showed a 94% higher conversion rate for products than ones without.
3. 60% reduction in abandoned carts, which can be explained by the increase in confidence and awareness of customers about their purchase when viewing 3D images.
4. Reduce sampling and photography costs by >70%.
5. Maximize product margins and the number of products sold at full price with no discounts.

TNF Base Camp Duffel Bag 3D Animation by DIGGITT

There are some key steps within the implementation of a successful digital strategy that integrates all of the product lifecycle end-to-end stages. Here we list 5 valuable tips for implementing a 3D digital product development strategy:

1. Scan fabric and digitalise your trims, graphics and set up a digital library to utilise in the design process anytime and in different styles.
2. Make the transition of as many designs as possible to digital in order to scale your gains and maximise ROI.
3. Start with product categories and styles which offer maximum efficiency and speed benefits.
4. Invest in training your design and product development team skills in digital workflows and tools.
5. Integrate your digital product creation into PLM systems to streamline product configuration and production rules across the entire value chain, speeding up manufacturing processes.

Supporting the Fashion industry, reducing resources, waste and overproduction DDIGITT helps fashion brands, who need to create their Digital Supply Chain, which can help them to streamline their workflow, leverage sustainability and get products to market faster than ever before, by offering 3D strategy Consultancy and 3D Digital Product Creation “as a service”. Standing out from the competition, DDIGITT services are high-quality, innovative, end-to-end and customized to the client’s needs or scenarios. “A digital supply chain is also seen as a way to decrease waste while increasing production speed, offering a win-win for companies working to become more sustainable while cutting costs (Vogue Business).”