3D technology has been widely used in the animation and gaming industries over the past decades. Nowadays, such advanced technology has also been applied in fashion design industry driven by the e-commerce sector. Customers are no longer satisfied with the plain 2D photos of the clothes they are interested in, and want to check the garment in 360 degrees and even try them on in virtual fitting room. Famous fashion brands, like Tommy Hilfiger, have transferred to 3D fashion design.

· 3D Clothing Model vs. 2D Images

Unlike plain 2D images, 3D clothing models can be manipulated by customers to check the garments from any angle they want, zoom in to inspect the details and see how the clothes look in different lights. With the help of AR technology, customers can even try the clothes on virtually as if they have the physical garments in their hands and view how they look like on their bodies. 3D fashion design software and platforms, like Seemsay 3D digital clothing platform, can generate true-to-life quality virtual clothes which can be applied in various e-commerce platforms.

· 3D Tech and Fashion E-Commerce

3D is the future of fashion e-commerce. Garment visualization will give customers an excellent interactive experience of the physical clothes. E-commerce is typically a business which sells perceived looks of products. Customers make purchase decisions merely based on the videos and photos of products. Therefore, the role of product visualization is highly crucial for the e-commerce business. 3D clothing models not only display the garments but they can also be manipulated and provide extraordinary experience to your customers. They can experience the clothes even before they get the clothes, and the expectations are created.

· Build Respectability

As we just mentioned in the previous section, visual representation plays an important role in the e-commerce business. High-quality visual representation can build up your brand repute among prospective buyers. Product photos may be zoomed hundred times by potential customers to detect and inspect the slightest fault in it. 3D garments created through 3D clothing platforms, which are more attractive and can interact with your customers, certainly look more trustworthy than plain 2D images. Compared to conventional images, 3D fashion design can portray the garments closely to how it actually look in real life.

· Short Lead Time

3D clothing technology can shorten the product development cycle from months to days. In traditional garment development process, manufacturing physical prototypes are necessary. Every amendment will lead to one new prototype. On the other hand, 3D fashion design allow designers to make decisions based on virtual garments without physical prototypes. Amendments, modifications and updates are conducted digitally, virtually and quickly.

· Save Costs

3D fashion design is more cost-effective than traditional photography. In conventional way, a piece of garment must be manufactured first and shipped to the best location before setting up for photo-shooting. Thus, the manufacturing and shipment fees will be incurred. Photo-realistic 3D rendering of clothes doesn’t require physical resources. After creating a 3D model, you can easily render a picture of it. Furthermore, those 3D garments can be amended and adjusted to create a new type of clothes, thereby saving your expenses.

With the use of 3D fashion design technology, online sales can start even before the actual garments are manufactured. After the potential buyers share their feedback based upon the 3D clothes, you can use their comments to improve your design and gauge the demand before investment. If the market is not ready for a certain product, you can save enormous money.

3D garments models can not only provide engaging interactive 3D representation of garments to customers, but also bring more convenience and entertainment. Transform your products into 3D models via Seemsay platform and allow your customers experience garments in 3D in simulated environments to increase their satisfaction.

Since the internet technology boom in 1990s, the retail industry has slowly crept into consumer’s daily lives, offering the public a more convenient purchasing option, without having to leave their homes. Along the advancement of the technology, the e-commerce industry, especially the fashion e-commerce, further evolves. 3D, as one of the most popular and practical technologies in many sectors, is a new solution for fashion companies to promote their e-commerce business.

· Enhance Customer Experience

In the fierce competitions between online fashion shops and brick-and-mortar stores, digital retails are weaker in providing interactive customer experience. Thanks to 3D clothing imaging, e-commerce can have a interactive display of apparels. 3D fashion design software like Browzwear and digital clothing platforms like Seemsay can generate 3D garment models, which allow customers thoroughly examine the clothes like they do in real life and have a better understanding of the properties of the garment. 3D clothing modeling can not only render a photo-realistic image of the product, but also enables customers to interact with the digital products — rotate the garment, check the garment from different angles or in different lights or zoom in to check the details of any parts of the clothes. Different from the traditional photo of products, 3D graphic representation let customers have a interactive browsing experience, which increases the time customers spend on page, and further increase the conversion rate.

· Reduce Cost and Save Time

Compared with manufacturing physical garment samples, the process of creating 3D clothing models can be carried out online, through which fashion brands are able to maintain their regular business during the COVID-19 pandemic. For fashion companies with 3D fashion design staff, 3D materials and garment models can be created with the use of 3D fashion design software. While other brands may choose to cooperate with 3D clothing solution vendors. Owing to the rapid development of 3D clothing platforms in the post-pandemic era, digital garment models can be easily created in three steps: upload the picture of the physical garment or the 2D drawings of designers to Seemsay 3D clothing service platform; review the 3D models created by the platform and give comments; and confirm the revised models.

Furthermore, 3D imaging has the power to reduce product return rate of e-commerce shops. According to the statistics of Global Webindex in 2019, clothing and shoes are the most frequently returned online products. Among the reasons that customers choose to return a piece of online clothes, sizing/fitting is the most common issue. Through implementing 3D visualization, e-commerce stores are gifted with a new function: virtual fitting room, where customers can try the clothes on 3D body models virtually and check the size and silhouette.

· Improve Marketing Strategy

The contents created by 3D clothing technology are marvelous resources for marketing activities. 3D images are more compelling to customers than traditional 2D photos. The strong marketing strategy with attractive pictures will make the products more saleable.

· Keep up with Industry Trend

3D clothing and modeling technology is the trend of apparel and clothing industry. As early as 2017, Amazon has acquired a 3D body modeling startup company to create 3D human body to develop garment virtual try-on function. As 3D clothing technology improves, there will be more and more fashion companies starting to adopt 3D garment visualization to create digital fashion experience for their customers. Lagging behind peers is more than losing competitive edge and opportunities. Stubbornly clinging to outdated ways may make fashion brands exposed to the risk of being eliminated by the market.

It’s not surprising that digital retail giants like Amazon have take actions to promote the development of fashion e-commerce, aiming to provide consumers more interactive shopping experience and advance the transition from traditional fashion to digital fashion. In additional to its tremendous values in 3D fashion design, 3D clothing technology has great potential in marketing and retailing. By applying 3D imaging to e-commerce, fashion brands are making a change. With 3D fashion design and clothing technology providers like Clo3D and Seemsay, mass consumers can easily get access to digital assets, which make e-commerce business totally different from before. We believe that 3D technology will drive e-commerce ahead.

Fast fashion has long been criticized by the public for creating a large amount of non-degradable fabric waste, which resulted in rapid increase in landfills. The reason of the waste is a disastrous effect of its business model: trendy designs, mass production — even overproduction, and low quality. Due to the negative environmental impact of fashion fashion, the brands are increasingly being boycotted by environmentally-conscious consumers. Therefore, fast fashion brands are desperate to solve the waste problem and improve brand images.

Cutting-edge technologies are solutions for brands to transform its old production model which is heavily reliant on manual work, among which, 3D clothing technology seems to be one of the perfect options. H&M Group, for instance, has adopted 3D clothing and other 3D-based technologies in order to take its business model to a new level.

1. Cut Down Pre-Consumer Textile Waste

According to the report of Pulse of the Fashion Industry 2017, 35% of the raw materials along the fashion supply chain end up as waste. A single style may require twenty or more samples before finally determined, and thus tonnes of fabric are wasted during the product development process. As most of those clothing samples are part-finished and cannot worn by consumers, fashion brands have to discard them.

In design stage, 3D clothing technology is the optimal tool to reduce pre-consumer textile waste. Different from the traditional product development process where 2D sketches and physical samples are indispensable parts, 3D fashion design is a computer-aided process where pattern making and prototyping procedures are conducted digitally, and thus fabric wastes are eliminated. Digital clothes created with 3D fashion design software like Clo3D or 3D digital clothing service platform like Seemsay, can be reviewed, edited and modified digitally, so as to enable designers and pattern makers to check each amended version directly in 3D form instead of making physical samples. Therefore, there would be no clothing sample waste or sampling yardage waste.

Additionally, databases of digital fabrics on such 3D fashion design software and platforms are excellent tools to facilitate material sourcing and eliminate textile swatch wastes. One such fabric database is the built-in fabric library on Seemsay 3D digital clothing platform, which enables designers to check the texture and drape digitally. Furthermore, Seemsay platform also provided the contact information of fabric suppliers. So, fabric sourcing can be conducted online without the need of physical textile swatch books.

2. Tackle Overproduction Problem

According to the analysis of Son of A Tailor published in 2019, an average of 18.5% of produced garments are never being sold. Attributable to the expensive warehouse fee, it has been a norm for apparel companies to throw away or burn the unsold clothes. To tackle the challenge of overproduction, France’s prime minister announced in 2019 that France was working on legislation to ban destruction of unsold garments. Accordingly, fashion brands will have to change their operation model and address the oversupply problem.

3D digital clothing service platforms like Seemsay, offer 3D garment rendering services, with which 2D design drawings can be easily transformed to digital clothing models. Through showing the photo-realistic 3D image of garments to potential customers, fashion brands would have a clear impression of the buyers’ interests before the physical prototypes are created. Therefore, decision makers can drop undesirable products in time and determine a production volume much closer to the number they can sell.

3. To Reduce Return Rate

It may be an astonishing fact to a lot people that returned online purchases are usually sent straight to dumpsters. According to the environmental journalist of Corporate Knights magazine Adria Vasil, returned garments should be rechecked, repressed and re-packed before they can be resold to other customers. In consideration of the expenses, many companies consider it’s not worth it, and the most “economic” solution is just discarding them. As suggested by the 2021 Click, Ship & Return Report, size and fit are the top reason customers return online orders. Solving the size problem can eventually reduce a great amount of waste.

In this regard, 3D fashion design offers an excellent solution. The hyper-real digital clothing image created by 3D clothing technology, paired with body scanning technology, can create a brand new business model: virtual fitting room, where consumers can try items on virtually. Through checking the drape, fit and style of the virtual clothes on full-body 3D human avatar, customers are able to choose the suitable size and reduce returns, and then cut down garments sent to landfills.

The key to rebuilding a responsible image of fast fashion brands is to find a feasible way to transform its wasteful operation model rather than greenwash. Fast fashion has been conducting their business in the same way so long that it’s time to change its low-tech operation model. 3D clothing technology gifted fast fashion a chance to change its pollutant production method and go to a new future. The past of fast fashion is written, but its sustainable future is left for them to write.

During the past few decades, the fashion industry has made great progress in material innovation, weaving technology improvement, sales model upgrade, etc. However, there is nearly no change in the way we develop products. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the global fashion market and forced the whole world into lockdown, fashion brands, material suppliers and clothing manufacturers began to realize that the old way they ran their business in the past would no longer be feasible in the pandemic and post-pandemic era.

Some of the industry pioneers turned to advanced technologies for help. 3D clothing technology started to grow its presence at an eye-popping speed, as it enables fashion brands to work remotely and keep their business moving during the lockdown.

· No Person-to-Person Contact

Owing to the social distancing policies imposed by governments, fashion companies were exploring innovative product development practice. How can designers develop a garment without physical samples? 3D clothing technology seems to be the optimal solution.

The old-fashioned product development process involves plenty of in-person meetings during the physical sample review and editing phase. Since it’s hard for designers to get access to physical prototypes due to the shipment and transportation restrictions during the pandemic, product design teams needed to change its working practice. With 3D technology, designers can create digital garment with the fashion design software like Clo3D and Tuka3D, or transform their 2D fashion sketches into 3D models on the 3D digital clothing service platform like Seemsay. So, further changes, editing and modifications can all be made on the 3D virtual model, and designers and decision makers can see amendments and make decision in real time, instead of relying on physical patterns and garment samples. 3D fashion design eliminates the need of in-person meetings during the garment development process, and allows brands to continue their business while isolating at home.

· Online Material Sourcing

How can brands purchase fabric without feeling its textures? This is a crucial question facing apparel companies as the industry adjusts to the “new normal” brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. 3D technology might be the answer. Digital clothing technology assists apparel companies to fundamentally reshape their out-of-date supply sourcing models featured by long lead times and low agility.

In addition to providing a new fashion design method, 3D digital clothing technology is also a perfect base for establishing a comprehensive clothing solution platform, where fashion brands can manage and optimize their supply chains. One such platform is Seemsay, which provides fabric and trim supply information and compiles yellow pages of reliable clothing manufacturers. 3D clothing technology can create digital image of fabrics and trims, display their appearance and simulate their behaviors on human avatars. Through checking those digital fabric and trim assets, fashion brands can complete material sourcing online.

· Cope with New Customer Behavior

Attributable to the COVID-19 epidemic, there is great shifts in people’s clothing consumption habits. People are becoming more comfortable staying at home, searching the Internet to keep up with news and trends, and browsing clothes on e-Commerce platforms. 3D clothing technology has brought new opportunities to fashion brands to upgrade their merchandising models.

Without exaggeration, consumers hardly differentiate between the 3D image of digital garments and photos of real physical clothes. With the help of digital clothing technology, customers can purchase garments based on the digital images. Moreover, 3D modelling technique have created a brand new business model: virtual fitting room, where consumers can try digital clothes virtually to check the size and fit. 3D technology transformed the way brands showcase their products, change the online shopping experience, and thus to cater for consumers’ new shopping habits and reduce return rate.

Adoption of 3D clothing technology has surged since the pandemic hit the fashion industry. Some industry leaders, especially luxury brands, has recognized the great potential of 3D clothing technology long before it drew the public’s attention, and started to use such advanced technology in their business activities. It was only a matter of time before 3D technology became widely used by fashion brands. The COVID-19 pandemic happened to accelerate its adoption because it supports remote work and collaboration. Although a majority of apparel companies adopted 3D fashion design due to their needs of digital workarounds to maintain business activities during the pandemic, they will definitely find out that the benefits of 3D clothing technology is far more than that. Leveraging this opportunity, it’s time for fashion brands to digitize their workflow and improve their business model.

The fashion industry generated millions of tonnes of fabric wastes and green-house gas emissions each year. 3D technology can play a strong role in solving the fashion waste problem.

The clothing industry accounts for 2.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions each year, more than the entire economies of France, Germany and UK combined together. Tonnes of fabric are wasted during the early pattern making and sampling process. In respect to the serious waste problem, there is urgent needs for apparel companies to transform their design and product development model.

Advanced technologies, especially 3D clothing technology, gifted fashion brands a groundbreaking opportunity to innovate their business model and discover a new path to a sustainable future, by challenging the traditional garment development and manufacturing processes in all aspects, from pattern making, sampling and prototyping, to merchandising.

· Garment Development

With the use of 3D technology, pollution created at the initial garment development stage can be dramatically reduced. According to the report of Pulse of the Fashion Industry 2017, around 35% of the raw materials in the value chain have been wasted. In traditional garment development process, an average of four to five physical samples are created before the brands confirm the desired product. As those samples are semi-finished or inaccurate, the ending of them is usually being burned or thrown away in landfill. Different from the time-consuming and environment-damaging sampling process, 3D clothing prototyping eliminates sample wastes in the pre-manufacturing phase.

3D fashion design software and digital clothing solution providers enable designers to create 3D pattern, apply trims and decorative details, and change fabric of garments on the digital clothing models. One such 3D clothing solution provider is Seemsay, which allows designers to create photo-realistic image of the finished garments, and check the fit, fabrics & trims and silhouette of clothes digitally. All edits and modifications on the samples, change of textiles & accessories can be done virtually without cutting any fabrics or generating any waste.

· Material Sourcing

Traditional material sourcing usually requires fabric suppliers to deliver swatch books to fashion brands, who eventually discard those discontinued books. Due to their insignificant size, the swatches are hard to be reused or recycled. It is difficult to calculate the fabric wasted during the material sourcing phase as apparel companies don’t record the waste volume for fear of being criticized, which indirectly proves that the volume of swatches wasted are huge.

By developing digital materials, 3D clothing technology allows fabric and trim suppliers to showcase samples digitally and reduce material waste. This is where Seemsay 3D digital clothing service platform becomes essential. In its built-in fabric library, textiles are presented digitally with 3D technology reproducing its physical properties and performance to simulate its behaviors and drape, which gives designers a full picture of fabric’s features to judge its fit and look on real human bodies. And in its trim library, garment accessories, including buttons, zipper pullers, buckles, etc., can be observed from any perspective. Through 3D visualization, material sourcing can be a zero-waste practice.

· Product Sales

According to the fashion sustainability researcher Hasmik Matevosyan, up to 30% of produced garments are never being sold and another 30% have to be sold with a markdown. 3D clothing technology can contribute to significant reduction in inventory and returns.

Digital clothing technology means quicker time to market and faster garment development, which leaves more time for designers to work on optimizing the styles. Through being displayed on e-commerce platforms to replace photos of physical garments, photo-realistic 3D image of garments can also be used in product merchandising. The impact of using 3D virtual image instead of real clothes photos on online shops is more than saving brands the trouble of photo shooting. With the help of 3D body digital modelling, consumers can try digital clothes virtually on his/her own digital figure to check the fit of garments. The 3D clothing technology, actually, transforms the current clothes sales model from the manufacturing-selling process to a on-demand process where consumers browse 3D virtual clothes online, place orders and pay deposit, then brands arrange manufacturing according to the order volume. The new digital process eases capital pressures of brands, decrease returns and reduce wastes from overproduction.

3D fashion design and solution companies like Clo3D, Browzwear and Seemsay help brands to speed up their product development process, streamline their supply chain and upgrade their sales model. Additionally, the 3D virtualization technology offers fashion brands a feasible way towards sustainability by reducing material wastes and minimize returns.

The fashion, apparel and luxury industry is a market-driven business where competitions are highly fierce. Owing to the economic depression caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the profit margin of fashion brands are getting squeezed. To pursue further growth and meet efficiency requirement, many fashion companies are inclined to try 3D clothing virtualization across their entire value chain, from planning, designing, sampling, sourcing, manufacturing to selling.

· Requirement of Faster Time to Shelves

Competition of shorter product development time and faster time to market went more and more intensifying mainly attributable to the rise of fast fashion brands, whose apparel cycle time has been shortened to two to four weeks. Facing the requirement of speeding up to market, fashion brands are leveraging the advantages of 3D fashion design to accelerate the product development and optimize their value chain.

The virtual images created with 3D technology simulates not only the appearance of the finished garment, but its physical properties as well. Such digital assets, offering a true-to-life representation of clothes, can be shared among different parties along the entire apparel cycle to facilitate and accelerate the product development process. Using 3D fashion design tools, like Clo3D, Browzwear and Seemsay, fashion brands are able to reduce physical samples, iterate design quickly, cut costs of sampling and shipment, and increase efficiency.

· Customer-centric Strategy

Today, it is very easy for customers to leave brands they once loved and find a replacement, but it is difficult for brands to form customers’ loyalties. In this regard, brands are beginning to implement customer-centric strategies, which means putting customers at the centre of every business action. For example, the world-leading fast fashion brand Zara sticks to customer co-creation principle, which is evolved from the customer-centric strategy. Zara makes great effort in listening to customers’ needs and collecting customers’ comments on styles, fabrics and cuts. Then, its designers will create styles based on customers’ tastes.

For fashion brands without Zara’s customer research capabilities, 3D clothing technology offers them an alternative feasible way to produce garments exactly reflecting customers’ needs. 3D photo-realistic image of finished products can be launched to the e-commerce store, and customers can shop based on the 3D image and try clothes digitally on 3D human avatar. Then, fashion brands manufacture garments according to the sales volume, and give customers what they want as quickly as possible. Don’t worry for making customers waiting for a long time. With 3D fashion design technology, fashion brands can have extremely fast product development cycle and very short lead time.

· Sustainability

The traditional clothing industry is unsustainable and brought a wide range of negative impacts on the global environment. According to the report of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in 2018, the fashion production industry produces 10% of the global carbon emissions and is responsible for 20% of the global water waste. Such heavy environmental cost of the apparel industry pushes fashion brands to implement a more sustainable business model and more environmental operation strategies. The adoption of 3D clothing virtualization assists fashion brands to find a way to sustainable development.

The advanced technology enables designers to make 3D virtual garment models. 3D clothing companies, like Seemsay and Clo3D, help designers make 3D garment patterns rather than paper patterns. All modifications, edits and updates on patterns and designs can be made digitally on the true-to-life 3D visual images, without the need to cut real fabrics. This completely eradicates leftover fabric scraps generated at the sampling stage.

· Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 global pandemic is having significant impact on the clothing supply chain. Unpredictable changes, including social gathering restrictions, working from home and canceled trade orders from suppliers and manufacturers, challenged the resilience of supply chain of fashion brands. Confronted with such dilemma, apparel companies are forced to switch to new business models and reply on digital solutions to continue operation activities.

Different from traditional garment development process which involves physical contacts between persons and delivery of physical samples, 3D clothing technology allows fashion brands to manage supply chain digitally and conduct work remotely. For example, Seemsay platform, which not only helps designers move from 2D drawings to 3D models, but integrates all resources along the entire supply chain with 3D fashion design technology, and provide one-stop services from product development, material sourcing and apparel manufacturing.

Actually, the above four drivers only make up a small portion of the advantages of 3D fashion design. There are much more values of 3D virtualization adoption to be discovered by fashion brands. 3D clothing technology has pushed the development of the clothing industry so far to the stage that the business model of fashion brands would be totally different. 3D virtualization adoption will rearrange the market shares of apparel companies. Thus, keeping up with the pace of technology advancement is crucial for fashion brands.

The clothing supply chain comprises of several processes, including clothes development, fabric & trim sourcing, garment production and distribution. As the manufacturing is generally subcontracted to suppliers located in different countries, shipping and transportation of samples and finished products come as a main factor that affects the garment cost. During recent years, more and more brands are beginning to realize that 3D clothing technology could put them on a path to solving the profit squeeze problem and coping with the industry trend of faster production and shorter product life cycle.

· Cut The Product-Development Cycle Time

Typically, the cycle time from product planning to garment hitting the shelves is about forty weeks, of which, only a third is for actual manufacturing, while the others is for product development (PD). However, most of the PD time is for waiting, because the old-fashioned PD method depends on creating physical samples. That is to say, each editing or modification may result in heavy manual work, including choosing new fabrics, cutting, sewing, etc.

While in 3D fashion design, all amendments can be reflected instantly on the 3D digital virtual image through adjusting a few parameters. So, brands can get the updated sample within several hours after giving modification opinions instead of waiting for weeks.

Additionally, 3D digital assets help garment developers take and enforce quick decisions about fabric and trim approval. For brands doing PD in the old norm, fabric approval starts from getting physical material samples from suppliers to check the draping and silhouette. In 3D fashion design, fabric sourcing is completed online with the help of digital assets libraries created by 3D clothing software or 3D digital clothing service platform. With digital fabric and trim resources, material sourcing can be changed to searching digital library and contacting with suppliers online, which is much faster than the old way.

· Give Consumers What They Want

The impact of 3D fashion design on the supply chain will help brands to catch up with the change at consumer level. Due to the rapid development of social media, the connections between fashion brands and retail consumers is unprecedentedly close, establishing a basis on which the brands can produce garments exactly suited to consumers’ taste. Compared to the digitization level of the downstream, the upstream of the apparel industry chain is much less digitized. 3D clothing technology offers brands an opportunity to dig the value of a transformed and updated supply chain.

Unlike creating products in the old way, that is brands develop garments, and consumers choose what they like after seeing the physical clothes, 3D clothing technology let consumers order items based on the 3D photo-realistic image. Furthermore, 3D technology can help consumers find the size and fit they need by letting consumers try clothes virtually. Then fashion brands arrange manufacturers to produce what consumers want. Theoretically, there will be no unsalable items on fashion brands’ hand in a digital clothing supply chain.

· Boost Integration of Material Supply Information

Successful 3D visualization of fashion designs depends on abundant digital assets. Thus, 3D clothing companies made great effort in collecting apparel material supply information on the market to create digital assets library. For example, digital clothing solution provider Seemsay has its own online 3D fabric and trim library, containing numerous garment materials available on the market and contact information of suppliers. With 3D technology, physical properties of materials are translated into parameters to create digital assets that can be used to render a 3D virtual image of the garment. In digital assets libraries, fabrics are displayed in different positions, and digital trims can rotate by 360 degrees.

The integration of supply information not only enriched the digital assets of the 3D fashion design solution providers, but also provide fashion brands with key supply information along the industrial chain network. Such supply information sharing is conducive to supply chain flexibility of fashion brands and decision making during the product development process.

Along with the rapid growth of 3D technology, it has been a industry trend for fashion brands to use such advanced technology to optimize all phases of their end-to-end fashion cycle, from design, product development, material procurement and distribution. Attributable to the skill gap and the continuous improvement of 3D clothing technology, many fashion brands turned to partners with technical strength for help, like Tommy Hilfiger’s cooperation with The Fabricant. Fashion brands are highly recommended to find professional digital clothing solution providers, like Clo3D, Browzwear and Seemsay, to start their 3D experience.

Is your fashion brand striving to try new approaches to shorten product calendar? 3D fashion design is a perfect solution.

Waiting weeks to receive the first physical garment sample after the initial fashion sketch is no longer the situation suitable for today’s fashion industry. Especially, after the rise of fast fashion brands, like Zara, C&A, Forever 21, which generated great revenues through reacting rapidly to offer on-trend products to customers, the concept of “see now, buy now” gained legions of devoted followers. Although there is still a long way to adopt such concept as an industry standard, the requirement of shortening the product calendar is the eternal pursuit of fashion brands.

The fashion industry is a highly season-dependent business, where hitting the shelves in time is a question about surviving or not. Most fashion brands are constantly exploring new approaches to reducing the time to market, and most of them choose to adopt 3D clothing solutions.

Here are the five tips to shorten your product calendar:

1. Choose Suitable Products

Being on trend is the crucial premise for obtaining customers and making profits in the apparel business. That is why fashion brands, especially fast fashions, send designers to fashion weeks to capture the most popular trends. However, there is not a popular style suitable for every brand.

The manufacturing time of each product is different. The production cycle of a complex style or a style with new cuts or manufactured with new fabrics is definitely longer. Considering the limited time for a single fashion season, which is usually three month, and the preparation time used to identify the trend, the fashion brand only has about 40 days to take the products to the market. So, selecting suitable styles whose manufacturing time can meet your production schedule is significantly important.

2. Use 3D Pattern Making

More efficient than traditional paper pattern making, 3D pattern making process can not only save your designing time in virtue of its digital modification, iteration and design review, but also reduce costs in making physical patterns and garment prototype. Digital fashion design CAD tools like Clo3D and Browzwear have built-in block patterns and pattern editing & drafting functions to facilitate the process. 3D clothing service platform like Seemsay offers free digital clothing pattern making services to render designers’ fashion sketches into 3D clothing models.

Utilizing those digital clothing tools, all patterns can be confirmed before cutting fabrics, and grading can be done digitally and effectively. Designers do not need to wait for days to review or adjust the physical pattern.

3. Ensure Effective Communication

Effective communication is crucial for any company’s success. For garment development and production processes which require various teams’ engagement, smooth communication is essential.

3D visualization of garment samples, which can deliver a vivid 3D image showing what the finished product will look like, is a perfect solution for business communication of fashion brands. Instead of delivering physical garment prototype to teams and arranging various teams to discuss product development facing a bunch of patterns and textiles, adopting 3D clothing models accelerates the decision making process and guarantees effective and goal-oriented discussion among different teams. Digital clothing service platform like Seemsay, supports instant online chat with partners all over the world. Compared to sending physical samples via couriers to partners located at different time zones, sharing 3D files to your teams is dead convenient actually.

4. Streamline Supply Chain

Garment prototyping and manufacturing rely highly on the supply chain. A traditional apparel supply chain may stretch out for months on end. It is exciting that the global fashion supply chain is evolving rapidly after 3D clothing tech was in place. With such advanced technology, fabrics and trims can be visualized, with which designers and garment developers can make more informed decisions on selecting materials and shorten the time to market.

Seemsay has its own digital assets library on its online platform, where brands can access to numerous apparel materials. Moreover, Seemsay platform can also be used as a communication tool which provides brands a more effective approach to contact with suppliers and reliable manufacturers.

5. Adopt 3D Visualization

3D tech can easily create photo-realistic garment prototypes. The sampling and fitting processes can be easily operated through adopting 3D clothing technology. With 3D simulation mimicking what the garment looks like when touching human body, the fitting reviews and approvals can be processed digitally without the presence of real human models. For companies impacted by social distancing policies and remote working conditions, 3D clothing solution is a perfect model helping them maintain normal operation and even speed its garment development time.

The speed of traditional garment production process is usually slowed by inevitable human errors and multiple handoffs. Handling those processes digitally can save several weeks and allow brands to spend more time on creative products and stylish designs.

Five years ago, 3D fashion seemed to only exist in curricula of fashion design schools. However, since the hit of COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the whole fashion & apparel industry has started to rely more on digital clothing technologies. Taking into account of its various benefits, the 3D fashion design will definitely become a industry trend. But we never expected the impact of 3D clothing technology would sweep the whole industry so quickly — from sketching, sampling to fitting. Such sudden shift, of course, caused some problems related to the practical application of such technology in the garment development process, of which the most crucial one is requiring designers to transit from 2D fashion design to 3D clothing development.

“There is a boom in 3D clothing tech during recent years. Many apparel enterprises tried to utilize 3D design technology in their garment development process,” said Elisa Li, who holds a position of fashion designer in one of the biggest womenswear brand in China. Her company started to introduce 3D fashion design to its product development process last year when the whole clothing industry was hit by the pandemic and had to work remotely.

“3D tech will eventually dominate the whole apparel industry. The pandemic only sped up the progress. ” Plus, as Elisa pointed out, transition from 2D to 3D is not easy.

Problem 1: Skill Gap

“The first hurdle is the skill gap, of course,” Elisa said, “My company did arrange some tutorials, but I may get stuck like five times a day when I use the CAD software for designing.” 3D fashion design is basically a computation-intensive technology. For designers, like Elisa, who has barely no 3D modelling knowledge before, the 3D onboarding process is extremely tough, especially some 3D fashion design software is complex and not user-friendly.

Actually, the successful adoption of 3D technology to fashion design and sample producing processes require countless tutorials and practice. Facing to the challenge of training staff while operating business as usual, some companies let fashion designers work with 3D pattern makers, who are more proficient at using 3D digital tools. The former focuses on assisting designers to make design sketching and pattern making processes more efficient with 3D virtualization. While, some companies turn to 3D digital clothing service platforms for help. Digital clothing solution providers like Seemsay, offer 3D garment rendering and digital material sourcing services, and allow online communications across the supply chain.

Problem 2: Worries about Loss of Creativity

For designers, the designing perception utilized in working with 3D clothing technology is totally different from sketching in 2D. “Fashion design is an emotional thing,” Elisa continued, “I was used to touching the texture of fabric with my hands, and feeling the materials with my fingers. But now, all the tactical properties become data in the computer.”

Designers are of the option that the computer-aided design is far away from emotional. Labeled as such because the automatic technology depends on logic-driven algorithm. Designers worry that creativity and human judgement are lost when there are too much controls of data and predictive modeling.

On the contrary, 3D tech will lead to more creativity and self-expression. 3D clothing technology can generate garment prototype in a virtual-real environment. Moreover, the high efficiency of such automated technology allows designers to have more time and freedom to actualize their ideas. In respect to the bold conception which cannot be realized by conventional method, 3D tech is undoubtedly a better option.

Problem 3: Digital Materials

The last but not the least is about digital materials used in photorealistic 3D garments. Theoretically, 3D clothing tech allows designers to create any material they can imagine, but designers must use real-life materials in their work in order to manufacture the physical product. However, categories of fabrics and trims used in garment manufacturing are numerous, ranging from laces, leathers, woven, knits, buckles, buttons, zippers, etc. Each of these textiles and accessories has its own physical properties. Collecting the parametric data and scanning the materials are a long and tedious process.

Some luxury brands, like Tommy Hilfiger, chose to build its own digital material library. While more apparel companies turn to professional digital clothing providers for help. 3D fashion design software and 3D digital clothing platforms all have their built-in digital assets libraries. For instance, Seemsay has collected the data of nearly all clothing fabrics and trims available in the market as well as their manufacturing information, and digitized those materials with 3D tech for designer’ easy application to their work.

“It’s not just changing the designing medium,” Elisa said, “it’s about changing the way we create designs.” Barriers of changing to 3D sketching is more like a shift in mindset. In the future, designer will be a concept artist with 3D sampling knowledge, who can work closely with 3D pattern makers and sample developers to create 3D clothing samples.

“Transition to 3D is difficult,” Elisa admitted, “but it’s a must.”

3D clothing technology has the power to shrink the garment development cycle from months into weeks and increase fashion brands’ efficiency.

A decade ago, speed was still an advantage of fashion brands. However, it is now a basic requirement for apparel production. Huge successes of fast fashion brands, like Zara, Topshop, etc., proved that the secret of following the fashion is not just a unique style, but also a high speed.

3D technology’s high speed is not just about short product development periods, but also better-prepared product concepts, adequate validation time and better quality collections. With such technology, designers can easily edit their designs digitally and embed rigid parts like buttons and trims quickly. Adopting this high-automated technology means a more effective approach to success. Five reasons are listed below to illustrate how 3D fashion design technology accelerates your product development process.

1. High Design Speed

3D technology provides designers a faster way to ideate their concept, and offers pattern makers a more convenient method to turn the fashion drawings into patterns. 3D fashion design software, like Clo3D, 3D digital fashion design platforms, like Seemsay, and even some brands who wishes to shift to digital design, have built-in model libraries, where millions of 3D garment models are available for reference. Pattern makers can also access to prepared block patterns for easy use. Iterations can be done digitally with a single click in front of a computer screen, which dramatically speeds up the design process.

2. No Communication Barriers

Digital fashion design technology enables designers, pattern makers, fit technicians, garment manufacturers, fabric and trim suppliers as well as other roles in garment development process to communicate their ideas with products modeled on virtual avatars online instead plain drawings on paper. The digital prototype can presents a true-to-life display of the silhouette and fittingness of a garment on a live fit model. By depicting designers’ concept vividly, 3D clothing technology assists teams to avoid misunderstanding caused by manual errors and communicate internally and externally through sharing all reviews and comments directly on a photo-realistic avatar. Product developers can have immediate and feedback from team members without having to wait for weeks for revised physical samples.

3. Shorter Decision-Making Time

In 3D clothing process, a physical sample will not be made until the digital prototype is approved. All product development processes rely on 3D digital sample, which can be created much faster than physical ones. The key point of digital fashion design is rendering a digital garment nearly the same to the appearance of a physical prototype, allowing product developers to make decisions quickly without the need to see a physical garment on human models.

4. Eliminating Unnecessary Steps

3D clothing technology eliminates the troubles of delivering physical samples among different teams. Such advantage will benefit hundreds of global enterprises whose designers, material suppliers and manufacturers are usually located in different countries. It fundamentally changed the outdated situation where it may take months for brands to complete the whole garment product workflow — from sketching through sampling to showrooming.

5. Facilitating Fabric and Trim Supply

Fabrics and trims in the built-in libraries of Seemsay, Clo3D and other digital fashion design solution providers, have gone through physical testings. Then, those accumulated data were fed into the databases, and then translated into a visual image presenting how such materials look like on real clothes. The accurate manifestation facilitates designers to choose the most appropriate textiles and accessories. Furthermore, the number of materials stored in a 3D fabric and trim library can be millions times more than a physical warehouse. With such libraries, brands can access to numerous raw materials in one platform instead of collecting sample information from different vendors. In addition to the raw material resources, Seemsay, the 3D clothing service platform, has attracted a plenty of fabric and trim suppliers to join in. That means, brands can get the best price through comparison.

Fashion design is a highly seasonable business, where brands must move their products to shelves within the fashion season. 3D clothing technology is a great solution for brands to speed up their production time and reduce the risks of falling behind the next trend.