PI Apparel’s Post

There is a MUCH, MUCH bigger miss here than the divide between 3D design tools and content marketing. Bigger by orders of magnitude. The divide between 3D design tools and manufacturing, which CLO and Browzwear do not address. If the design process is digital, but does not directly drive manufacturing, the design work will ultimately be a waste of time and energy in the future manufacturing space and will become completely irrelevant in just a few short years. The savings in time and resources in digital design and the portability of the data is minuscule in real impact compared to the value of generating data that can drive manufacturing in the real world. Until then, manufacturers will continue to take Browzwear and CLO data, and re-enter that digital content into manufacturing systems. Double work, and certainly not capable of driving ‘on-demand’ manufacturing, which will be the single greatest factor in reducing the carbon footprint of the sewn products industry. Over half of apparel in the U.S. just sits in consumer’s closets unused. Making exactly what an individual consumer wants in a product that fits and is traceable is the first best answer to overconsumption.

Juliana, your article is spot on and reflects something I've been contemplating a lot. Like many disruptive technologies, changes often occur "to" an industry rather than "by" the industry. That's why I believe it's crucial for us all to engage and be part of the conversation. We must accept that in the future, shipping physical products around the world to capture content will not be the norm. Content creation teams should seek opportunities to become involved earlier in the product design lifecycle, providing the necessary expertise on what type of visual content is most helpful to customers. Technology is moving faster than adoption and we need to be diligent to stay in the conversation.

This was great. I was in attendance and noted that there was a lot elbows out about subjects. There are reforms coming globally that America is vastly behind on. How we navigate those will be a big one for both ecomm. I work With some very good AI computational analysis people in programming data of all types. Big companies are no where meet ready for big tech that is being deployed and developed around AI. Very concerning how not ready US design teams are.

Great read, Juliana Vail! Coming from film/XR, I've seen firsthand the challenges of visually simulating 3D assets. Scanning/reality-capture, while powerful, is often more complex and limited than expected. The trend in Hollywood is augmenting photography with virtual production, not replacing it entirely. At Synthetique, we're bringing this approach to e-commerce, elevating product photography to affordable lifestyle and in-situ PDP.  This approach recognizes that gen-AI often falls short on fidelity, while customers consistently demand authenticity in product imagery. Another vector in this space that may be explored is using 3D assets from DPC to solve fit issues—the number one cause of e-commerce returns. This would require platforms to expand their capabilities, which could, in turn, feed back into expanding the deeper integration of 3D and value-adding interactive tools for users. It's worth noting that video is still considered novel in many e-commerce platform spaces today. 🙃🚀 Exciting times ahead as we continue to blend technology with traditional craft!

It's a very interesting discussion. For now, photography is inexpensive and superior in quality compared to alternatives however I am confident AI will close this gap sooner than anyone expects. The biggest challenges for this to happen is part technology and part how the organization is set up to utilize these technologies.

This was a question I had when working with brands that created product digitally - when I did some digging it seemed that the two did not even seem to speak the same language. Their objectives were so widely different that re-using digitally created content didn't seem viable. I would be curious what happens if the two start actively looking for ways to collaborate or utilise each others content!

Part of the problem is the leadership hierarchy. DPC and Creative Service teams report to different roles with disparate motivations. The overall corporate objectives should be unified but the marching orders between the different teams are clearly disconnected.

Some really thought provoking stuff in here. I’d love to meet some more DPC folks and hear what their vision of the future looks like.

Nisrine Maati

Thanks Juliana Vail for this article! I totally agree that we need to be more open to this type of discussion because it is so important for the future of content creation.