StyleCAD: New Player on the Block
Los Angeles–based StyleCAD is making a move on its big brothers. The CAD company has quietly flown under the radar in the Southern California apparel market during the past seven years but is starting to position itself to challenge the Gerbers and Lectras of the world.
By word-of-mouth alone, the company has racked up more than 300 accounts in the Los Angeles market and has become the top-selling brand in Australia. With a new marketing director on hand—David Scott, former vice president of manufacturing for rival company Tukatech Inc.—StyleCAD plans to make its name better known throughout the industry.
The company, a division of Los Angeles–based Advanced Computer Equipment, has found a niche selling its design software to Los Angeles’ sprawling Korean apparel industry. Because of language barriers, the Korean apparel community has been a hard sell for technology companies, but StyleCAD officials have made significant inroads.
It helps that the company’s owner, Sun Kim, is Korean-American and much of the staff speaks Korean. But Kim likes to let his product speak for itself. The main selling point, he said, is that users have found the product to be fast, at least 30 percent faster than competitors’ products.
And there are no 3-D tools or other bells and whistles included. Kim thinks 3-D in its current state is not advanced enough to be practical for domestic patternmakers.
“It’s more of a sales tool,” he said. “Our philosophy is to make software for our users, not something that sales and marketing can play with. The best feature is that it’s easy to use.”
Kim said training generally takes one-third less time than training on standard systems. The company is also able to provide support and respond more quickly to customization scenarios because its developers are local, he noted. SoftFashion Inc., a Northridge, Calif.–based company that Kim co-owns, produces the software.
With Scott on board, StyleCAD is making its first true venture into sales and marketing. Scott said he is launching an ad campaign and plans to take the company to a few trade shows. “It’s the most popular software in Australia, but nobody’s heard of it here,” Scott said. “So we have some work to do, but we’re going to be careful with growth.”
The product has a number of features aimed at making grading and pattern and marker creation easier, Kim said. The software automatically creates seam facing and hems. Users can work on multiple patterns simultaneously and switch between static- and dynamic-mode editing. The product has four snap modes: point, perimeter, intersection and grid. Patterns can also be used with underlying reference patterns and employ measure-and-change segment tools. Pattern charts can be accompanied by a sketch or photo image, and style reports can be printed with specs and photos. In addition, the system can use native Lectra and Gerber files.
The company also has an auto-marker program and markets cutting and spreading systems as well as computer-aided manufacturing products. For more information, visit www.stylecad.com.
Aria Releases New Products
Aria Systems Inc. officially released its Aria 4 XP enterprise resource planning software suite on Dec. 9 at the first Aria User Conference, held at the American Conference Center in New York.
The New York–based company gave several dozen customers demos of the system, which includes about 25 modules, ranging from accounting to shipping, tracking and sourcing functions.
Aria 4 XP succeeds Aria 2.7. The product’s new functions and services include support for server-based databases such as Microsoft SQL and Oracle; a new Windows XP interface; enhanced reporting, browsing and e-mail integration; and increased scalability with an N Tier server architecture.
The company also showed its new Digital Order Form sales tool. The Digital Order Form, used in conjunction with Microsoft’s Tablet PC, is designed to facilitate the flow of information between mobile sales people and the home office. The tool digitizes handwritten orders and then sends them via standard or wireless connections back to databases and servers at the office, where they can be processed without delay.
For more information, send an e-mail to sales@ariany.com.
