California Apparel News

It was not that long ago that Corey Schwartz would meet apparel industry workers so technologically inept they thought the CD-ROM tray was a cup holder. Then there was the guy who thought no one would be able to read his e-mail attachments because he thought the attachment symbol was the document itself and nobody could read a production order that small.“It was a great example of the lack of knowledge of technology,” says Schwartz.

The apparel industry is not the fastest adopter of new technology, but it’s improved greatly, says Schwartz, Director of Sales—Americas for New York–based textile design software providers Pointcarreacute;.

But with the increased pressure of speed-to-market, many companies are finding they can no longer lag five years behind the times, and so many are turning to textile design software as another way of saving money and time during the crucial product development process.

“Unfortunately, the textile and fashion industries have been very slow to embrace technology,” says Schwartz. Many companies in the apparel industry are family-owned and are slow to change, he says. And then there are designers who refuse to part with their cherished pencils. “Software is basically just a faster pencil for you,” Schwartz tells prospective clients. “We’re not taking away your design capabilities, we’re enhancing them.”

Schwartz has noticed increasing acceptance of technology over the past five years, especially among apparel companies that make their own knits, prints, and jacquard and dobby weaves.

Much of it has to do with the need to speed up the time-consuming sample process.

“People can’t wait for samples to come back and forth from overseas,” says Schwartz. “We’re living in a virtual world where you don’t have to wait for everything to be done on fabric.”

Like other kinds of software for the fashion industry, textile software allows the creation of a virtual sample that can be e-mailed for approval, saving time and money. Not only can companies make samples faster, they need to make fewer because software like Pointcarreacute;’s offers reliable color representation. “Whereas before they were making 15 samples in different colors,” says Schwartz, “now they pick the colors and are sure of them before [making the samples]. So if they were making 15 before, maybe now they’re making six and then choosing two for the line.”

Schwartz often hears customers say they’re spending $250,000 a year in shipping and color correction for their textile samples. He counters by saying they could spend $30,000 on software, and $50,000 in salary for a CAD specialist textile designer.

For the time being, virtual samples aren’t intended to replace physical samples entirely. A computer screen is a two-dimensional digital image, while fabric is a three-dimensional physical object whose color changes in different lighting conditions. Still, Schwartz says the obvious technological path is to perfect digital color to the point that physical samples aren’t needed at all. “I think the next major breakthrough will be with color,” he says.

Schwartz has also seen a big increase in in-house digital fabric printing. “Instead of sending print samples to a mill, having screens engraved at $500 to $1,000 per color, and waiting six to 10 weeks for them, you’re printing on an Epson printer on whatever fabric you’re using, so you have the sample made in a few hours using the same exact dyes in the printer as the mills use.”

Here, technology has filled the void left by the closing of so many domestic textile mills, says Schwartz.

But using software isn’t just for speeding up the production process to be more profitable—sometimes it’s a matter of simple survival.

“I knew a company that was late one day with a T-shirt order for Wal-Mart,” says Schwartz. “So Wal-Mart said it would pay $1 less per shirt, but the company was only making 50 cents on each shirt.

Wal-Mart said, ’I don’t care,’ and canceled the order.”

DigiFab Goes Digital There’s always a trade-off, but a rapidly growing number of apparel companies are finding that the high cost of digital textile printing is justified by the speed, control, and design flexibility it offers.

Los Angeles–based DigiFab has seen sales of its digital-printing software increase 35 percent over last year. “And we see that type of increase almost every year,” says president Avedik Izmirlian. “This is the main interest for people right now.”

DigiFab makes a range of textile software, but its digital-printing application is called “Evolution.” It is a Raster Image Processor specifically developed for printing textiles. An RIP program is necessary to run a digital printer, as well as provide color control and other features.

The software ranges in price from $950 to $5,500.

Clients are resorting to digital printing both for sample creation and short-run production, and are roughly split between those who do digital printing in-house and those who outsource it.

When it comes to samples, the trend is less about speeding up the development process and more about offering something potential buyers can see and touch. “You cannot compete nowadays if you don’t have a piece of fabric to show buyers,” says Izmirlian. “It’s difficult to compete without something tangible.”

Small digital printers for making samples can be had for about $15,000, according to Izmirlian.

Chain and department stores are also increasingly using short-run Future in Digital Continued from page 7 digital printing as a way to test items in flagship stores.

When done in-house, digital printing also allows companies to keep new designs a secret.

“It’s a more secretive way of making samples,” says Izmirlian.

“There’s so much competition out there, and with third parties there can be leaks.”

Although digital printing offers greater design flexibility, such as the ability to print photographic images, it does have its limitations. “It’s growing faster than I expected,” says Izmirlian, “but the hardware out there is still kind of slow as far as the number of yards it can produce.”

The fastest digital printer on the market can print about 100 yards of fabric per hour, while a conventional rotary printer can crank out 60 yards per minute.

The cost is also much higher, says Izmirlian.

For example, say you wanted to print 100 yards of fabric using 12 colors. The cost of screen engravings might run $3,500, with the total order running about $5,000. Going digital would cost about $10,000. “It’s costing you double,” says Izmirlian, “but you’ll have it in 24 hours. And of course you can do something you can’t do with conventional printing, so it’s all relative.”