190 people from around the world attended the four day IACDE event at the Intercontinental Hotel in Boston. Simultaneous translation was a must.
We had factory tours of the Jospeh Abboud plant (shown) and the brand-new Southwick/ Brooks Brothers plant.
The president of the IACDE, Joachim Hensch of Hugo Boss opened a series of excellent presentations and discussions on e-retailing and digitizing fit.
Jessica Murphy, co-founder of True Fit Corporation, explained how their analysis tools could help online shoppers find correct sizing more easily.
Thierry Moncoutié of Lectra S.A. talked about 3D visualization in garment creation. We are duly chastised with the statistic that 62% of consumers are unhappy with the fit of their clothes.
Alvanon presented some of their ideas about e-retailing and mass customization of fit.
A panel discussion, moderated by Karen Alberg Grossman, Editor in Chief of MR magazine on the impact of e-retailing on brick-and-mortar retail stores. Contributing were Joseph Abboud himself, Roxy Starr, EVP of Design Development at Fast Fit 360, Jared Blank, e-commerce at Tommy Hilfiger and Raj Sareen, founder and CEO of Styku.
We started an outreach/internship program last year to sponsor and encourage young talent, with participation from U.S.A., Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan. This young "task force" made some interesting recommendations during their presentation to the group, so we challenged them to implement some of these changes and gave them a surprise budget of $10,000 to work with.
Networking is always an important aspect of these gatherings.
Benjamin Cohen of S. Cohen speaks with Kyle Vucko of Indochino
Anthony Sapienza with Joseph Abboud and Dragan Udovicic of Men's Wearhouse
Roxy Starr with Adriano di Quinzio of Brioni.
And our formal event is always fun. We cruised Boston harbor with dinner and a live band for dancing.
Anthony Sapienza, Me, Dr. Heino Freudenberg of Freudenberg Group, and Alan Abramowicz, co-president of Samuelsohn.
Members of the Japanese chapter in beautiful traditional dress.
The Indochino boys, Heikal Gani and Kykle Vucko with me, Enza Sturino, owner of Intermforme Interlinings and Roxy Starr.
I am thinking of putting an informal gathering together for people in Chicago who wight be interested in the group, which would include a possible way of gaining membership in the organization. If you are interested and in the Chicago are let me know. Of course, if you are located anywhere else in the world and are interested, I can certainly point you to a local chapter.
These photos were all shot by David Fox, photographer.
Posts
7 comments:
Any interesting break through in technological front. With 3D printing everyone is talking about mass customization (in manufacturing, but not clothe). I can see how online ordering can help with customization, but how do you lower the per garment cost while still really going for customization.
Also can you talk more about TrueFit? What can they do? Are they as ridiculous as height/weight/body type, then give you a recommend size or something like 100 measurements, or somewhere in between?
Thanks so much for this post. It's wonderful to know that this was so well attended from many aspects of the industry and the conference topics were wide ranging and up-to-date. I esp am glad for the gift to the intern brainstormers :)
Nice coverage of the event. Are you going to the Internet Retailer Conference & Expo in two weeks? Large gathering of E-commerce vendors and technology showcase across multiple industries. I am speaking on a session on B2B social media, maybe worth your time to walk the floor and check out what technology can do
Jeff, How's your hand?
Jeff,
This topic would be of great interest here in Chicago. Being involved with Design Schools here in the city, a simposium like this would be great to attend, or any type of symposium that educates and enlights the doers here in the city. We are not NYC or LA,so the opertunities within the city are limited considering NY and CA have a larger industry. It would also be great to find out who and what we really have here in Chicago, but that is another story..... Wm M
Hey Jeff,
I think it's great the retail sector is developing into the digital fitting stage, the technology is there and continuously evolving with better results and measurements for customers. Several companies are now partnering with brands to make it more mainstream. I've been following one called Texel Graphics, one of the top 3D scanning manufacturers in the world that are currently partnered with Marks&Spencer for digital fitting and showrooms for their customers. Think this could really take off sooner rather than later!
https://texel.graphics/cases/fitting-room/
Post a Comment