As demand for customization continues to permeate numerous industries, from automotive to furniture, it isn’t surprising that the custom sportswear market will require new tools to meet consumers’ growing expectations for ‘design your own’ or ‘build your own’ functionality.
Due to the immense uptick in online shopping, customers have become increasingly accustomed to a very personalized shopping experience. They use online search engines to sift through options from all corners of the internet, then personalize everything from their childrens’ books to meal kit subscriptions.
Consumers have and expect a level of control never seen before. In this day and age, the former model of ordering custom team uniforms and sports apparel probably won’t align with consumers’ quickly-evolving needs. Before, a coach might have been satisfied working with a sales representative that played telephone with a designer to create and purchase teamwear. Now, they often want a more hands-on approach to both designing and ordering uniforms. The dilemma many custom teamwear brands now face is how to evolve with the needs of their customers without having to start from scratch…
Enter vPersonalize. We’re enabling businesses all over the world to increase efficiency, sales, and customer satisfaction while maintaining their existing ecommerce and supply chains. Our 3D product designer integrates with most ecommerce platforms, making it easy to publish customizable designs to a consumer-facing portal quickly and efficiently. Your customers can then choose a product, change colors, add logos or team lettering, customize in real 3D and place their orders. Once a custom order is placed, our patented technology automatically generates the size-graded, nested, print ready files with the roster name and numbers, ready for production in minutes!
We’ve built upon our deep knowledge of customization and on-demand manufacturing to develop an industry-specific, comprehensive solution for custom teamwear brands that includes everything from automated catalog design, team stores, and order management to roster automation.
We continuously add new technology to our platform based on the expanding needs of our clients. With our newest feature, you can also seamlessly add our team commerce to your Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce. Our team commerce enables you to create dynamic storefronts, set automatic launch and expiration dates, provide secure access to your coaches for review, manage affiliate revenue share, track production times and more!
At vPersonalize, we understand manufacturing and technology like no other. We are passionate about on-demand manufacturing and are actively building a future where supply chains work without any friction.
The global sportswear market was worth USD $239.78 billion in 2018 and is expected to register a CAGR of 10.4% between 2019 to 2025. Although there was a dip in sports participation due to the covid-19 pandemic, as schools and leagues open back up and outdoor activities are encouraged, the custom team uniform segment is expected to make a healthy rebound. With more and more brands and manufacturers offering the service either directly to consumers or through other businesses, it is time to explore effective ways of optimizing the custom sublimated sportswear and teamwear business.
Put Some of the Design Work in the Hands of Your Customers
Typically a customer works with a sales representative who works with a designer to create an initial design that then goes through rounds of telephone or email iterations before the design is finalized, accepted and ready to go to production.
Understandably, this back and forth process is time consuming and expensive. It may also be frustrating for your customer when your designer don’t get it “right” the first time. By offering templates and giving your customer the ability to design themselves or collaborating directly with them in real time, you ensure customer satisfaction and higher order volumes.
Grow Your Business with Team Stores
If chasing down customers for payment and tracking complex orders for the same team isn’t your idea of a good time, consider expanding your reach and customer satisfaction with personalized team stores.
By offering customized goods through a personalized storefront, you simultaneously drive sales and upsell opportunities while simplifying your order collection process and eliminating the need for manual or paper order forms.
With vPersonalize, you only have to design once to automatically generate a team storefront with team designs across your product line. Orders can be placed and fulfilled individually, collected over a selected period of time and then made all at once, or ordered in bulk. Create team catalogs available for purchase directly from your existing e-commerce.
Don’t Get Bogged Down with Rosters and Variable Data
The task of collecting roster information, or team variable data (like names and numbers) and translating that information in to actual print files can be a time-consuming process. Designers have to go through lists of names and numbers and the corresponding sizes ordered to first manually enter the correct information and then grade it to the appropriate size. Even the quickest of designers likely take a considerable amount of time to do this, which especially adds up when doing large team orders.
vPersonalize is the only manufacturing-aware design and production automation platform that offers full print-ready variable data automation: Simply upload a spreadsheet with team information to have it automatically generated into production-ready files, graded to size and ready for print, cut and sew using our advanced Artificial Intelligence based grading system. Don’t take our word for it: before committing to any solution, do a test run to make sure everything works as intended and you can go directly to print!
Avoid Re-designing Mock-ups into Print Files & Take Directly to Production
The back and forth associated with creating mock-ups can be an expensive and time-consuming. This snowballs further when, post-approval, mockups need to be converted into actual production files, with nesting, markers, fabric optimization, yield management, laser cutter, barcodes, etc.
Design and production automation allows you to go straight from purchase to the production line in minutes without any manual work. When you purchase a solution, do a test run of multiple sizes and rosters, test end-end for print colors, fabric yield, cutter compatibility and make sure everything works as intended.
We are here to help
Key technology decisions can affect your business for many years to come and it is important to take a long term view and choose the right technology that can keep you ahead of your competition. Equally important, choose a partner that truly understands your business – both manufacturing and technology.
We are the industry leading provider of software for mass customization and on-demand manufacturing at scale. Our technology helps apparel brands and their manufacturers bring designs to market significantly faster, expand product lines and make those products on demand.
According to a McKinsey report, the fashion sector was responsible for 2.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions in 2018, about 4 percent of the global total— that’s more than France, Germany and the UK combined that year—making it the second largest polluter in the world. The fashion industry is also the second largest consumer of the world’s water supply, accounting for 20 percent of industrial water pollution globally and 79 billion cubic meters of water in 2017 alone. That figure is expected to increase 50% by 2030.
In addition to the significant monetary motivation to reduce waste, there is the sheer consumer perception as well: The majority (54%) of US adult shoppers agree (43%) or strongly agree (11%) that they are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products says a report by The Integer Group. Furthermore, according to The Business Research Company, the sustainable fashion market is expected to grow to $9.81 billion in 2025 and $15.17 billion in 2030 at a CAGR of 9.1%, potentially tripling in less than a decade from the $6.35 billion it’s currently worth.
There are several ways the fashion industry can reduce emissions, water waste and align with a growing voice for sustainability:
1. Shorten supply chains with mass-customization
When we say mass-customization, typically what comes to mind is the consumer level, bespoke customization. Although this is a fast growing niche, what we are referring to here is a different application of mass-customization. Think of this as product development by a brand for a small group: targeted demography at the store, city or event level. This does three things: firstly, brands can now experiment with a large variety of new designs and sizes without carrying much physical inventory. Second, use targeted small batch manufacturing to stock store-specific designs and sizes (inventory targeting). Third, switch to faster production cycles, with shorter supply chains, run with local manufacturing, thus bringing new styles to market significantly faster
Traditionally, what you see as the latest trend for the season has been on someone’s drawing board 60 to 90 days prior! The long production cycles meant making assumptions before all the data was in. A compressed supply chain removes the guesswork, enabling a brand to defer production till it has the needed data, thus capturing the market when and where it matters most, while significantly cutting down on wasted resources.
When corporations lengthen their supply chains, transporting the product across the world (from countries with fewer fossil fuel restrictions) to end-consumers releases greenhouse gasses at a distressing scale. Ships alone were responsible for emitting more than one billion tons of CO2 and greenhouse gases a year, an estimate which is projected to increase by 50% to 250% by the year 2050.
Re-shoring efforts have been increasingly popular throughout the world for a number of reasons, but the immediate reduction in emissions and the ability to shorten supply chains and make products on-demand has even driven large traditional brands to rethink their mass-produce-overseas strategy in favor of producing small batches locally.
In addition, mass-customization makes bespoke fashion possible. Research indicates that consumers perceive their customized goods to be more valuable, likely leading to a longer usage of the product. Several studies have shown that customized goods are far less likely to be returned. A reduction in returns alone has the potential to cut emissions significantly, seeing as each return can effectively double the transporting of goods, and is currently more likely to end up in a landfill than back on shelves.
2. Reduce wastage through on-demand manufacturing
Dead inventory is costing the US retail industry as much as $50 billion a year, being passed through a chain of discount stores and liquidators before the remaining portion ends up in landfills.
That is right – a significant percentage of produced apparel, that has used up natural resources and water by the ton, is never even purchased or worn! Although one report puts the wastage anywhere from 20-30% of produced goods, the actual figures are thought to be much higher.
Brands won’t reveal this number, but some studies have put the production to purchase ratio at 2.4:1 among brands that better manage their inventory to 5.6:1 or higher, among those that don’t. That is 40% to 60% of manufactured products, never being sold and making their way through a chain of discount stores and liquidators before ending up in a landfill or destroyed to protect the brand’s prestige and exclusivity, like in the famous case of Burberry.
One obvious solution to tackle fashion’s overproduction problem is by only making what is needed. Although this objective would have once been deemed impossible due to demand volatility and the high minimum order quantities associated with traditional supply chains, on-demand manufacturing is enabling firms to do just that: produce products when there is a demand and without minimum order quantities.
Made-to-order or on-demand manufacturing ensures that the materials, energy and resources that go into producing a garment will only be deployed if and when there is a demand for it. This has the clear potential to significantly reduce emissions and waste associated with warehouse inventory and overproduction.
3. Improved machines, processes and responsible materials
Using processes and machines that waste less water and materials is an obvious way for the fashion industry to significantly reduce its impact on the environment. A Bloomberg news article, explored the use of lasers and software to produce distressed and faded looks on jeans, without using chemicals and water entirely. This, coupled with mass-customization opens the door for bespoke fashion on a jean, while reducing the environmental impact!
As in the case of Levis, manufacturers can also reuse processed water and explore digital printing on textiles rather than dyeing. In addition, adopting technologies that reduce the need for physical samples and shipping, like virtual product samples, will enable more sustainable product development.
Around 70 million barrels of oil a year are used to make polyester fibres for our clothes. A simple shift to recycled polyester can help reduce carbon emissions by 50% to 75%. Organic cotton and linen are naturally biodegradable fibers which produce 50% less greenhouse emissions compared to synthetic fibers. Till a decade back, retail quality bespoke products with these fabrics were not thought possible. New manufacturing and printing technologies now make it possible to use these fabrics for garment printing, bespoke fashion and on-demand production.
We are here to help
Fashion and the demand for new apparel and accessories is not going anywhere, but we can make the industry more efficient and sustainable.
From mass-customization, print-on-demand, sportswear production optimization, design-to-manufacturing automation to bespoke fashion, we can help with digital technologies for a sustainable future.
We are the industry leading provider of software for mass customization and on-demand manufacturing at scale. Our technology helps apparel brands and their manufacturers bring designs to market significantly faster, expand product lines and make those products on demand.
vpersonalize.wordpress.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.