Last week, I, along with a good
colleague and friend attended the 2nd PI Apparel conference (http://apparel.picongress.com/). Last
year the conference was held in London, but this year they shifted the conference
to NY, the US fashion capital. The focus of the conference was on four topics: Product
Lifecycle Management (PLM), Wearable Technology, 3D Technologies and Merchandising
and Planning. The primary focus was PLM and Wearable Technology. I feel naming
the conference “PI” (Product Innovation) is a bit misleading, since most of
presentations focused on PLM rather than innovation, except for the key note
presentations. The keynote presentations were the highlights of the conference.
There were also about 20 software vendors at the conference. This year’s
conference was a huge success with some key insights into Product Development
across Retail, Apparel, Fashion and Footwear industries that made me write
about it.
Day 1- The opening key note
presentation was on “Wearable Technology and its Evolution into Broader Fashion”
was by Qaizar Hassonjee, VP, Innovation - Wearable Technology, adidas. adidas
had acquired Wearable Sensors Specialist Textronics in 2008 and the miCoach collection comes
primarily from Textonics. He talked
about the world cup champions, the German Soccer team using miCoach products.
Using IoT, Cloud and Mobile devices, Coaches could get real-time insight into the
players’ performance, peak etc. Now we know secret behind the team’s success. Impressive!
The other interesting
presentation of the day was from Director, Apparel & Accessories Product
Development, Target and Senior Group Manager - NIT & 3D Virtual Product Development,
Target. They spoke about their journey implementing 3D CAD designing. 3D CAD Modeling
has been there for quiet a long time and industries such as automotive,
industrial machinery, etc. have already being using 3D CAD Modeling for years. The
Retail-Fashion-Apparel industry is now adopting 3D technology. It is helping
them in sample reduction, sustainability, speed to market and making smarter design
decisions. However, the interesting fact to note is that integration between 3D
CAD and PLM is still lacking in the Retail, Fashion, Apparel, & Footwear
industry. The 3D modeling vendors with PLM vendor are collaborating on creating
the integration which will enable the companies to get max value.
The Design Director from
Harley-Davidson for Apparel & Accessories spoke about their PLM journey and
how Organizational Change Management is extremely important in any PLM business
transformation.
Day 2- The key note presentation
by Lauren Bowker, The Material Alchemist, T H E U N S E E N (http://seetheunseen.co.uk/) on "Seeing the
Unseen" – Combining Science and Design to Create A New World of Materials was
an eye opener. She talked about wearable fabric that can change colors based on
sunlight, wind speed, humidity, temperature, etc. She started initially with
feathers and ink and moved to Fabric. She showed a video about a headdress that
changes colors based on brain EEG. The headdress has lab-grown Swarovski
crystals dyed with the color-changing ink, which respond to the heat and
electrical waves in the brain as it comes in contact with one’s head. One
interesting fact to note is that the front part of the headdress changes color in
the mornings, pointing to the fact that the front side of brain was more active
at during that time of the day. In the near future, one will be able to change the
color of one’s jacket, trouser etc., using a smartphone app. This is possibly a game-changing innovation.
Amazing!
The other highlight of the
conference was a presentation on “The Shoe that Grows” by Kenton Lee, Founder
& Executive Director, Because International (http://becauseinternational.org/).
Kenton traveled to South Africa where he
saw that the kids in the orphanage did not have shoes to wear. These kids
solely relied on shoe donations. He started a non-profit organization in Idaho
to help this cause, and approached all the big and large footwear companies,
but with no luck. With the help of friends, he then designed and built a shoe that
grew so that it could last at least a few years. While we think of footwear as
fashion, Kenton saw is as necessity, and contributed to a cause that helped
humanity. I salute him!
One thing that I missed at the
conference was the lack of in-depth case studies / presentations on Organization
Change Management (OCM). OCM is often overlooked in Product Development
business transformation programs.
I also participated in a think tank
session on “Sustainability”. We defined “What is Sustainability, Compliance and
Quality”. One point we all agreed on is that Quality leads to Compliance, which
leads to Sustainability.
