FastFit360 creates sewn 3D garment, simple as taking a photo

27 Sep '08

3 min read

Efficiency and speed to market mean everything in a world where retailers are placing more emphasis on global sourcing. By implementing new technology tools and finding creative uses for some older ones, retailers are addressing these crucial areas. In turn, they are generating better supply chain visibility and saving money across multiple business areas.

The truth is, as fashionable as a garment is, it needs to function. The holy grail of the apparel industry is quality and fit. The question is how to utilize the available technologies to achieve this goal. A Victorian novelty has provided the inspiration for a 21st-century innovation for the apparel industry.

Shapely Shadow has created FastFit360, inspired by flip books first introduced in 1868. Like flip books, FastFit360 utilizes the visual experience to capture movement. The application cuts up to 99 frames out of 15 seconds of digital video to create a 1 MB file presenting movement.

The file is a piece of HTML code, not a large video or Flash file, showing an image that rotates 360 degrees, either on a mannequin or fit model. It eliminates the need to take multiple photos of a garment from different angles, or to create video files that are too large to e-mail.

Technology continues to be a great enabler to visibility. Managing time differences and language barriers remain at the forefront of successful collaboration. Capture a garment from every angle, insert written comments into the images, and communicate fit revision directions without a separate written comment.

FastFit360 is a connectivity platform that bridges the language and cultural barriers of overseas manufacturing, not to mention reduction of emails. Communicating with images creates a universal language that provides visibility into the supply chain for speed, flexibility, collaboration and stronger partnerships.

The FastFit360 application comes as part of a hosted solution that allows workers in any part of the world to access a new product in development for tracking changes and viewing the thread of comments from all those involved in the project. This facilitates efficiency by eliminating the need for every worker to store large number of e-mail messages. Now they're all in one place.

PLM systems have become a necessity for managing product lifecycles, but FastFit360 is the missing piece. "Web-based interactive communication with FastFit360 images is a more effective way to build partnerships," says Starr.

"It reduces the scope of errors in interpretation of fit comments and provides a good understanding of silhouette issues. FastFit360 is an easy to use, configurable, SaaS application that integrates and compliments PDM/PLM beautifully.”

To create a FastFit360 file, users import video into a computer using a digital video camera, then use the application to create rotating images of garments in just a matter of seconds.

FastFit360 was designed to make the creation of a sewn 3D garment as simple as a taking a digital photo. That's the key, communicating with partners once the garment is sewn. Clear imagery improves comments and provides a point-to-explain communication tool. Instead of saying “know what I mean?”, get the picture.

Shapely Shadow Inc

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