Harnessing the Power of Digital: Textile Companies Embrace Fashiontech Solutions

22 Jan 2024

Over the past 10 years, the textile industry has been pressured to take significant steps toward digitalization and sustainability, both viewed as key in adapting to continued disruption.

The two aspects are often intertwined. Streamlined operations and workflows, courtesy of computer technology, can help reduce environmental footprints, while embracing sustainability, and sophisticated digital efforts are needed for traceability.

When the pandemic hit, all of the above came to the fore, as both digital tools and sustainability were seen not just as competitive advantages, but as part of a survival toolkit.

Here, WWD spotlights high-tech solutions and fashiontech companies seen driving change on both fronts.

Temera

As traceability has largely replaced sustainability in the ongoing conversation about responsible business practices, Temera has become an ally of fashion players aiming to implement traceability.

Founded in 2009 in Florence and acquired in 2022 by Beontag, a global supplier of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, Temera provides fashion and luxury brands and supply chain players with digital twins to their physical products, harnessing a blockchain-based technology to enhance upstream and downstream traceability.

In addition to enabling sustainability, digital twins are viewed as valid instruments to gain a competitive advantage because they enhance real storytelling about marketed product; help shorten time-to-market and manufacturing accuracy; help combat the gray market, serving as proofs of authenticity, and can unlock after-purchase services for customers.

By embedding RFID tags in each product, the latter becomes digitally identifiable and traceable along the pipeline. The use of IoT devices such as QR codes and NFCs, or near field communication, also ensures that customers can have access to sustainability and traceability information.

Temera technology allows companies to implement the Digital Product Passport across their assortments, a requirement at the center of the debate on a European level as part of the textile- and fashion-centric ambitions within the continent’s Green Deal policy. The tool is also considered the sole solution to fully embrace the circular economy.

Providing companies with different tier of services covering each product’s life cycle, from sourcing of raw materials to manufacturing, logistics, retail and upcycling, Temera has become a European leader in RFID technology for the fashion and luxury sectors. In 2023 it generated 24 million euros in sales.

“[Implementing] digitalization equals becoming more sustainable,” said Temera’s chief executive officer Francesco Pieri. “The operational aspects of the Digital Product Passport keep evolving, but in its first iteration [the tool] can already highlight the product’s sustainability, environmental and recycling credentials, as well as its production process and provenance,” he added.

Among its marquee clients, Temera boasts a recent partnership with Tod’s, which conscripted Temera for the implementation of an NFC-enabled Digital Product Passport on its signature Di Bag.

S-iR’s i-Fabric

At the peak of the pandemic, fabricmakers lamented remote work, which cut off the look-and-feel aspect that’s so pivotal when sampling textiles.

Fast-forward to back-to-IRL business, and digital showrooms are still a thing — no longer replacing the physical experience, but flanking it and providing additional customer service throughout the year, beyond trade shows and sales campaigns.

S-iR, or Sense Immaterial Reality, has been at the forefront of innovative digital features, providing realistic digital counterparts to physical experiences and products.

Among its roster of services, the i-Fabric proprietary tool manages to replicate fabric features, including weaving details, patterns, textures, colors and finishings, with a good level of approximation to their physical alter egos.

Viewed as a tool to expand market reach and simplify the sale process, it combines fabric simulation, 3D garment previewing through AR, as well as real-time fabric availability checks, linked with the adopting company’s stock system.

Mindful that digital sales campaigns can be accompanied by lower conversion rates, S-iR has built easy-to-adopt user interfaces allowing company to turn a fabric into a 3D digital asset within one minute through its MagicBox technology.

The tool comes with a sustainable silver lining, too, in that it avoids sample catalogues needing to be shipped to clients.

The company boasts a partnership with the Marzotto Group for its Fratelli Tallia di Delfino and Tessuti di Sondrio labels. The former has embraced the solution for its Gentleman’s Wardrobe service, providing clients the chance to shop in-stock carryovers directly from a smartphone, while the latter has adopted the digital catalogue provided by S-iR across its assortment. Also CLASS, the Milan-based international platform that connects key players in fashion and provides the resources they need to realize sustainability, has tapped into i-Fabric to digitize its clients’ offering.

Last year, S-iR tapped Art Zuijderwijk as CEO, tasked with spearheading its internationalization process. The company, which also provides services including digital and interactive shopping windows, branded spaces and digital trunk shows, counts Christian Louboutin, Foot Locker, Eurojersey, ADI Design Museum and Triennale Milano among its clients.