Day to day in fashion

Just this season we got set up with software called WFX (World Fashion Exchange).  It is a PLM (product lifestyle management) software system and is SO amazing…the screenshots below don’t do it justice.  This system is how we manage all of the tech packs for garments, approvals, sample ordering, reporting, and much more.  We used to manage everything in a billion Excel spreadsheets, and it was a mess – when something changed, it had to be updated in 5 different spreadsheets.  It was a mess and a lot of work.  This database like set up saves a lot of time and work while also tracking things more efficiently.  Here is a quick rundown on a tech pack:

WFX Tech Pack Home Page

Click on the image to get a legible view, but here’s a quick rundown on the capabilities of the software.  Circled on the left are the details for the tech pack – you can add more but the basics are colorways, care, image and annotation (allowing you to upload CADs to call out details in garments/patterns), file upload/download, specs.  Circled along the top are various tabs that allow you to track the status of the garment, a log that tracks everything modified on the tech pack, a messaging center where you can communicate w/ your vendors on that specific style, BOM (bill of materials) that allows you to add all of the “materials” required to make your garment (buttons, zippers, hang tags, poly bags, fabrics, etc), and costing where your vendors can input pricing and it will auto calculate all of your margins frombased off of your sell price.  Wow, as I write about this I realize that this is only the smallest fraction of what the software does.  More details will have to come later or this will wind up being one lengthy post…

This week we had a great trainer visit us from NedGraphics, the company that produces the fashion design softare we use.  We were well overdue for a software upgrade, and our upgrade included 2 days of training.  Woot!  It was an amazing 2 days of education and we learned all about the new tools that the software has to offer (some of them were actually just new to us…).  I will share with you here one new tool we learned as well as a few of the basics of one of the many programs we use.

Storyboard & Cataloging
This program is used to both “fill” garments with patterns as much as it is used to put together presentations.  I will show you here how we use it to “fill” a garment.

Storyboard & Cataloging: Filling a Garment

I’ve circled a few things that I will review briefly.  Garments are brought in filled with color based on where we need to put different patterns or where those patterns need to go in different directions.  I show a few steps of “filling” a garment from the original multicolored shirt, to defining what direction the pattern needs to go (straight up and down in the body, and at a slight angle in the sleeves – defined by the arrows that are circled), and to the final “filled” shirt.  Garments are brought in from your “article library” and patterns from the “fabric” library.  Everything can be scaled and manipulated based on the size and needs of your garment.

The new tool that we learned in S&C has by far been my favorite and without a doubt the one over which we oohed and awed over.  That would be the 3d mapping capacity of the program!  We don’t have the software to create the images to be mapped, but we have a library of basic items that we can fill using our patterns.  See below:

3D Mapping in Storyboard and Cataloging

The item (ie tie) is pulled in from the 3D Book, then your pattern is pulled from your fabric book.  It’s was my first experience with 3d mapping like this and I’ll be honest, it was a little bit like magic.