Why Your Brand Needs A Fashion Database

If you’re still manually managing your material showroom or sample inventory, you’re lagging against competitors and you probably won’t be able to keep your shop open for long. No one wants to change unless it’s for the better; by moving your data to the cloud or going digital, you can finally start accumulating data, have that data be accessible to all your teams, and make decisions based on meaningful numbers.

A fashion database is a management system designed to collect, organize, and display information on fabrics, machinery, raw materials, and other components related to the textile industry. Each fashion industry database is intended to provide perspective on different aspects of the business including supplier inventory, consumer trends, and team management.

Here are key points explaining why your brand needs a fashion database:

1.  Faster turnaround

Some fashion companies get lucky in creating a few appealing designs. People get attracted to the new product, either because of hype or excellent marketing. As the trend grows, more people get interested in the merchandise.

Eventually, luck runs out and the trend dies down as fast as it rose up. People forget about the brand, many of which become insignificant after a few years. Many of these companies end up closing because they fail to repeat the success they had back then.

On the other hand, top fashion companies create their own luck through data gathering. They utilize a fashion database that lets them analyze current trends and anticipate new ones. They harness the power of science to succeed in a highly competitive market and to capture customer insights regarding the brand.

According to studies from McKinsey, a key differentiator that makes top brands more successful is their heavy reliance on data analytics. They incorporate it as early as the creative process where new designs are conceived.

Industry leaders stay on top of the game by releasing new products every other month. The strategy is to get a quick feel of market trends and keep in touch with customer insights.

A fashion database can be used as a basis for determining what’s hot and what’s not. It can give information into customer preferences, business performance, and industrial trends. It can give insight on customer preferences that’s critical in improving the areas of marketing and production.

A fashion industry database can tell you what customers are looking for. The key to success is to quickly adapt and provide what consumers need now instead of spending weeks predicting a fad that may not materialize.

2.  Flexibility to trends

Sometimes, fashion brands ride the trend too late that they’re left holding large stocks of textiles that won’t sell because the market has already moved on to the new flavor of the month. The storage and disposal of these materials are both costly and impractical, especially now that consumer tastes change quicker than ever. 

Fast fashion is the new methodology that leading brands adopt. Instead of trying to project market trends and preparing year-long for product releases, companies focus on mass-producing products as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

The concept behind fast fashion is that clothes don’t really last for several seasons. New designs and styles will always overtake the old stocks, as consumer preferences swiftly shift from one style to another. Utilizing the fast fashion methodology keeps the product line fresh and relevant to customers.

If fast fashion is the game, getting a quick response from suppliers is one of the major areas you need to get covered. An online fabric database like Frontier provides you a direct line to thousands of suppliers worldwide. You can swiftly browse through their inventories and see where to source the raw materials nearest to your location. This means you can release products to the market as fast as possible without worrying too much about supplier availability.

3.  Sustainability and cost-efficiency

The textile industry is known for the pollution it generates, the outdated supply chain management it continues to use, and the inequitable working conditions. Traditional fabric manufacturing requires the consumption of thousands of tons of raw materials. Even the production of samples alone creates tons of wastage and spends large amounts of energy in the process.

Running a sustainable business is now an ongoing trend. People love companies who care for the environment, so they prefer them over those that stick with polluting practices.

By using an online fashion database, there’s little to no need to produce actual samples. Fashion brands can just look at the fabric database and request for the swatch design they like from garment mills.

For textile manufacturers, this eliminates the need to produce several samples in which only one or two will be chosen. Production is minimized as they manufacture only the amount demanded by the clients.

Digital samples can decrease production costs by as much as 63%, which is equivalent to around hundreds of tons of waste fabric. The use of chemicals for dyeing, water for production, and fuel for transportation are drastically reduced in the process.

4.  Creativity and 3D printing

With a physical fabric swatch, it’s challenging – or even impossible – to make projections of the end product without producing an actual sample. You may want to save cost, but producing a visual representation using the pencil-and-paper method is outdated and ineffective.

Shifting to a digital format can be difficult when all you have at hand is physical fabric. Even if you scan it and recreate a digital copy, the dimensions and patterns may not be accurately captured. Using inaccurate images can result in a distorted visual prototype, defeating the purpose of creating an accurate visualization of your design idea.

Frontier solves all these issues by providing an online fabric database that has a clear-cut digital format of swatches. These digital swatches can be easily used for 3D designing for faster prototyping.

You can access Frontier’s fashion database containing a wide variety of textile designs. Aside from being more cost-effective, it’s easier to be more creative and try new designs using 3D models. 

In a few years, fashion brands will be shifting to industrial 3D printers which can greatly cut off production time. As of now, 3D printers can only use synthetic materials, but it will only be a matter of time before they can print natural and near-natural fibers. With Frontier’s online textile database, you can future-proof your business for the upcoming 3D printing revolution.

Fashion brands need new business models to cope up with the advancements in technology. Adopting an online textile database like Frontier is one of the cheapest, fastest, and easiest ways to prepare your business for the digital trend.

What Frontier Does

Frontier is the game-changer of the fashion industry. It provides a cloud-based platform both fashion brands and garment mills can collaborate in building digital material assets. Material digitization could be a painstaking process, so why not engage your suppliers to help build your seasonal collections. You already collect packages from your trusted partners, why not have them share digital files that are searchable and accessible from anywhere, instead of piling up hangers all over your office. Start organizing materials digitally in fact is good for your suppliers too, in the long run, it will reduce sampling, and no one makes money from making samples.

Frontier is an online solution that requires no special hardware or software installation. It can be utilized by both garment mills and fashion designers for improved collaboration on virtual prototyping. Interested parties just need to register on the website to access the platform.

Contact us if you need to schedule a demo of the platform or if you have any questions about our technology.