CAD Artwork as a Competitive Advantage - computer-aided design

Bobbin, May, 2001 by Alison Hardy

Digital asset management is becoming a hot buzzword in the textile and apparel industries. Here's a look at how some companies are using digital library technologies.

textile and apparel companies spend thousands of dollars annually to buy original artwork for design inspirations. These valuable assets get put in drawers, sent out to customers and frequently are lost or misplaced.

Fabrics and styles developed and/or produced by a company are also valuable assets. But finding samples often relies on diligent searches by designers, sales staff or administrative aides. GISTICS, a consulting company based in Larkspur, CA, estimates that creative professionals spend an average of one out of every 1.0 hours on file management, and search time accounts for a third of the pie.

However, a handful of companies are beginning to leverage their resources by creating digital libraries that make it easy to search, sort and locate the right fabric or file. What they are finding is that asset management not only improves productivity, it also provides the ability to exploit new revenue opportunities.

Locate, Locate, Locate

Craftex Mills, located in Blue Bell, PA, has more than 100 years worth of fabrics and designs for high-end jacquard fabrics. This third-generation family-owned company started to create a digital library three years ago. "The resources, artwork and fabric samples accumulated to the point that Terry Donahue, the head designer for the residential department, wanted to get someone in here to sort through the piles of fabric that were literally floor to ceiling," says Beverly Godfrey, the company archivist.

"The beauty of the database is the ability to locate items quickly and to reuse patterns that previously could have been lost in the back corner of a drawer," she notes. "We have a lot of customers coming here looking for older [designs], or certain types of fabrics from our archives. With the database, we can enter a request for all contemporary floral frames with 13 1/2-inch repeats done in chenille, for example. And in a few seconds [I can] pull up a collection of all the pieces that meet that requirement. Instead of looking though racks and racks of fabric, the software is really quick, and that is most helpful," Godfrey says.

Craftex chose Thumbs Up software from Raleigh, NC-based Graphic Detail to create its digital library. The database now holds 27,000 records, which include files from the company's CAD systems, as well as fabric photography from its existing swatch collection. More than 100 flat files containing thousands of pieces of artwork are currently being photographed, some of which were purchased more than 30 years ago. When that's done, there are about 50 boxes full of fabric samples waiting to be photographed and cataloged.

On average, the company produces 1,000 new products per year, and archiving them has become an integral part of the design development process. "The truck arrives daily from the mill with samples. They go to a design review meeting in the morning and then are photographed in the afternoon, before the daily post to our customers or their final destination. They get categorized either that afternoon or by the next morning," says Godfrey.

The company's sales teams in New York and North Carolina are able to request a copy of a digital image so they know what was sent to their customers. The images, which are usually low-resolution files, are sent as e-mail attachments. "We've debated whether or not to put these images on the Internet, but as always with textile companies, the issue is security," explains Godfrey. However, enabling sales people and customers to search quickly and easily for designs is important, and Craftex plans to continue researching Web capabilities.

Locking in the Value

At Culp Inc., one of the world's largest marketers of furniture upholstery fabrics and a leading supplier of mattress ticking, creating a digital artwork library was viewed as a necessary design center component. "With three divisions purchasing artwork, we realized we had an incredible investment and needed a way to get the maximum value from it," says Sheila Portela, CAD manager.

Each season, the divisions purchase their own artwork for collections. While the creative process is happening, the pieces stay in the design group's

offices. At the end of the season, the artwork is turned over to the archiving department where it is photographed, cataloged and almost literally put under lock and key.

"The designers don't get to rummage through drawers anymore," says Portela. "They can search the database for the designs they want, we retrieve the original art from storage, and then it's checked out." When the artwork is cataloged, the software -- a custom package developed for Gulp by CurrentView of Dallas, TX -- generates a barcode sticker that is placed on the back of the artwork. When the artwork is checked out, the barcode is scanned and information about who has the artwork is updated in the system. As a result, other designers searching for that piece know who has it at any time.