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Businesses around the world are demanding higher productivity from their employees. The United States has reached an all-time high labor productivity as we get 4 times more work done than our grandparents in 1950.
Technology has contributed to most of our productivity. With software, information communication, data processing, and automated control, it has made us a smart and sophisticated workforce for our value-added enterprises.
However, with over 4 million software, browser extensions, phone and tablet apps to choose from, it is easy to become overwhelmed. In this blog post, we'll recommend 15 apps that will make your job easier, faster, smarter, and more profitable. In a nutshell, higher ROI (Return on Investment).
These apps are divided into five categories and will guide you through all stages of product development. These stages include fashion inspiration sources, product design applications, product development apps, manufacturing, and marketing. So this is essentially a step-by-step guide for your entire product development process.
Fashion Inspiration
What is the initial step in product design? It is being inspired by something! It doesn't have to be a piece of clothing; it could be a mood board, a film, or a work of art. Here is a list of our recommended sources for inspiration.
WGSN
WGSN is a trend forecasting platform. It constantly monitors how consumers think, feel, and behave. Their experts help brands stay relevant by predicting the products, experiences, and services people will need in the future. WGSN's network of industry experts provides inspiration to a community of over 43,000 product designers and thought leaders in 32 global markets.
Price: Free registration
Art Authority
Art will always be the biggest source of inspiration in the fashion world. The Art Authority app lets you browse over 100,000+ paintings and sculptures by 1,500 of the world’s leading artists from ancient times to today. Their visual library is easy to access and use for every designer.
Price: $4.99
Vogue Runway
Take inspiration from other designers' collections! Vogue Runway is an app created by the world's leading fashion publisher. And it offers unlimited access to the world’s latest collections. Their archive contains over 1 million runway images from over 12,000 fashion shows including new ones and old ones from way back to the 2000s.
Price: Free
Other apps for fashion inspiration are Pinterest, Business of Fashion, Instagram, The Hunt.
Design
Sketching an initial idea and technical specifications are part of fashion design. The traditional method of sketching on paper has become obsolete. These apps will allow you to quickly sketch designs and customize them on the go.
Adobe Illustrator
Fashion and technical designers use Illustrator to draw flat sketches (or functional sketches) with callouts for construction and styling details to put them in tech packs so your team and manufacturer can easily understand and follow.
If you are new to Illustrator then there are some great resources available. You can join free webinars and training classes from 383 Design Studio or Skillshare.
Price: $35.99/mo per license
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Repsketch
🔥 #1 Online fashion design tool
Repsketch App
Create technical flats in minutes using templates
You don't always have to draw technical sketches from scratch for all your fashion projects. Apps like Repsketch allow you to re-purpose and customize existing sketches created by the community of top technical fashion designers.
Select from a variety of styles from tank tops to gowns and modify as you need. Quickly change the sleeve type, neckline, or add a logo to your garment. Download, embed, or simply share a public link of your designs with the world in web-friendly SVG format. Sign up for early beta access here.
Price: $19/month
Pret-A-Template
Pret-A-Template is your digital sketchbook. It allows you to sketch your designs on an iPhone or iPad. They offer over 500 templates to choose from, including bodies and details like shoes. Select from predefined skin, hair, and makeup color pallets for quick success.
Price: Starts at $5.99
Other apps for fashion design to consider: Sketchbook, Corel Draw.
Oleksandra Baukh
Product Development
Product development includes the following stages: product design, product planning, and product development. It is the process of preparing your fashion products for manufacturing.
Techpacker
Tech packs (or specification sheets) used to be the most time-consuming tasks and every fashion designer will tell you the endless frustrations of creating flat sketches, condensed wordings to fit in a format, amendments, and repeated data entry and fixing those measurement specs.... grrrr!
Techpacker took the challenge of making tech packs better, faster, and together. By breaking down tech packs into cards, the process of creating tech packs becomes simple, visual, collaborative, and 70% faster. The beauty of cards is that you can copy, move, reuse, connect, and do lots and lots of things with them. You can bring your entire team or manufacturers on Techpacker and integrate it with other apps to make it super powerful.
Price: Free 7 days trial and thereafter US$35/month
CLO3D
If you are looking for futuristic pattern-making software or a way to visualize your sketches in 3D so you can eliminate at least one sample, then you can check out CLO 3D.
It starts with selecting a 3D body avatar or dress form, which is available in a variety of shapes and sizes. Then you can either import your own patterns or draw them directly in CLO. Finally, select the fabric and pair each seam of the garment to see it all come together in 3D. You can then adjust the pattern and fine-tune your designs in real time.
Price: Free 1-month trial and thereafter US$99/month
Zapier & Workflow
With all these apps, the new challenge is moving data around and communicating between them so we found that the best way to do it is, Zapier (for web) and Workflow (for i-phones).
It connects over 750 web apps for you, allowing you to create workflows and automate tasks in the background while focusing on more important tasks. There are thousands of pre-configured workflows, such as automatically resizing images and adding them to Dropbox.
Price: Starting at $50/month
Other product development apps to consider - Slack, Pantone Color Finder.
Manufacturing
Once the garment has been designed and the prototype has been created, it is time to put it into production. The first steps are to choose and source the right fabric, as well as to locate the right manufacturer.
Sewport
Finding a manufacturer specific to your product categories is hard. And finding a good one is even harder. You can start by asking around for references however it could be time-consuming. An online digital platform like Sewport can help you source high-quality clothing manufacturers and suppliers.
Price: Starts at $20/month
Swatchon
Swatchon is a wholesale fabric platform based in Seoul, South Korea. It ships to 52 countries and has 100000 fabrics to choose from online. This platform works with brands of all sizes allowing them to place an order as small as 3 yards, or up to 500,000 yards.
Price: Free for ready-to-wear businesses, $500 prepayment for everyone else.
Higg Co
Higg Co is a technology company that focuses on building tools that power sustainability measurement. Higg Co. helps brands reduce energy use, combat audit fatigue, and safeguard those who work in the supply chain. Higg Materials Sustainability Index allows designers to create custom materials, and understand their environmental impact.
Marketing
When the product is finished, it is time to sell it! You can create a website, and line sheets, and market your business using the apps listed below.
Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows you to easily set up an online store and start selling. It lets you customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, and track and respond to orders — all with a few clicks. It powers over 350,000 businesses and over 1,000 Enterprise Plus customers.
Price: 7 Days free trial, thereafter US$29 per month
Brandboom
Brandboom is a wholesale e-commerce platform to create clean Line sheets, get orders directly from retailers & receive payments in simple steps. After setting up your line sheet, you can directly send a link to your buyers and showrooms so they can book directly and can also pay. This will avoid so much back-and-forth communication and missing critical SKU/sizes etc.
Price: Free with limits and thereafter US$79/mo.
Garmentory
Garmentory is one of the top online marketplaces existing right now. It is the ultimate source of indie boutiques, and emerging and contemporary designers. By setting up a store on their online platform Garmentory gives brands access to thousands of customers around the globe.
Boutiques and brands can submit their application on the Garmentory website and start selling after it's approved.
Other marketing apps to consider: Afterpay, Like to know it, Faire.
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