FASHION MADE: How We Change The Industry, with Joshua Young

This is obviously the biggest PI Apparel that there's been, that I've been to. And I think what's really interesting is that since we started at basically the supply chain, and it's grown from what was, I think, a fairly small discussion on supply chain and PLM to where it is now around 3D and what the future is. Where we were before was really just kind of organizing our information. Where we've come to now is how do we fundamentally change the industry and bring us to an entirely new place. Someplace where we can virtualize the product process to change literally the way we do everything from concept to consumer. I think it's a change that we've needed within the industry for a really long time. I feel like it's a change that will enable us to do all sorts of new things to be more consumer-focused. And I feel like it's also something that will allow us to provide the level of customization that we haven't in the past and go from methods of creation that are based upon throwing a huge amount of product out into the consumer and hope something sticks to a process which is really understanding what the consumer wants and only making those products specifically for each consumer.

Yeah, that is really the zenith, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

It feels like it's a bit of a long way away though.

It is, it is a very long ways away. You know, the— I think what is difficult about PI, and I've heard this mentioned by, you know, a number of different people, is that they show up at PI, they see all of these really amazing technologies, they realize that they're absolutely at the beginning of the process, and they're overwhelmed. And I think what, you know, some of the tracks that have gone on today, the IKEA one was a good example, where they showed people really what someone, IKEA's actually doing all of the things that we're talking about. They are talking about how from concept to consumer, they have digitized the entire experience all the way out to consumer with an AR app that allows the consumer to decide what exact piece of furniture they need in their home. I find that really interesting because where do you think the apparel fashion industry is going, right? It's going toward a customization model. You have a company like IKEA from a different industry leading the way, and I think now we've painted a picture that this is where the industry should go. This is— these are the technologies that you need. And so now I think companies can come in, see the technologies, but then also understand, this is how I'm going to put them together into a process that's really going to make a difference within the industry.

Yeah. What do you see as the biggest process changes that are going to happen in the next few years?

So within the last 2 or 3 years, I think we started at a point where you had only product development teams using 3D tools. I think you had a lot of spot solutions that were trying to put the— this solution in place to reduce physical prototypes. I think where it needs to go and where it's going very quickly— PVH is really leading the way in this regard— is using 3D assets for planning, creating within design and product development digital assets, and then using those digital assets for assortment planning, for 3D retail planning, and then for selling to the consumer. And as you've seen IKEA then actually selling to the consumer and using it in consumer experiences. And I think that's where we're going. Where we are right now is moving away from, you know, kind of crawling out of the primordial sludge from, you know, just this simple tool-based solution to a holistic solution that encompasses concept to consumer.

Yeah. One of the great things that some of these technologies will provide that often gets talked about, I know you've spoken about it yourself, is the sustainability side of things. And obviously sustainability, much like innovation, much like digital transformation, is a much overused word, but it encompasses a lot of different things.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. We just recently added a PhD in sustainable science to our team, and I was not prepared for for the potential impact that she was able to show us on how sustainability can impact this process. So in the past, when we've talked about— we tend to talk about this whole opportunity concept to consumer, virtualizing the product process as plan, create, and sell. And those are the areas which we think are going to be impacted. And typically what we said for plan, create, sell is that We believe that you can save time, we believe that you can save money, and that through making better decisions, you can also make money. You can generate more revenue because you make better decisions and put together better assortments. We said that we think that because as you virtualize the product process, you stop producing all of those types of samples, so development samples, ad samples, salesman samples specifically. You have companies that can produce as many as, you know, 15,000, 30,000 30,000 samples over the course of the year. You put that together across multiple industries and you can have hundreds, you know, hundreds of thousands of samples being produced every year that never see the consumer. So what we were able to do was take a look at a sample, understand— and this could be, you know, this can also be applied to things like returns as well. You know, we began to quantify How much waste material comes from those digital samples that's generated? How much actual material goes into making the sample? How much— what's the water usage, you know, for cotton product? What is the chemicals that are released into the environment? What is the wastewater that's generated for all of this? And we're able to quantify it very clearly into exact measurements that we could say, you know, this is the amount of energy that's used, and it's equivalent to so many— the amount of energy that so many houses use per year. So we're able to start, I think, telling a story to the leadership of apparel companies of just how massive of an impact this, this can make. So I don't know if you know, but in order to make a single cotton t-shirt, it takes 2,700 liters of water. That's equivalent to the amount of water that one person drinks in an entire year. So to make one cotton t-shirt, you make the same— it costs the same amount of water that one person drinks an entire year. That's an unbelievable impact. So, and it's most likely even more in less developed countries. So when we— this footprint that we currently have within the industry, we need to really start understanding what it really— the impacts really are to the planet. And I think the hope is by exposing that, not only will it, you know, help generate more pull behind the 3D process, but it will also obviously help the current situation that we're in and provide a huge sustainability benefit to the planet.

Yeah, well, that's the thing, because if you can tell people the story— it's almost a tragic story about how, you know, terrible this is. I mean, it really is terrible. Yeah, that's, that's one person's years' worth of water for a cotton t-shirt that, you know, may not even be sold.

And for all of that product development, for everything prior to consumer, all the samples that we create for decision-making, for salesman samples, those will never see the consumer. There's literally no purpose in creating them. So if we can virtualize the process, we can make a massive impact on the planet. And I think that should be a goal of many companies these days.

Yeah, well, that's the first goal, isn't it, to reduce those samples, because that's completely wasted. I guess the next goal in this zenith that we're looking for is, um, perhaps a plan-sell-create system where you only, as you touched on earlier on, you only create it once you've sold it. And if you can get that manufacturing process sped up enough and maybe localized, and the supply chain obviously needs to back that up, then you don't need to ever have a wasted products.

Yeah, the, the industry right now is, is, um, and again, maybe that's— this is another area where I think we need to start looking into. Um, sometimes when I talk about, um, the process of plan, create, and sell, I add something else in there. So plan, create, make, and sell. This make process is really about digital manufacturing, both the creation of digital content that can, that can drive automation within a factory, but also the automation that happens within the factory. So automating the flow of information to the factory, and then once the factory gets it, using that automation internally, or using that information internally digitally to automate the process. The other thing that, you know, once you start automating the factory itself, then you sort of free the factory from being in a particular location based upon labor costs, and that means that you can create product close to the consumer, so you get rid of all of the shipping, you get rid of all of the packaging, and you can literally, and the transportation that goes into that. So the bottom line is, is that, you know, if you envision this world where you're creating very little upfront footprint based upon product development and product, you know, the product process, you're, as you're saying, you're making a custom product for a particular individual instead of, you know, shipping out all sorts of different, you know, shipping out a huge line and hoping it sticks. And then finally, you're manufacturing that custom garment close to that consumer so that there's very little transportation and cost incurred with actually getting it to the consumer. And not only that, the garment that you produce can be produced with local resources at a local cost so that someone getting a product in a less developed country gets it with local materials at a local price point, and someone in a more developed country gets something with their local materials and at their local price point. Okay. So you start to create a balance of depending on people's standard of living and dependent upon people's ability to pay for the goods they need, they are priced and presented appropriately according to that market.

Yeah, I feel like there's so many opportunities in all of the areas of fashion apparel footwear industries to change.

Yeah.

There's so much ground to make up, but actually it's possible that this industry could really turn itself around and be a leader for how things should really be done, because these problems do occur in other industries as well.

I think we have an interesting group of people that are part of the fashion industry. Most of these people are very forward-thinking, they're very concerned about the planet, they're very concerned about the people who are wearing the clothing, and I think that, you know, there's, there's a push within our industry to really make it more clean, and I think as we can make people more aware of what's possible, you know, and again, even from the financial standpoint of saving time, saving money, making money, those are all fantastic, but when we can add that extra piece of we can make this whole fashion industry much cleaner and hopefully even beneficial to the planet rather than negative to the planet, I think that's, as you said, I think that's going to hopefully drive a lot of industries to take the same approach.

Yeah, one thing I wanted to ask you is, but we always talk so much about technology and it feels like everyone always wants to implement it now and rapid change, implement rapid change in their companies and organizations. What do you think are the common mistakes that people are making when they're actually trying to do this?

The largest mistake that people make, and I can say this without qualification, is is that many people say, I want to get into 3D, which piece of software do I buy? That's the wrong approach. Because you're taking a process and you're making it virtual, you're making a digital twin basically of your physical process, you have to— it is a process change. It is quite literally a process change. So the way you're going to work is going to be different. The tools that you need are going to be different. The assets that support that are going to be different, and potentially even the integration with your existing systems are going to be different. So the place to start is to understand how your business operates, how— what capabilities you need for a virtual process. You also need to think about then what that end goal looks like. What are you trying to accomplish from concept to consumer? Then once you understand what capabilities you need and the process that you're going to put in place, Then you start plugging technology, and I'm not even gonna call it software, you start plugging technology into that process where it fits and where it can activate it. It doesn't need to be 3D. 3D, I think, is a great solution because for apparel, apparel has forms, that's wonderful, but there's 2D solutions that we're not using, visual solutions that we're not using that can help that process immensely as well. So I think that's the biggest mistake, is not thinking of it as business process change and not planning for that process change. Change, and really not even thinking that there's more than one piece of technology that needs to plug into it.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of things.

Exactly. But in the end, it's really about an evolution. People— you have to realize that change management is going to be part of this, and that people within an organization are not suddenly going to be able to flip on a light switch, go from working in the old way to the new way. You need to start, you need to educate them, you need to bring them along on the journey, you need to paint a picture of the future, and then you bring them along to that future in a phased approach. And companies have done that, PVH has done that, other companies have done that, and it's been very successful.

How often did you see this in Nike, and did this really drive your ability to lead the way in thought-breaking consulting?

Yeah, so with Nike, I mean, I was with the company a very long time, starting in the mid-'90s and then leaving Nike in 2015. We was able to build starting in the year 2000, looking at 3D at that point, and then taking that journey to understand, making the mistakes, understanding what that whole, what the whole potential is, and then working with the team starting in 2010 to build an actual 3D team to start implementing these ideas within the, the product categories. So that work that we did, because it took so long, and because it took so long to convince leadership and to get people on board, it eventually gained momentum. But I realized, I understood then what are the key things that you need to do to get people to talk, to speak the language of design, to speak the language of IT, to speak the language of product development, to get them on board. And then how do you speak the language of leadership to help them understand the benefits? So I kind of learned those lessons. We have continued to prove out those lessons with Thought Provoking Consulting. As the lead principal for Thought Provoking Consulting, I've been able to, we've built a team that we can now take into companies like PVH and Carter's, and we can take them on that same journey, but in a much more compressed timeline. And our goal isn't necessarily to, you know, bring in a huge number of consultants and overwhelm them with a lot of, you know, work. Our goal is to really, as I said, transfer that knowledge, do that knowledge transfer so that, you know, we help them understand all of the things that we learned and we can bring them on board at the pace that makes sense for them.

Yeah, because obviously this whole goal is to make things easier for people, right? But maybe in the short term there's a little bit of pain that needs to take place to make that change?

You know what, I don't even think it's pain. I think, quite honestly, I think when you make it— when you are really planful about how you move forward with the process and you don't push people into things and you explain them and you, you educate the teams, it becomes fun. I like to pride myself in the fact that when we work with teams, it's, it's a fun process. You hear about PLM implementations, you don't really ever hear people talking about fun. We try to make this fun because technology is fun. These 3D processes and the way we work is really fun, and the benefit— the benefits that it brings to the companies, you know, if you're working in a way that's really uncomfortable, you're not going to want to come to work every day. If you're working in a way where you're empowered and you're excited and you're, you're using new technologies and you're learning, you using new skills, it's massively empowering. We have, you know, a few— for the few companies, for the few schools that are actually training their graduates with these digital skills, those people can't get hired fast enough. You know, they're— I've heard people coming out of colleges who learn 3D skills that immediately get snapped up by large corporations because there's just not very many people out there with that skill set, but that's where all these brands are moving. So it's, um, I think it's a— quite honestly, I think it's an exciting time to work in this field. It doesn't matter whether you're a senior leader, whether you're someone like myself who's helping brands, or whether you're a, um, you know, a kid right out of school. I shouldn't say kid, but whether you're a less experienced person right out of school, um, You know, I think it's a hugely exciting time.

Well, it's a very good point because actually, you know, it doesn't matter if you're 18 or 88, you know, you learn these skills and you still get snapped up straight away.

You know, in this, in this day and age, it's, it's really hard to draw divisions based upon age. I've tried to change my, my— and you just heard it— I've tried to change the way I refer to people as more experienced in a particular area versus less experienced because As you said, I've seen people who are, you know, 75, 80 who have a vision of the future that is far beyond some people who are much younger. And I've seen younger people who are incredibly wise beyond their age. So more and more, you know, people used to talk about digital natives. Even people who didn't grow up with the internet, even people who didn't grow up with, you know, with an iPhone, Some people, I think it really just depends upon your perspective how much you're going to embrace these new technologies and start making use of them.

Absolutely. It's an exciting time.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Joshua, thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate it.