Transforming a $3 Billion Company With Emily Roosen | Fashion Made Podcast

Hello, welcome to another episode of Fashion Made. This week we have the pleasure to be joined by Emily Roosan, who is heading up transformation at Stitch3D, a company that you should all know about, and if you don't, well, you should get to know. Really, really interesting conversation about digital transformation at a $3 billion company. I hope you all enjoy. Nice to speak to you. How are you doing?

I'm doing okay. How about yourself? How are things?

Okay, yeah, I'm doing pretty well actually. Really strange, we're super busy at the moment. I think I'm busier than I ever have been, which is surprising for an events company in lockdown.

Right.

But yeah, I mean, we're just doing— we're just producing so much content at the moment. Whether it's for our members or free-to-join stuff like this and our webinars and roundtables. And, you know, we want to sort of deliver that information digitally.

Yeah.

So yeah, really busy. How about yourself?

Yeah, I mean, the COVID-19 crisis really like sped up our scaling tenfold. So it's been interesting times for us as well where, you know, we were on a path a well-thought-out path of scaling and all of a sudden we had to ramp up super fast because of the business needs. So it's definitely been really good for us in terms of forcing us to go super fast and really getting early features out already of our tools to make it go faster.

That's interesting.

Yeah, and for us to learn even faster because we're doing this scaling with such a big company. We're every day thinking, okay, we're doing things for the first time every day almost. And we're working across almost 40 product groups right now. So how do we do this at scale for these product groups with all these different people and right before the sale season starts to get all the 3D imagery ready to sell? So it's been great learnings for us as well. And I think it really has amplified our knowledge and how to do this with also companies.

It's interesting. What about this sort of scaling and also for the seasons? Forgive me because I'm not in that world, although I'm sort of constantly on the periphery of it. But when does this sort of season begin and sort of what are companies typically doing right now?

Yeah, yeah, super interesting. So the The coronavirus restrictions really hit us just at the start of our Spring '21 season, of PVH Spring '21 season, that is. The factories were closing and no samples were coming in. As you know, the whole economy kind of stopped. But we knew the Spring '21 selling season was coming up and we needed product to sell. Traditionally in fashion, you do that selling on a sale sample. So the physical sample actually comes in, you take pictures of the physical sample to put it in your digital selling tool in the digital showroom. And you have the physical samples in small quantities across your sales countries to sell maybe in one colorway. And all of a sudden we don't have that anymore, which means you don't have imagery to sell. And we all know in fashion business, You know, if you don't have anything to sell off, it won't sell. So yeah, we really got together with the PVH business and like, okay, what's critical? What do we need to do? How can we help? How can we help go even faster? So yeah, we started upskilling more people through our online trainings even faster. We have a program called Stitch Accelerators. There are 3D artists that work with us on a freelance basis. So they're creating a lot of 3D content right now for the brands to able to sell in spring '21. Vendors got involved super fast, designers, pattern makers, PD. It was really an impressive cross-functional effort across the whole, both brands of PVH, Tommy Hilfiger and CK. So yeah, we're in the midst of that right now. And also on the road for pre-fall '21 because in fashion all the seasons overlap. So we're finalizing spring '21 and moving on to pre-fall '21 with the with both brands.

Yeah, it's interesting. Do you think that these sort of seasonal things are going to continue or do you think this is kind of the beginning of the end for seasons as we know it?

Yeah, I mean Gucci had that really interesting statement come out, right? Where they were letting go of seasons. And I think a lot of brands are moving that way. It's going to be really good to see what's going to happen in terms of the fashion industry in the next coming months following this crisis. And if it really does mean seasonless and always have product there, but maybe not so much in the 4 to 6 seasons that are usually sold in.

Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of interesting to sort of pontificate on what might happen.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah.

There's a lot of pontification going on right now, isn't there?

Every part of our lives right now.

Yeah, for sure. You know, a lot of people talk a lot about sort of true end-to-end, you know, these sort of things, digital transformation, end-to-end, all of these things are sort of well, you know, well-worn-out phrases. What does that actually mean for PVH?

Yeah, I think when working with PVH, we really focus on the Stitch workflow. As you know, we're an incubator of PVH. And by the Stitch workflow, it really encompasses the software tools that we create in-house with our engineering team and how that flows through the season for the product creation teams. Our goal really, and our mission is really to make 3D design accessible for everyone, be able to train everyone, and through our software and tools, make sure it's fast and easy and faster than the traditional 2D process that we know. So for us, that end-to-end is really like starting with training your teams in the 3D tools and the Stitch tools and making sure that one 3D file through our tools flows all the way to your selling moment and into your selling system and the digital showroom in our case. And that's what we really see as end-to-end at this moment.

So that's— it's sort of Stitch, Hatch, and PVH all sort of working in unison.

Right, yeah. And we're, you know, we really work with the business in the transformation of making sure the product creation teams change their way of working from 2D to 3D. And that's such a big change. You know, we have these really short calendars and timelines in fashion. And within those timelines, we're upskilling and retraining the pattern makers, the product developers, the design teams, the merchandisers to use 3D tools, but— and also use our stitch tools. So I think that's for us where it really starts, making sure everyone has the support and the training anywhere, anytime. And our Academy team, which usually does a lot of onsite training, and now with the crisis that changed everything to online. So we have our curriculums online. Which has been a great development because it means that anyone can refresh whenever they want, look at videos again when they want, and also book face-to-face trainings with our trainers. So that's been a really huge success for us, and online training was always on our, like, wish list, but as with many people right now, you know, the coronavirus really sped that forward and forced us to really focus on that, which is a really good thing to happen. And from there, once you're trained, we really get you trained in our tools, right? We have a great render farm that automatically renders 4 standard views. It's been a huge win for us that we look at the things that a designer does when they design and the things that are added when you design in 3D, which is when we talk about making sure your garment simulates the right way, work on your drape of the 3D garment and rendering. These are things that you normally don't really do in Illustrator. So how do we take those extra things away to make sure that design team really focuses on their designing? So right now what we do is you drop your 3D file on our Design Hub, one of our tools, and automatically renders those 4 views, which means you can drop the file and continue on to the next file and check in later to see what your renders look like. And on that, once we do that automatic rendering, we also connect it to our, uh, the PVH PLM system, which means we connect it to the data of the actual style. So we're really making sure we can connect all those points of the business to take away, uh, manual data entry, uh, waiting for your renders, making sure you can share your file easily. So we really focus on How can we take away that manual data entry and how can we make sure that everyone can focus on the design part of things and not so much of the extra things that come with 3D design?

Yeah, very important. You know, are you finding that your sort of team and your workforce there are responding well to it?

Yeah, I think for sure. I see so much enthusiasm across the business. For getting in 3D and learning something new, I think, is a really great motivator for a lot of the designers, product developers, and pattern makers that we work with. They're really excited to learn this new skill. And, you know, it's hard for everyone that's learned 3D in the beginning. It's like two steps forward, one step back, and it's not always easy. But once you get through that initial bump of learning it, It gets really exciting to learn more and more new things and how to do it. And I see so much pride with all the teams and what they deliver in 3D, and it looks absolutely amazing. And when I talk about designers, they're delivering their own designs in 3D and creating beautiful imagery. Patternmakers stitching up all their blocks and making sure that 3D block is, is the perfect starting point for the design team. And then product developers working with the vendors who are also sending us their 3D files. And finally, merchandising, using all that wonderful image, all those wonderful images to sell to their clients. So it's what we've also seen in the past couple of months is really great work across the board to make this happen as a team.

What, you know, there obviously is not all plain sailing, you know, what have been the challenges?

I think, you know, kind of our philosophy is to make sure you're ready before you start. And then we talk about making sure your digital assets are there. So making sure all your fabrics are digitized and your trims are digitized and your blocks are ready in 3D to go because you really want your design team or your vendors to have that really good starting point. And for us, we scaled super fast out of nowhere. Getting all those assets ready on time within such a short amount of time was definitely a big jump for us. Luckily, we have a dedicated team working on that that are experts in what they do. They're doing amazing work. It just comes to show that it's so important to make sure that you have all those libraries ready to start designing. Because that was definitely the biggest push that we needed to do. Besides that, making sure everyone's ready and trained. And that's why we have our transformation team consisting of, you know, of course our academy that I talked about, but also our 3D leads that really sit in those teams of designers, developers, pattern makers, and work together with them to make sure they're going to be successful in their transformation.

Yeah.

So I think it's, you know, it's a combination of those things. We have our tools that really help make the process easier. And then we have our transformation team that is there with the teams always, and a point person for anyone with a name to reach out to, right, that you have a relationship with. And we have our digitization team that makes sure the assets are there.

Yeah, do you feel like everything's well connected then in that regard?

Yeah, yeah. And I would say, you know, we really feel that together with the business we can make this a success through that. But yeah, definitely scaling so fast, so quickly, there have been many Many times we're like, okay, we have 200 fabrics we need to digitize in a week. How are we going to do this? But the business has really come together and we see also that product developers, they really want to work on this digitizing and do the digitization of the fabrics together with their vendors or themselves. The further we get into the 3D scaling with CK and Tommy Hilfiger, the more we see that they want to own every part of it, which is which is great.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Especially when you get it, yeah.

What, um, you know, communication is a massive part of this when you're talking about connecting sort of disparate workforces, whether they're in, you know, all around the world, they could even be in the same building but disconnected. Yeah. You know, what's the, um, you know, what tools do you use for that connecting of your teams there?

Yeah, well, when we talk about Stitch internally, we use Slack and, you know, like Google Hangouts or whatever, just like everyone else, I guess, right now in the business. Yeah. Yeah, but, and what we've seen is, and it's really interesting you touch on this, is that right now working from home, the importance of documentation and having one place for everyone to find what they need. Yeah. And something I didn't realize before, how much we discuss in person and how much you do when you connect like face-to-face now needs to be followed up with documentation because people need to be able to read about it at any time while working from home. So our digitization team launched a great tool, the Vendor Portal, where they have all the documentation that vendors need to be able to work in 3D, but also PDs need to be able to review 3D files. Within transformation, we have an online training website, and we have— what we're working on right now is making sure we document all our transformation tools. There's so many things that come natural to us, especially going through this transformation with— I think right now, I did a tally work with around 400 users to make sure everyone understands what that workflow looks What are the roles and responsibilities? How do I create a 3D outerwear piece versus a t-shirt? Those are two totally different workflows. And even in fashion and in any fashion brand or company, we know that every team works a little bit different. So what we really focus on, this is like a generic workflow that you could work for a t-shirt, or this is a generic workflow for an outerwear or a heavyweight knit. And then our 3D leads work together with those designers designers one-on-one over phone call to really flesh out what that workflow is for them specifically. Yeah, documentation has become such a priority for us.

What does all this mean for the customer then? Does this increase loyalty and brand engagement and things like that?

Mm-hmm. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how this first season is going to go where we have over 9,000 3D images that we're selling from. I think, you know, for both TH and CK, wholesale is a big part of their business. It'll be great to see how the wholesalers are going to view these 3D files in the digital showroom and their feedback. A, if they're even going to see if they're 3D, which is always an interesting survey to run. And also, are we going to start, you know, using this consumer-facing? I think these are all things that we're going to find out in the next coming months. I think it's super exciting for the fashion business. I think the next coming months are going to be pivotal to define how— what is the need for salesmen samples? How many do we really need to be able to sell successfully? How many protos do we really need to be able to sign up for bulk? And what are the consumers expecting from us in terms of imagery? Is it just a photo shoot with models and have all your product photography for online in 3D? Yeah, I think I'm super excited about it and I can't wait to see where it goes and what the feedback is going to be in the next coming months.

You actually make an interesting point, you know, what about the models? We're talking about virtual sampling here, but, you know, have you considered using virtual models for this process as well?

Yeah, it's a topic that we get asked about a lot and I think A lot of fashion is emotion. And what is the emotion that I feel when I see an image from any brand? And that's where models play that big part, right? They really convey the feeling that you want to feel when you buy something. So yeah, I think there's always that traditional model photoshoot to bring that emotion. But you see more and more with the digitals and the work that The Fabricant does and these other companies. That these digital models are making a huge impact on the fashion business. So maybe it's going to be a mix at some point. Or maybe you use digital— what we're doing a lot is using digital mannequins. So it's not so much giving them a face and an identity, these digital avatars, but using digital mannequins to be able to show outfits. Because one of the things that we run into with 3D, you have a lot of front, side, back views of these 3D garments, but sometimes you want to see them as an outfit because we also sell a lot through outfits. So we started developing digital mannequins so you can show the garment without having the conversation about what kind of hair does the avatar need? What is their facial expression? You know, there's so much craft that goes into that part of things.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, do you make them look real or do you keep that unreal aspect to it? That people talk about.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, the work that the Digitals do is so impressive to, you know, create a human-looking avatar is all the little details that come with it. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Yeah, I love those guys. They're great.

Yeah.

You know, you talk about The Fabricant there, and one of the things they do is add movement to this virtual garment. Have you guys started doing that?

We have definitely done some motion capture for more sportswear things. Right now we use it more internally. But yeah, I think, I think marketing teams now across the fashion business are also seeing those opportunities of what they can do with digital assets. There's so many benefits, like they'll have the digital asset available way before they would ever have samples available so they can think much further ahead about what that campaign is going to look like. And maybe they can even present styles that haven't been produced yet. Through the beauty, like the beautiful videos that The Fabricant makes are definitely things that across the business we get asked about, like, oh, can we do something like this? This is so cool. So yeah, I think from, you know, the huge scaling that we're doing right now with both of these wonderful companies, I think that's what's the next frontier, right? Okay, now we have the foundation. Our teams are creating 3D images, they're doing all this great work. So how can we take that foundation and elevate it into selling?

Do you think that would work in a wholesale— sorry, do you think that would work in a wholesale context as well?

Yeah, I think, you know, you're selling to a customer, whether they're wholesale or wherever they're from, they're still wanting to be wowed and wanting to be taken on that journey of that season, of the feeling and the mood and really that theme of that season. And I think that comes into play.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Do you think that the whole lockdown and COVID and all of this, do you think it's changed people's attitudes towards digitalization of the fashion industry?

Yeah, I think so. I think everyone was open-minded about it, but the need wasn't there yet. But I think everyone's super open-minded about it and now also see how critical it is to become digital and be more flexible from where you make your clothing, how quickly you can see images and strikeoffs and all those kind of things. So I think the need became more critical through this crisis.

Yeah, I mean, and I feel like you guys there with Stitch, Hatch, and PVH in general, I feel like you guys are so far ahead. Definitely one of the leaders when it comes to digital transformation within the industry, but you're not ones to rest on your laurels. So where's next for you guys?

Yeah, I think it's been such an amazing journey to work together with PVH on this transformation and implementation of our tools. And I think we're 2.5 years in. Very, you know, doing great work together with these brands. And yeah, we're really looking towards 2021 and what's that going to mean for us. You know, Hatch has already gone commercial and working with other brands. And you know, what is that going to be for Stitch? We're still defining what that's going to be, but we're definitely looking ahead in, you know, the full Stitch workflow that I was talking about, our tools, our transformation, our educational services that we provide right now for our number one client, PVH, and what's that going to be potentially in the future when we think about commercialization or something.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's super interesting. I just want to bring it back to education for the last, last few minutes, just because it's such an important, critical piece of this whole ecosystem, and I feel like you guys are doing really great work there. Do you feel like there are other companies that need to sort of follow that route to offer this kind of training?

Mm-hmm. Stitch Academy is one of those, when we talk about foundational services, without Stitch Academy, our users aren't educated. They won't be working in 3D, and they eventually will only use some of our tools because Only some of our tools work with 2D imagery. And the success is really that always there, not an external service that comes in and trains you for 4 days, but really having trainers nearby that you can connect with. You know them, you have that bond with them. There's online content and there's that always availability to help. We have, you know, face-to-face, we have a chat function as well where we can help users. And yeah, having the online content always there, you can always go back and review. So yeah, I can definitely recommend having education in-house or working together with, for example, like in a Stitch Academy that's always there that can help you go through that transformation and transition. Because what I've really seen is the always there and being there to make your product creation teams feel safe and feel like they can accomplish what they need to accomplish for that season is super important. Because learning this new tool, new way of working within your season, we have very tight deadlines and high deliverables, is super scary. So yeah, that is kind of like the safety as well of it being there.

Yeah. Well, look, Emily, it's been really, really great talking to you today. Um, thank you for joining us.

It's been wonderful. Thanks so much for inviting me. It's been really great chatting to you.

Yeah, thank you too, Emily. Really, really great conversation. Well, that's about all we have time for this week, so hope you can all join us again next week. Um, I will be speaking to Isaac Korn of Periellis, and, uh, yeah, we'll be talking all about innovation. Innovation is not an island, so I hope you can all join us then. Until then, Take care, be safe, goodbye. Everybody get up!