3D printing - High-end fashion, Watch, Accessories & Handbags

Emerging technology – 3D printing

Why High-end fashion, Watch, Accessories & Handbags Industries?

High-end fashion, watch, accessories and hangbags industries have 2 common product features which are wearable and fashionable.  Also, 3D printing technology is already impacting these industries and there are still many opportunity gaining by 3D printing technology.

[Materials Girl]

Opportunity presented by Globalization & Consequences of technological adoption or oblivion

3D printing in High-end fashion (Prepared by Iris Leung, Student ID#5389 7559)

Expensive, trendy and more formal clothing which has an established reputation and is known for high quality.  Although the high-end fashion industry is limited by a small number of brands, top fashion designers set the tone for fashion trends, in addition to initiating the way consumers choose their lifestyles and apparel selection from their high street fashion shop like Top Shop, Zara, Marc by marc Jacob etc.

Fashion designers have been using 3D printed materials since 2010, their range has been limited until recently. 

The World's First Fully Articulated 3-D Printed Gown.  Fashion designer Iris van Herpen collaborated with New York company .MGX by Materialise and artist Daniel Widrig to create 3D printed clothes

The opportunity presented by Globalization & Consequences of technological adoption or oblivion

1.        New Market & High demand

Global economy has changed in last 10 years and economic growth from BRICs (金磚國家: Brazil, Russia , India, China and South Africa).  They have accumulated very strong purchasing power.  Particular in Mainland China, people is getting richer & richer and it's beneficial by China internal economic rapidly increase.  As such, they can afford to buy an expensive and luxury clothing for themselves.  In addition, consumer purchasing pattern has changed from basic, simple and down to earth to unique, outstanding and innovative.

Ø  Adopt 3D printing

Allowing designer to create a variety design for different customer and custom made for themselves.  Designer is simply using 3D printing technology to create what they want and print out without time limited.  Xuberance's Shanghai design studio displayed two unique SLS 3D printed wedding dresses at the Shanghai Convention & Exhibition Center of International Sourcing in China from March 12-14.

2.        New Fashion concept / Idea from customer and other market expertise

Luxury brand strategy has changed.  The focus is shifting to consumers, with local trends and tastes.  This new mind-set has important implications for luxury brands as its requires to think about their product offering from global perspective instead of oneself.

Ø  Adopt 3D printing

Practitioner and designer can widely use of 3D printing to create and develop more design for different market and tailor made for some special customer in order to suit their needs.  3D printing can simplify the design & development lead-time throughout the process and allowing more time for customer's service to acquire more customer feedback for future's idea . 

3.        Changing consumer shopping pattern

The trend of the way that customer shopping is now has changing to online and e-commerce since last 5-10 years.  Over the last few years, many fashion brand have made use of social media to market their product and talk to the customer directly.  Personalize, customize and memorable shopping journey will be a new shopping pattern now a day.

Ø  Adopt 3D printing

Consumer can experience to create their own design online by using 3D printing technology and they could review the open design through online service.  The whole designing & ordering process only handle by themselves such as review the final product online and place order directly.  It's easy, accessible, simple, no time limited and privacy.

4.        Global supply chain

Simplify the supply chain process. Old pattern was starting from Raw material, production site, Manufacturing, Packaging, Complete product, Shipping, in-land transportation, Distribution center, local transportation and finally Retail store.  Allowed companies to expand into different markets of customers and suppliers.

Ø  Adopt 3D printing

Reduce the total development and production lead-time massively.  And eliminate the handling throughout the whole process undoubtly.

5.        Material & Manufacturing cost

Garment industry involved different kind of raw material around the world and purchasing from different location.  The key cost driver mainly from material and manufacturing cost. 

Ø  Adopt 3D printing

After adopting 3D printing technology, there's no more "made to order" as the order will be by request from customer individually.  Total cost will be reduce massively due to logistic cost and inventory cost have been eliminated.

3D printing in Watch industry (Prepared by Vicky Chan, Student ID#5065 8033)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jelwek-watch

Opportunities presented by globalization

1.      New Market/ Demand

With the strong economic growth in BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and rising disposable incomes, it boost consumer spending on personal accessories, apparel and travel. It also increased the demand on luxury products.

New competitors from technology company create a new market for watch industry - smart watch e.g. Apple Watch. The smart watch also create a new demand for watch accessories e.g. bands, watch-stands, cases, buckles will be created.

Ø  Adopting 3D printing

Provide flexibility to designers and consumers to customize and print their own bands with different materials. Company “cgtrader” even launched a 3D print competition on Apple watch accessories.

2.      New idea from consumer and other market expertise

Consumers are keener and more able to express their individuality. Company need to “think globally and act locally”. Watchmaker company keep monitoring the market trends e.g. consumer interest on Smartwatch. The growth of Smartwatch is totally different from traditional watch industry, collaboration with electronics manufacturers are required.

Ø   Adopting 3D printing

-          Increase the interaction with consumer.

-          Company invest in 3D printing can also gain knowledge from other company/ industry successful case

3.      Provide better service and product

-          With the advancements in internet-based tools, it increased the buying convenience and online shopping is growth rapidly.

-              Due to the keen competition, company need to provide more diversified product to fulfill different customer needs e.g. diving watches, sport watches, multiple time zone watches.

Ø   Adopting 3D printing

-              Customer can design and order from online shop directly

-              Reduce shipping cost and time (On-the-spot printing/ print in by customer)

-              Time reduced on prototyping gives designers to have more time to thoroughly review designs during early stages so they could produce better final designs

4.      Reduce supply chain and production cost

Companies can select the best suppliers and manufacturers without cross-border issue.

Ø   Adopting 3D printing

-              Shorten research and development time e.g. prototyping (short term)

-              On-the-spot and on-demand 3D-printed manufacturing will highly reduce the manufacturing cost.

5.      Eco-Friendly

Globalization raised the awareness of environmental protection. Companies introduce Eco-Friendly Watch, bio-degradable watch and solar powered watch.

Ø   Adopting 3D printing

-              Beside of production cost reduction, on-the-spot and on-demand 3D-printed manufacturing can also reduce the environmental costs

3D printing in Fashion Accessories (Prepared by Toni Ye, Student ID#5380 5830)

Opportunities in globalization

Fashion (accessories) industry is traditional low-end manufacture industry, which already developed in many countries. Currently manufacturing centralized in China, South-east Asia and South America. Matured market sits in North America and Europe. With the 3D printing technology emerged, we could foresee the globalization opportunities and effects presented in global supply chain and global manufacturing.

• New market demand & customized design

Once fashion accessories adopting 3D technology and going globalized, more and more customized design will be brought out to meet the different markets. The demand of uniqueness will be more focalized. In addition, the factories will be more able to accept small order, thus the customized design with small order will flourish the whole industry and market.

Meanwhile, China & other Asia countries, as well as South America countries, no longer only serving as the supplying roles, but also growing up to be another new market, which will pull up the demand of the fashion accessories industry. It is predicted that these countries will become the domain market of fashion industry, with stronger consumption power. 

• Global Manufacture

1. More flexible global manufacturing network building

The manufacturing becoming automated and removing reliance on large and costly work forces, means no longer a labor intensive concern, thus the factory scale would be smaller. Thus factories of those of MNC can be set up easily near the domain market to reduce logistic cost. The global manufacturing network construction will be more flexible.

2. Lower production shorter production lead-time

Once the accessories manufacturing goes golobalized, the manufacturing process itself will be streamlined as much as possible due to globalized process standardization. Therefore, the production leadtime will be shorten as well. Production scrap will also be minimized dramacally as production process streamlined. Raw material ulitilization rate will be lifted to a higher level at the same time.

• Global Supply Chain

1. Lower logistic cost on sourcing and selling

A proportion of goods which is previously produced in China or other Asia countries could be "near-sourced" to North Amercia and Europe. It will help reduce sourcing effort and the cost of long distant logistic.

2. Lower warehouse operation and labor cost

When the accessories industry being globalized, the demand of global logistics and warehouse will increase. Under the 3D printer technology, the mass customization of products decrease the inventory levels as goods become made to order. This would reduce raw material warehousing requirements, hence reduce global warehouse operation cost and labor cost.

3. Simplified global distributed system and higher the distributing speed

Especially for those multinational fast fashion company like Zara, Gap, H&M, they are now spending billions of money on holding stock to supply products in different distribution center. In some cases, huge amount of redundancy is built into supply chains to enable parts to be dispatched in a very short timescale.

• Cultivate green awareness in production and consumption

The material of fashion accessories are metal and plastic, some of which are non-recycle and non-eco-friendly. While adopting 3D printing technology globally, the raw material will be further researched and developed. With no double, the feature of recyclable and eco-friendly would be well addressed.

At the meantime, streamlined manufacture, high raw material usage rate, as well as simplified global distribution system will help the industry going further to green industry. 

Consequence:

• Most traditional component suppliers will disappear

As manufacturing processes are increasingly re-bundled within a single facility, the component supplier will disappear, which affect the whole industry chain, e.g. people who work for those suppliers will lose their job.

• Most traditional wholesaler and retailer will disappear

Build-to-order production strategies could fundamentally impact the manufacturer-wholesaler-retailer relationship. In the future the shopping experience could also be vastly different. In some sectors, wholesalers and retailers will either cease to exist or become ‘shop windows’ for manufacturers, keeping no stock of their own. Orders are fulfilled directly by the manufacturer, and delivered to the home of the consumer.

• Small accessories manufacture will close down

As 3D printers become more affordable to the general public, some small manufacturers may not survive between the big giants and homemade market.

3D printing in Handbag industry (Prepared by Joyce Fan,  Student ID#53511796)

Regardless of time, handbag is a necessity item for women to carry personal items who leave home. Nowadays, handbag is a luxury and fashionable item which reflects personal taste and self-image.

Since 3D printing technology was first introduced at 1980s, it has never stopped developing into a much adaptable technology into the commercial world. It is believed that3D printing may spur a manufacturing revolution in the handbag industry.

Kipling is a famous Belgian-based bag and luggage brand that have released an upcoming 3D printed handbag in 2014, named “The Monkey Madness city Jungle Shopper”. A large format SL 3D printer enables the bag to be produced with resin, resulting in a unique, smooth and detailed print that could hardly be produce using other production method.

http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/01/27/3d-printed-primates-tote-kipling/

Nowadays, the handbag industry is facing keen competition. Even luxury brands like Hermes, Channel, Gucci, Dior, Mui Mui are facing competition from other “affordable brands” like Coach. With the opportunity presented by globalization, industry players are advertising and distributing their products around the globe. There is no doubt that a Hermes handbag can easily be found in large cities around the world, like Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai, etc.

High-ended handbag brands emphasis on the high-quality, innovative design as well as the limited number of production. It is believed that only customized handmade handbags can satisfy personalize needs.

The opportunity presented by Globalization:

• Market

Globalization provides a larger and better platform (greater market/potential demand) for high performing industry players to produce and market its products around the globe.

Ø  Adopting 3D printing

Companies can benefit from a higher volume of sales driven by the global demand instead of demand from local market.

• Cost (Global demand->mass production->economies of scale)

Besides, economies of scale can be achieved through mass production, as large quantity of production will reduce production costs.  Producing larger quantity reduces unit costs of product.

Ø  Adopting 3D printing

Easy modelling

With 3D technology, companies can create low cost product model during the R&D and selling process, which reduce the related modelling costs. For example, handbag companies can create a tailor-made 3D printed product model according to customer's design to customer to confirm the order requirement prior to the manufacturing of the actual product.  So as to make sure the final product will match customer's demand.

Mass production with 3D printing technology can be machinery oriented which involves less human resources employed, this in turn reduces production costs. Besides, with the 3D printing technology develops, companies may receive tailored-order of 3D products instead of mass production.

Tailor-made 3D printed product simplifies supply chain process from online purchase to direct shipping. This involves lower costs compare to traditional global supply chain activities.

• Risk

Customers from different region have different taste among handbags. Industry players often produce products with different size, design, materials for different market and charge at a different rate sometimes. 

Some regions may encounter economic growth while the other going through a recession. Raise in demand in some regions may offset the fall of demand in other region. Business risk can be diversifying through the natural demand stabiliser and the broader product range with globalisation.

Globalization can benefits companies from reducing the business risk while companies will face higher global competition when entering into global market compare to local market.

Ø  Adopting 3D printing

With 3D printing technology, the entry barrier can be relatively higher compare to other industries due to the higher investment/fixed costs of specialised machinery as well as technical resources.  

3D printing machineries, software and IT support are some of the high cost crucial resources that companies shall invest on at the first stage of production. This may deter some potential competition out of the industry.

• R&D in 3D printing technology

As a recent technology, there are a number of limitations in the development of 3D printing technology, including the invention of materials choice.

With the help of globalization and advanced information technology, industry experts and innovative ideas can be easily transfer and communicate through face-to-face and online interactions, which enhances research and development efficiency and effectiveness.