Outline of Project
In Korea, it is very rare for small Business brands to implement CLO into their workflow. This makes it hard for CLO as a company to research them to better understand their needs and how they might respond to 3D even if they are curious. That was until 5 months ago when our design team in Korea began educating and supporting an up and coming designer who was preparing for the launch of their brand.
The designer launched their brand entitled “rootfinder”. Rootfinder is a brand that pursues a comfortable and practical silhouette based on sports tailoring. To showcase their designs, the brand had a 3-day launch event beginning October 11th, 2019. The event featured their F/W collection as well as a lookbook and videos that were created using CLO. To their surprise, sales were higher than expected and the event was a success. Because of the success of this event, those who own other small business brands were especially very interested.
Evaluation of Collection
Unlike the conventional method of evaluating a collection, as there were no physical samples created the critique was only done on the 3D samples made in CLO. 22 styles of 3D samples were then produced from a total of 26 sketches that were done in 2D. From there, 11 designs were adopted during the review process. The styles that they decided to move forward with then went into the 3D fit-check stage where the designs were further refined. Rootfinder says, “As we develop more seasons, the library will be more diverse. Then, we expect to begin our designs in 3D and instead of a 2D sketch.”
Fit-check
Dongdaemun Fashion Market might be one of the fastest in the world. Sometimes clothes that are designed in the morning are displayed and sold in stores that same day in the afternoon. Because the production cycle is so fast, most smaller brands have a hard time keeping up as they can’t spend much time at the fit-check stage due to time and cost. Because of this inability, these smaller brands often introduce mediocre product into the market place. With CLO, rootfinder was able to launch a collection filled with high-quality products.
Marketing and Promotion
As mentioned, the 3D content that was produced was used in many different ways such as a lookbook, promotional videos, and for rootfinder’s online shopping mall. It was interesting to see that customers did not object to browsing the 3D garments as they were hardly able to even distinguish them from real garments. Many of the customers inquired or actually purchased garments with only seeing the 3D lookbook.
Generally, it costs $3000-$5000 to shoot a lookbook, so the cost reduction of implementing a 3D cookbook instead was highly valued by rootfinder. Additionally, they are extremely keen on the fact that using CLO enables them to introduce designs in creative and diverse ways that were not imaginable prior to using the software.
CONCLUSION
It’s exciting to see small business designers picking up CLO to start their own brands. Working on this project allowed our Korea design team to see firsthand how the small business brand environment operates and how CLO can best serve them.
Just Brilliant , its the way of the future