End to End Cloth Stitching Machine with 3D interface: Designed, Customised and Delivered instantly

End to End Cloth Stitching Machine with 3D interface

Designed, Customised and Delivered instantly

Clothing is one the basis necessity and there are various aspects around purchasing cloth / garments. However, the most important one includes style, design, quality, pattern and value system. With the development of e-economy, various marketplaces have tried to make this task convenient and cost-effective with some elements if customisation. However, this lead to certain compromises. There are lack of choices, there are complexities (at-times limited options), problems with right fit and size, issues with quality of material used and most importantly, users are unable to imagine themselves in the garment, while purchasing it through e-commerce channel. If a consumer try to control these options, the convenience and cost would overshoot. Off-line/ POS stores does not provide an affordable designer garment. The problem statement here focus on the using technological advancement to generate an apt mix so as to develop a comprehensive cost-effective solution.

1.    Challenge Statement

Can we develop a cost effective cloth stitching machine which would provide end to end service, user feasibility and interface and potentially instant deliveries.

Wear what you always wanted to...

2.     Vision and Mission Statement

The Challenge is to develop a cloth stitching machine, which would design, stitch and customize a cost-effective garment for the user. Additionally, the machine could provide an instant output to the user based on the requirement. The user would have an option to select the style, design, size, patter, quality etc. from the mobile app (cloud based platform) and once he login to the machine at the respective machine center (which ideally would be located at designated places in the city), he/ she would get the desired output. Once the instruction is sent from the app, the user would get a time slot to visit the nearest convenient center for processing the output (which is nothing but the garment). User could take a feel of the 3D patterns and designs, user could feel the quality of the cloth and options available (from basic to designer), and user could see the 3D output on the system synced with a prototype of the user image to provide a post operation result

3.     How does the garment shopping works: Pre and Post

      It is important to understand the pre and post garment purchase model to determine the effectiveness and efficient of this idea and its impact on the challenge. The model is indicative and focus on the important parameters, which impacts garment purchase.

    BEFORE:  This is the current garment purchase model and has been categorised as "Pre"

AFTER: After the implementation of this idea (and business model), the customers would follow a different garment purchase model. This model would ease the customer experience and provide cost effective advantage. The CSM model is scalable and customisable

4.     Low Cost Experiment for CSM

This challenge determine to provide convenience to the customers with a build in infrastructure and technology along with an efficient supply chain model. I have tried to build in two low cost experience/ model to determine the below hypothesis.

Hypothesis: People want customised cost-effective designer garments

Objective: The objective of these test is to determine if the challenge highlighted above is catered by the design and functionality of this model.

Two Models: The concept of low cost experiment could be perceived in a vary different manner. Considering the impact and scale of this idea, I have devised two low cost models, which could cater requirements for different set of user. Both the ideas have its own value-adds and limitations.

Model 1

This prototype model is devised to obtain the information from customers/ user on the customised Garment Stitching. The target customers would be the one buying from the marketplace or specified shopping arenas. This is not just a questionnaire, but would be a solution based approach. The customer would be shown a business prototype and how would it impact their pattern of garment purchase and cater requirements. Understanding customer aspirations would be important. Whether they are interest in a low cost designer garment would be the key question to understand. It would take 2-5 minutes of customer time to complete this exercise. We could also target mass scale mailers with tie ups with Media agencies to obtain primary information

Model 2

This prototype model has a significant advantage in terms of user interface and obtaining first hand information about the customer requirements and aspirations. Considering the overall scale of this idea, I would be keen to categorise this model into a low cost experiment. The most significant part of this model is to obtain a garment printing machine and set-up a basic infrastructure for customers to interface. Stage 5 would be crucial as it would let us determine what customer wants and whether the macro factors are favourable. This model should be worked up at a few locations (at least 3) to understand feasibility. The machine shall be planted at customer centric places.

Measure of Success:

The success could be measured on below criteria and its impact on the over assumption highlighted in vision and mission statement

1. The response from customer on the solution pack/ questionnaire would be a direct measure of success as well as for product improvements/ development

2. The usability of garment printing machine would help us understand the need for such a solution in the market. This instance will more prevail if the customer did not respond to the questions but used the printing machine

3. The views of the business prototype model (which is essentially a combination of business model and new garment purchase model) would also be a parameter

I would not like to create quantitative evaluation as we would also be interested in qualitative assessment. Being first of its type, the customer could not be receptive at initial stages.