Denim mill’s digital diligence pays off
Mexico-based fabric producer Global Denim has said work it had already done to digitally present its collections paid off in a big way when the covid-19 pandemic hit, and has continued to develop in the post-covid environment.
As its name suggests, Global Denim, a family-run company with its headquarters in Mexico City, a denim mill in Puebla and a sales office in Los Angeles, has attempted to take a global view of its business since its launch in 1994. It is proud of its verticality and self-sufficiency, working from fibre to finished fabric, with its own fibre-washing, carding, spinning, dyeing, weaving and finishing operations. It prefers to keep these processes in-house, it explains. It regards each of the links in the chain as important and prefers not to depend on external partners for any of them.
In the same way, the company has come to view digital connections to customers as a natural progression from the physical ties it has spent years building up, creative director, Anatt Finkler, said at the Trippin’ Blue seminar this September. “They go hand in hand,” she says. “We now talk about a fusion between what is real and what is virtual.”
This has led to the development of an advanced digital showroom in which customers can pore over the Mexican company’s entire range of fabrics and make choices for the jeans, jackets and other products they want to make. “This came out of the pandemic,” Ms Finkler continues. “Our lives changed completely during that time and we became used to searching online for everything we needed, whether for entertainment, education or even personal connections. This situation changed all businesses, including in the textile industry and in our world of denim.”
Fabric assessment
She explains that with everyone “immersing ourselves in that virtual world”, people became much more willing to assess fabric digitally, making business decisions more efficient, faster and with less waste and fewer samples flying back and forth. Advanced software has made it possible for Global Denim to showcase its entire library of fabrics, giving customers quick access to information about the fibres, colours and finishes available. “This is making it easier for our customers to do business with us,” the creative director says.
A new project that Global Denim has embarked on with technology provider Bandicoot Imaging and the organisers of Trippin’ Blue is taking this further forward. It has a new tool that allows customers to see 3D versions of finished garments, jeans, jackets or shorts, in the fabrics they have chosen, zooming in to get a close-up view of the material and changing the angle to be able to make decisions about design, pattern-making, construction and even about fluidity of movement in garments. The system makes it possible for customers to make one-click requests to receive samples, swatches or the 3D files for the choices they have made for them to use in their own design systems.
Communication channel
“This has become an important communications channel for us,” says Global Denim’s sustainability director, Vanessa Troice. “It’s true, of course, that we don’t make the final product, the product that reaches the consumer, but we think it’s a good thing that our customers, the companies that make the finished garments, can take some inspiration from us. Perhaps there are people who see less clearly in their imagination what it is possible to do with the fabrics we are developing. We are helping our customers understand our fabrics more clearly.”
For Anatt Finkler, all of this constitutes an important contribution to the emergence of Latin America as a near-shoring hub from which brands in important markets such as the US and Canada can source denim garments. She says she knows that the virtual world is never going to take the place of the physical world, which is good news for clothing companies. All Global Denim wants to do is provide a tool that will make selection processes faster.
Too many choices
In any case, her colleague Ms Troice says there are too many choices in the company’s fabric library to be able to send clients samples of all of them. “This is a way for clients to look at what we have and start to make their selections remotely,” she explains. “Another benefit is that it gives us good insight into the way our clients are thinking and the direction they are moving in before we sit down to have a meeting with them.” And when the time does come to sit down and talk to customers face to face, the customer, too, will know more about Global Denim and its product range.
According to the host of the Trippin’ Blue event, Ana Paula Alves, Global Denim’s approach is about offering the highest level of service it can and she says she has been delighted to see this develop at the Mexican company. “The service levels are so high that the company is selling its fabrics by osmosis,” she comments.
Mexican fabric producer Global Denim works from fibre to finished fabric and is proud of its verticality and self-sufficiency.
Photo: Global Denim
