IKAR, a producer of seamless apparel including intimates and activewear, has some high-tech advancements in its future.
As the CommerceNext 2019 conference gets underway in New York City, CGTrader, a purveyor of true-to-life, licensable 3-D models, said it’ll be working with IKAR to bring some of its augmented reality shopping innovations to the apparel brand, with a helping hand from Magic Leap, the spacial computing and virtual reality experts.
CGTrader said the first step of this new collaboration will see IKAR, which already produces intimates and activewear for retailers including American Eagle, Target, Ross and Nordstrom, integrate its ARsenal, an AR platform, into its design cycle.
In a statement, CGTrader said that ARsenal will allow the apparel supplier to completely integrate the benefits of augmented reality into its business model through a single platform, which the company calls the “first complete, easy-to-deploy AR solution” for the fashion industry.
“A garment will create a greater attraction when presented on a human model rather than lying flat or on a hanger. However, such presentations require a considerable amount of resources such as photoshoots, human models and more,” Roi Ballin, the business development manager for IKAR, explained.
“For us, CGTrader ARsenal provides an immediate solution for a more elevated means to present our products, while eliminating the need to invest in expensive 3-D software, internal training, project management and other internal resources or upfront investments for 3-D implementation,” Ballin continued. “We can cost-effectively outsource the 3-D modeling and 3-D viewing processes so we can focus on what we do best. This is transforming our whole approach to the way we think about pre-sales and fashion product presentations.”
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Integrating 3-D models into the design process can also help a brand reduce waste, according to CGTrader and Adidas’ director of design operations, Sky Asay. Without the need for physical samples, brands can focus more on design choices while opening up a whole new way to interact with consumers.
For instance, CGTrader is also partnering with spatial computing and augmented reality firm, Magic Leap, to bring that same technology into homes and retailers both physical and digital.
“Just as IKAR’s seamless apparel creates a better experience for the buyer, so does CGTrader ARsenal bring a better customer experience to the retail buyer,” CGTrader CEO Dalia Lasaite added. “Working with IKAR has given us the perfect opportunity to expand the scope of our augmented reality solutions to include omnichannel retail. And collaborating with Magic Leap will enable us to explore interactive spatial computing experiences for fashion and other industries that eliminate the boundaries between the real and digital worlds.”
The collaboration with Magic Leap, according to the brands, could result in the use of at-home VR or AR technology for such purposes as a “virtual fashion show” that consumers could interact with directly, changing colors, shapes, textures and styles of garments as they see fit. Before that, the technology is ready for implementation into existing online stores, creating a more immersive shopping environment for the digital consumer.
Interested parties can see the new technology at the CGTrader booth during the CommerceNext conference taking place from July 31 to Aug 1. On the final day, Lasaite—along with IKAR’s creative director, Reut Nevo, and the senior director of enterprise sales at Magic Leap, Vivek Sharma—will address the conference in a keynote speech.