Ep. 47: PixelPool’s visualisation services reduce waste, time and costs Ankit Podcast

This transcription has been AI generated and therefore may have some inaccuracies.

Ep. 47: PixelPool’s visualisation services reduce waste, time and costs

In this episode of The WTiN Podcast, we talk to PixelPool’s chief operating officer Jan Torringa and business manager Gary Plunkett.

Jessica Owen
Music, hello. My name is Jessica Owen, and I am the Deputy digital editor at WTiN, and this is the WTiN podcast, the fourth industrial revolution is underway, and the world of textile and apparel is just one industry that is benefiting from new and innovative technologies. With this in mind, for this series, I'll be talking to companies across the textile apparel landscape about their new technologies, the benefits of digitalization, and the advice that they'd give to others who are trying to implement such solutions. This week, I am joined by PixelPool Chief Operating Officer, Jan Torringa and Business Manager Gary Plunkett. We talk about the company's 3d virtual technology and retail solutions, how these can help businesses become more sustainable and cost effective, and how COVID 19 has urged the fashion industry to embrace digitalization.

Hello and good morning to you both. Thank you very much for joining me. How are you great yourself? Yes, I'm fine. Thank you. Yes, I hear you're both calling from the Netherlands. So how is the situation in COVID, etc, over there?

Gary Plunkett
Well, they're trying to manage it as best they can. We've been trying to work from the office as from the home, actually, as much as possible, and put some regulations in place in terms of how many people are allowed in the office at any given time, and we've been able to manage that fine being a tech company, to be able to adjust in this current environment in a kind of technical or digital way makes it easier, I guess, for us. So so far so good. Yeah,

Jessica Owen
yeah. I imagine if your your brain is wired that way, then it's really not an issue at all. Is it having to work from home, using, I don't know, Microsoft Teams, etc, for meetings. It's a, I think, our generation, well, I don't know how old you both are, but I'd say a younger generation are probably, you know, coping quite well, all things considered. Well, first of all, then before we talk about pixel pool and what you guys do, do you mind just telling me a bit about yourselves and what your roles are at the company? Yeah,

Jan Torringa
sure, maybe I can kick off. So my name is Jan, and I joined the company almost 20 years ago, and I'm in the position now of Chief Operating Officer, overseeing our daily operations throughout our offices, and I work closely together with the team in Bulgaria on the creation of virtual samples. Yeah, so that's, that's basically what I do on a daily job. And background in architecture. And I started that company as a 3d artist, actually project manager, and slightly grew into this role while we were growing the company as to a place where we are now at a company of four offices with almost 100 people employed,

Jessica Owen
right? Yes, it sounds like you've come a long way in that time. It sounds great. And Gary, then, can I ask you what what you do at the company? What's your background as well?

Gary Plunkett
Sure, I'm the business manager. I have my responsibility is primarily, essentially negotiating the relationship with the partners, so kind of a lot of stakeholder management and work with legal teams to get to an agreement that is effective for both parties. I actually just started with the company in April, so I'm a newbie. My my background, I have over 20 years experience in in fashion. So I worked for Tommy Hilfiger for 10 years. Worked for g star for over four years. I've done collaborations with Disney, Karl Lagerfeld, just a number of things. And I just, I got to a point in my career where I didn't want to go working necessarily for another fashion company unless the opportunity was really, really interesting. I really wanted to get into more future thinking businesses and and this opportunity came along, and it was a perfect fit. It allowed me to exercise my extensive knowledge in fashion with combining with tech and digitization, which is the way forward. So I couldn't have asked for a better role election.

Jessica Owen
Well, I mean, you said it there. Pixel pool definitely comes across as a very forward thinking, sort of almost futurist. Stick kind of company. So do you mind just telling me a bit more about the company? Then, for those listeners who don't know anything about you guys,

Jan Torringa
yeah, yeah, sure. So our company was founded 20 years ago by Martha van door, our CEO and founder, who is currently still actively involved on a daily basis with the company. And we started off actually as a digital agency creating artist impressions, architectural illustrations for mainly architects and real estate developers. So we were really in that building area, real estate area, that's where we were active, working with a small team of three artists, or with a background in architecture and design. And over years, we grew that team and we started working with some of the bigger retail brands. At some point, while we were doing architecture, we got in contact with their retail designers doing interiors, exteriors, shopping windows, and started to visualize that as well for them. So we were creating the 3d remnants for those teams. And then at some point, and of the 2000 we the economic crisis kicked in, and we were not doing so much architecture work anymore, but we were actually able to grow our business more on that retail brand side, working together with those retail designers, and we started to get more involved with these retail and fashion brands, and started working for more divisions within these brands, working together with their visual merchandisers, rendering their planograms, doing entire shop interiors, but also brand campaigns. So we were able to grow during that period, and we started to open up our office in Portland, us. And couple of years later, we also opened a production office in Bulgaria, Sofia, and yeah, that business kept growing, actually, and we found more work in some kind of a niche market within retail, doing their visualizations with a strong emphasis on 3d which which was our background and our experience. And at some point, we got more involved with game technology, and we started hiring also game artists which is very much related to the to the world, of course, with all the game development on first player experiences, first player games. So we we adapted more to that game technology and added sort of a functionality, a layer of functionality on top of our lynders by using game technology, and that enabled us to create way more richer environments experiences and add that level to our renders, where Slightly our work became more into an interactive product. And yeah, there was a lot of interest in that as well. And so that the transition happened, and we had, we needed more people also on the development side, because of the technical implications with with making the change towards game technology. And yeah, nowadays we have our company set up with partly 3d production, but also a very strong development group and a group of developers with which is currently a team of almost 15 people. And yeah, that's, where we see a large future for us going that direction and developing more generic products, interactive products, even up to the moment where we are now developing some sort of software product which we are planning to sell as a service, software service. And that's where we see a large future for us. Wow.

Jessica Owen
Okay, so I mean, 20 years ago, did you ever think you'd be where you are now, and working in almost a very different industry to architecture and so on?

Jan Torringa
No, no, absolutely. It's interesting though that we still have a lot of people on board that were with us from the beginning, so that's always nice to share that same thought and feeling of when we started the company, but having all that history and heritage helps us still to think forward, move forward in this industry and. And rich our products from a 3d visualization standpoint, and I think that that's what what we what separates it separate separates us from the market, and what gives us also our distinct, or distinction towards our competitors? Yeah,

Jessica Owen
definitely sounds it. So let's talk more about pixel pool and your solutions then. So the aim of your company, from what I understand, is to make fashion industry more agile, sustainable, cost effective, and so on. And one of the things that you've come up with is something called detail. So what exactly is this? Then, can you tell me more about it?

Gary Plunkett
Yeah, I can feel that one in a nuts. I mean, the detail was built to essentially support design to sales process in fashion. Put simply, it's a 3d sales and merchandising tool, which incorporates the use of a virtual showroom to promote B to B selling. That's what it is, in a nutshell. And we've gotten out to a very good start in terms of the companies that's speaking to us to use the platform, okay,

Jessica Owen
right? And so talking maybe step by step, and what this is exactly, so I've been on your website, and apparently you can not only design products, you can also, you know, store everything online, so, you know, everything that you've designed. And then you can also sort of almost pick those products out and put them on a virtual rail and design your shop. So, I mean, have I got the right end of the stick here, or

Gary Plunkett
pretty much you've got the gist of it. I think what's happening is a lot of fashion brands are transitioning to using 3d and that came about initially for cost saving measures. Producing samples is a very costly endeavor, so you most major brands will have, you know, anywhere from from five to, you know, potentially 20 different showrooms globally. And you need to produce, you know, the same style 20 times, essentially. And a collection could be as big as 1000 to 2000 style. So you do the math, it gets quite costly and quite fast. And so there's cost saving measures there, but there's also been a huge drive towards fashion companies being much more sustainable. For too long, the fashion industry has contributed greatly, actually, to just waste and a lack of sustainability. So the last few years, there's been a dramatic shift to that fashion companies are signing up to sustainability goals. So as a result, 3d became this solution to check a box from a cost saving measures, but also from a sustainability perspective as well. So as these brands are developing 3d designs, they're still using the normal processes that they would normally use, which doesn't incorporate 3d so many of these brands now have three to design, and they're trying to figure out, okay, I have them, what do I do with them? What kind of what kind of platform can I put them all in, where I could be able to really look at them and analyze and merchandise Create line, you know, assortments and so on so forth. Because in the past, that was being done in a physical space. I have a physical sample in this physical showroom. I hang everything up and I look at it, and I kind of play with it. No change this, that whatever, take things out in this current state. When that's not possible, it becomes difficult. So what the platform allows you to do is one upload all your 3d assets, so you have them all in one place. You can also upload all your product information attached to each data, and have that all in one place as well. We could even link the platform to a company's PLM system, which is driving a lot of the data, information about the product that they have, so that they could always up as you update their PLM, it updates our platform as well. Once you have it there, then you can essentially start figuring out how your rain, your product range should look. Do I have all the styles that I need, or are the colors in the correct combinations, or does everything make sense? Essentially, from that stage, in just uploading the products and reviewing the assortment, you could also create individual assortments, whether it be by delivery or by group color groupings. Inspiration, whatever the names you have of each group, you can create assortments of top to bottom, so on, so forth. We have this neat little function called the canvas, which allows you to basically take a helicopter view of your collection and essentially analyze its license. It in number of ways you want to see, okay, which styles are in this this department, the sportswear department versus the luxury department. And within those individual departments, what are the price points that have per products? What's what percentage of tops versus bottoms? So it really allows you a great degree of analysis from 100% visual perspective. And once you've been able to say, okay, my line looks good, I have some that I would like to essentially present to the market, you could take it a step further, and we offer you a virtual showroom. The first we offer you a couple of options. We have a generic showroom that you can essentially place fixtures from our generic library to lay out an actual, real life showroom scenario. And then you can put your products, your 3d items within, on those fixtures within that virtual showroom. We also take allow the brand to take it a step further. As Jan mentioned earlier, we started out as a kind of a visualization company in terms of real estate and creating realistic renders of, you know, possible physical settings that a real estate company is trying to achieve. So if a company sends us a picture, for example, of the current showroom that they're working with, or even a fantasy showroom they want to work with. We can virtually create that and allow them to add their fixtures into that space and merchandise it as if they had physical samples in their regular showroom. Does that make sense?

Jessica Owen
Yeah, it does. I mean, I'm just trying to get my head around it. I mean, I when I was younger, I actually worked in retail, and I would spend ages going up to the storeroom, getting bars, trying to hook them onto the wall, standing back, thinking, is that look all right? I mean, I'd spend so much time just messing around with these shelves and stuff. And so I can completely see the advantages of this, just from that tiny perspective. But I mean, the ultimate question is, is it easy to use? I mean, we said earlier, if you've got a slightly technical background, then you probably pick it up quite quickly. But I mean, what do your customers think? Do they find it easy to use, or do they need quite a lot of training?

Gary Plunkett
It's our training with our customers could be anywhere from an hour to three hours. So depending on how savvy you are, you can pick it up quite quickly. You could even pick it up by even just watching our hour long webinar without us even walking you through it. And once you have that, it's, it's super intuitive. So it's just like, you know, like an iPhone, you know, that's super intuitive. You go through it, you kind of do some common sense things. It'll, it'll function as such. The it's super easy to get into the platform and utilize it.

Jessica Owen
Okay? Interesting. And another question I wanted to ask, actually, is so I can see the benefits of this in a normal world, but when you add COVID 19 to the situation. I mean, have you had a lot of interest from people, because they can now, well, with social distancing, they can now use your technology to work out how people might look at things. Is everything distance, far enough, apart and so on. I mean, is that something people are now asking you about for sure.

Gary Plunkett
I mean, the funny thing is, brands, because they're transitioning more into 3d was looking at our platform to house the goods, and as I explained, kind of go through the whole process to go to a virtual showroom when the pandemic hit, and those brands were doing that on a very kind of pace control level, you know, we're going to start slow and kind of move forward and get there when we get there, when the pandemic hit, it became a matter of urgency, actually, to get there already yesterday. And so the platform is great in that regard, but because you don't have to now invite your buyer to come into your showroom to walk them through the collection. You basically just have a zoom call with them and kind of and walk through the showroom with them. On that Zoom Call, click on items and see the 3d object, rotate it, give them all the product information it. It's a great solution in this setting where people aren't traveling as much and coming to showrooms. So the pandemic has definitely pushed the need for this type of technology to the forefront. And when I say customers, you know, are not trying to put it on their roadmap necessarily for the next three to six or 12 months, they want it now.

Jessica Owen
And I mean this whole concept of a virtual showroom. I mean, do you think without the pandemic, people would have been eager or as willing to try it? Or do you think they like, Oh, we don't need that. Well, we've

Gary Plunkett
had a major one of our biggest customers have been using a virtual. Showroom for the last four years, so there was interest. I think the distinction is people may have baby stepped in and slowly gotten there the pandemic just cranked up the volume to say it's urgent and we need this now because FYI, no one's traveling. Everyone's been told to essentially stay home, so no one's coming into my showroom to buy anything, so therefore I can't sell. So therefore, yeah, what's happening to my business? So that's that's kind of how the pandemic has impacted the urgency of this software,

Jessica Owen
right? Okay, and I also wanted to talk about maybe the other possibilities with this. So I can see how a business would want to use it and to set up their showroom, and as you said, then you can show it to other people, and they can see how it looks like. But I mean, could it be used for runways, for example? Because obviously cat walk shows London Fashion Week, so and hasn't been able to go on this year. So could it be used for that, and could it even maybe be used for, say, a different online shopping experience as well. So instead of just having a list of clothes, people could walk around a shop and have a look at it that way. I mean, is the these crazy ideas, or is it possible? 

Gary Plunkett
It's possible. I mean, there it is. It is possible. I mean, our platform is developed specifically for a specific use case. If you talk about a virtual fashion show free will, those are usually kind of one off things, and we wouldn't necessarily offer our platform to use that, but we for sure, can have, for example, an avatar walking out from the fitting room and in the showroom or something like that. But usually, when we talk about fashion shows, a brand you know, want that to be a very specific thing, and it's a one off that involves a bit more development and so on so forth to create that that experience. So does that answer your question?

Jessica Owen
Yeah? No, that makes complete sense. I get it. Yeah. So do you have any case studies or collaborations at all that you're able to talk about? I mean, I think your website lists a few well known brands that are using your technology now. So are you able to tell me about their experience with it?

Jan Torringa
Yeah, maybe I can tell a bit about our collaboration with Nike, for instance, which is, I think, an interesting use case, also, because we've been involved with their process in terms of the transformation from from a physical to a digital showroom environment. From the beginning, like I said, we were involved with Nike, doing their retail environments, rendering them esthetic renders for more than 15 years ago, and at some point, we were also rendering their assortments, doing their renders of planograms, helping the visual merchandisers enrich their presentations. And at some point we got involved with with their sales teams, marketing teams, and they started using our visuals more and more during their sales processes, the business to business sales processes. So basically, we were supporting their sales processes, processes in their physical showrooms, which were at that time point, still filled with fixtures and samples and products and huge stock of samples, and every time a buyer came in, I would need to rebuild the showroom to show that specific assortment to that specific buyer. But we were rendering for them, and they printed out our renders, and they were supportive to their sales process. And at some point, we helped them make that transition from that physical showroom, that physical space with physical samples, towards a more digital showroom, and we helped them digitize their collections, their samples became digital. They were showed on screen and where they were at first, maybe with the physical samples, fighting over a sample, who would get it in their showroom, in their region or area to show it to their buyer. They now all had access to all their samples, because they were digital, and we saw their showrooms changing from those packed well mock up retail setups towards a way more digital environment where their account representative would take the buyer to a virtual store behind a large screen. So they had these, have these big screens in that area, and collaboratively, together with a group of buyers, they can walk through that environment and add all sorts of functionality by pulling up assortments by just a click, adding shopping carts functionality all. All that sorts of things. And if you look at the showrooms nowadays, it's mostly screens. It's a couple of big screens with all the functionality in there, accompanied by some of the key products. But the focus is really on digital, and it's really nice to see their dedication to make that happen, and the way they succeeded in that, and being part of that was, was thrilling. Yeah,

Jessica Owen
I imagine. I mean, I'm not sure whether Nike have worked on stores I've been in with this technology, but when you go around a night shop, you do think they're sort of, you know, they look very cool. It's very slick, and I can see why they'd want to use technology like this. They do seem to be like the forerunners of like new technologies, and they don't seem to be afraid of trying something new. So talking more about these virtual samples then, so you offer this side of the business, in addition to detail, is that right?

Jan Torringa
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, we have a separate team focused on the production of those samples, and the services that we offer to our clients is basically the consult in scaling up the production of physical samples within the organization or outside your organization for outsourcing, we can help them out and offer production support, but we also have clients that outsource their entire sample production to us, so we create their entire assortments digitally.

Jessica Owen
Okay, right. Got it and so going back to this topic of sustainability, then, I mean, I imagine virtual samples help brands become more sustainable in this respect, is that? Right?

Jan Torringa
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a huge contribution, contribution to sustainability, and not only by the sample reduction, which is, of course, the most obvious feature or the most obvious point, but, but yeah, I mean also cost effectively. Of course, it's it's a good transition to go through, and by reducing your time to market, you can make your assortment way more relevant to to your buyers, and that will also help in waste reduction, right?

Jessica Owen
Okay, and I guess I mean, at the moment, it just sounds like there's only benefits to what you guys do, but the only thing that I can see that might be an issue is that with everything being virtual, you don't get to feel it. Is that an issue? Is that something that people you know get slightly frustrated by?

Jan Torringa
Of course, it was our initial thought as well. So we always thought that it would be added as an added value to it. But we were actually surprised how it could even replace the physical sample. And we were surprised how easily, especially in the business to business market, how buyers who are already familiar with your product could easily buy from a physical sample, and, sorry, from a digital sample. And in the past, of course, they were also used to buy from limelight. For instance, if as long as your buyer is aware of the quality that you deliver, is aware of your style, your specific key products, then it can be a complete replacement of the of the physical sample, actually? Okay,

Jessica Owen
right? Well, that's interesting to know. Um, so considering pixel pools offering and capabilities and and other businesses as well that are providing digital solutions, would you say that we're definitely in a new sort of technological and sustainable era now, with regards to Textiles and Apparel,

Jan Torringa
I absolutely think so. And if I look in into other industries, I think we've been actively involved in architecture and retail real estate, like, like I said, where we started off in these industries, but also, for instance, in automotive industry, they have adopted cat cam techniques already, like 30 years ago, and they they started experimenting with it, and there was a lot of people were acting, hazarding towards The change. But I think years later, they started adopting it, and maybe 10 years later, but it's already so many years back. If we now look at the fashion industry, they are still up for this big change, and it's been so long that they have been using these traditional process. Us. But in the current situation, it's obvious that we all need to change. They need to change the fashion industry, and it will only be a matter of time before everyone will adopt digitization.

Jessica Owen
Yeah. I mean, I speak to quite a lot of people being in this job, and everyone has said that it COVID has almost given the industry the kick that it needed to sort of try new things, get out of their old habits, and maybe these new technologies and so on will actually benefit everyone in the long run.

Jan Torringa
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the only way to make make it a success is to embrace it throughout your entire organization, you need to have leverage with all stakeholders, and everyone needs to be behind it. But it's obvious that it's the only way forward. Yeah,

Jessica Owen
okay, well, moving forward, then what are pixel pools plans for the future? Do you have anything new that you're working on, or do you maybe have, like, a wish list of stuff you'd like to develop in future.

Gary Plunkett
Well, we're, we're constantly evolving and developing even the existing platforms that we have, the canvas functionality that I mentioned to you earlier is something that continues to evolve to potentially include possible line planning capabilities. So from beginning of the design cycle, where you're just trying to figure out what you even want in your collection, as opposed to starting with designs that are completed, we start further back and just kind of laying out the sketching of that process, and then, you know, starting to basically develop the collection almost almost 100% within the platform. In addition to that, is also continuing to scale up the qualities of our 3d items to make them even better based on the latest technologies that's coming out to this constant refining of process. We work very closely with many brands. So, you know, we also get challenged by them in terms of other things they need. And because we're quite agile and have a good team of very talented developers, we're able to develop with them and anticipate their needs. But if I think more broadly in what the future is, I mean, because a lot of people are making this transition, and it is scary, they're used to working from a very traditional way of doing business, within fashion and getting into digital could be a bit scary, and potentially it could be a big financial investment as well. So you want to make sure that you're not making too many mistakes, and then you know, spending a lot more than you need to. Our position is we are firmly grounded in 3d and where that's going towards the future. And the position we like to take is one where we are thought leader, where we're working with these companies and helping to guide them in the process, because we speak to so many different brands, we have a very diverse perspective, familiar with the challenges that they're going to come up to and face, and we can help them go through that process, whether it be initially, doing all their 3d work, because we're able to do that to helping them figure out how they start doing it themselves internally, to then also working them with working with them, with the detail platform, to digitize their entire process, to move forward into into the next day, the next stage, into the future, if you will, and feel Safe in doing it, that they're working with a partner that has over 20 years experience. When I started with the company, I did a competitive analysis, just because that's how I generally work, just to understand who am I up against here? And one of the most interesting things I found was that within the last five years, there was something like between 10 to 15 new companies that just popped up doing, uh, and trying to present in the platforms in different ways. And if you look at those companies, a lot of us being head by, you know, young, young people that have an idea, that think they can commercialize it, which is great. I support that, and support, uh, innovation and pushing the thing, pushing this industry forward, if anything, it challenges us, but it's difficult for a company that has been around for, you know, 3040, years, that's just a juggernaut in the fashion industry, to feel comfortable, to deal with this company that just started three years ago, that has maybe five people within their organization and saying, Yeah, we can scale up. So for us, we think we have an advantage in that regard, because we do have the history of developing 3d and creating virtual spaces. We have been around for so long. We have dealt with so many different Fauci. Brands and understand their needs, that we think that's a huge advantage. And in terms of the people who are trying to start new companies or just really getting in there, we support that as well, because we like to hire very talented people to also help push our process forward and really be a champion within this field. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Jessica Owen
no, definitely. I mean, it's funny. I think I'm speaking to another company do something similar to you guys, and I think they are a relatively young company. I'll have to double check that, and maybe I'll bring this question up with them as well, actually. But yeah, it does sound like you guys have such a solid foundation to stand on, and I completely see why companies would feel safe in your hands, definitely. And actually, you've led me on to the last question that I wanted to ask you guys, and that was, I mean, clearly I've spoken to you both today, so I can see how your technology can benefit people. I completely get it now, but to those people who literally have no idea where to start when it comes to innovation, how do they go about, you know, operating in a different, slightly new, maybe technological way, what advice would you give to those people about where to start and how you can help them? Yeah,

Jan Torringa
yeah, you're right. It can, it can be overwhelming to people to start this journey and to think of where should we start? But I think it's wise to choose your battles, digitization, the software, the tools that we use. It's it's so broad, and you can use it through your product life cycle. But if, if you're used to all your old processes and you need to start this up throughout your entire organization, I can imagine it can be, can be hard to to to see where you need to start. But what we have learned from from our experience with other clients, is that it's, important that you define where you think that you could benefit the most from the digitization process, and that's wise to start small with a smaller team and see how you can make that a success story. But you always have to keep in mind the bigger goal, which is the digitization of the broader process of the product life cycle. Because in the end, if you want to make digitization a success, you need to have the leverage from all the stakeholders, and you need to have everyone arm digitization, because otherwise it won't succeed. You won't it won't be a success. And yeah, to set you yourself up for the future and to make this successful, successful process, yeah, you have to start small. Think of where you would start, and think of the bigger goal and how to adopt it throughout the organization. Well,

Jessica Owen
I mean exactly that. I mean, before we actually came on air today, we were talking about the need to walk before you can run. And that definitely seems to be the case here. Well, guys, I think that's all we've got time for today, unfortunately. But I mean, thank you so much for coming on. You've completely opened my eyes to virtual sampling showrooms and everything that's possible. So yes, thank you very much for your time this morning. I mean, I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Gary Plunkett
Appreciate the time as well. And thanks for your good questions, thought provoking questions as well. And I think, I hope your audience get a good insight of what we do, but also what the possibilities in general are out there.

Jan Torringa
Yeah, I want to thank you for the opportunity, and I hope people will enjoy listening to it and hopefully learn a bit from it.