BOSTON and LOS ANGELES, April 13, 2021 — PTC is proud to announce that its industry-leading FlexPLM platform will integrate with VNTANA to empower retail, apparel, footwear and accessories companies to seamlessly scale their use of 3D in product design, development and downstream consumer experiences.
This industry-first partnership will provide brands with the ability to automatically optimize 3D assets and their file sizes through VNTANA’s patented algorithms, making it significantly easier to use and collaborate with those assets than previously possible. Traditionally, using 3D assets effectively during product development and sales and marketing can be challenging due to incompatible file formats and very large file sizes, which hinder a brand’s ability to scale 3D across the entire value chain.
“Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ecommerce has quickly become the dominant mode of retail, at the same time that supply chain disruption created an acute need for remote, visual collaboration, forcing brands and retailers of all sizes to rapidly increase their use of 3D assets for design, development, and digital engagement and sale,” said Bill Brewster, Senior Vice President and General Manager of PTC’s Retail Business Unit.
“FlexPLM already leads the industry in facilitating these digital workflows, with native, bi-directional integrations to leading 3D design tools, but with the rapid expansion of 3D comes the need for a smarter approach to 3D asset management and reuse. Our industry-first integration with VNTANA will enable FlexPLM users to not only solve the immediate problems of interoperability and file size, but to truly maximize the value of their 3D assets across their entire end-to-end process.”
The demand for 3D in retail increased dramatically in 2020, with recent research suggesting that more than 90% of brand and retail leaders believe that the pandemic accelerated the need for digital product creation. Compounded by preexisting market forces such as digital-native consumers, increased social media shopping and a timeline for capitalizing on trends that can be measured in weeks rather than years, the scope of 3D strategies has also evolved. These abilities have grown from simply replacing physical samples with digital alternatives, to transforming line reviews and fit sessions, and bringing products to life on eCommerce websites and in augmented and mixed reality applications.
As more brands and retailers pursue these extended strategies, significant barriers have emerged: 3D assets created for internal and supply chain collaboration are unsuited to use elsewhere, being stored in incompatible file formats and different, disconnected data sources. The file sizes of these 3D assets are so large that their use in product development and sales & marketing scenarios is hindered without extensive manual rework.
“VNTANA is specifically designed to solve these business challenges as brands look to make more use of their 3D assets across the retail value chain,” said Ashley Crowder, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of VNTANA. “Thanks to this integration, FlexPLM users can easily collaborate on 3D models and instantly share a web-standard version that can be used not only for in-house design reviews and supply chain collaboration, but also across social media, ecommerce, and digital advertising, which have proven to double online conversion rate and reduce returns by 40%. We chose to work with PTC to reach the largest pool of retail PLM users on the planet.”
VNTANA’s patented software platform is already in use within retail, with major, multi-brand businesses relying on them for automated optimization and 3D file management. Among these is long-time PTC customer and digital product creation leader, Deckers Brands, who provided an insight into the value that the partnership will unlock for other FlexPLM users.
“VNTANA was the only solution that could handle our needs – from optimization to collaboration to visualization,” said Mitch Harvey, Deckers’ Senior 3D Innovation Manager. “With VNTANA we have saved a huge amount of time on optimization and have also been able to replace slower and more expensive software. As longtime FlexPLM users, we are excited to see where this partnership leads, since the potential of having a seamless, fully connected, multichannel workflow could transform the value of our 3D assets even further.”
About PTC Retail:
PTC leads the PLM industry for retail, footwear and apparel. Since introducing the world’s first fully-web-based PLM solution, we have become a trusted PLM partner to over 150 iconic apparel, footwear, fashion, and retail customers and more than 1,000 brands that use our FlexPLM platform to create amazing products. Today, in excess of 211,500 people use PTC FlexPLM on a daily basis – with more than 50,000 of them in the global supply chain. We support them with a worldwide team of dedicated retail specialists, on the ground in every major fashion hub. For further information, please email [email protected] or visit:
About VNTANA:
VNTANA brings products to life, from design to 3D shopping, across web, augmented and virtual reality platforms—in minutes, rather than weeks. VNTANA’s 3D Collaboration Platform unifies and automates 3D workflows giving teams a centralized place to optimize, share, review, and distribute 3D models to any stakeholder or end-point saving teams hours and accelerating 3D digital transformation. VNTANA is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA and does work globally. Visit www.vntana.com or follow @VNTANAlive.