Alvanon equips apparel retailers, brands, designers and manufacturers with world-class growth, customer engagement, product development and supply chain strategies. Its team of apparel business and product development experts have worked with the world’s largest and most successful apparel organizations and amassed an unparalleled wealth of knowledge and expertise on people, processes and supply chain alignment; best practice product development; and customer engagement and retention. Its unique domain expertise enables it to deliver practical ‘real world’ solutions, recommendations, advice and the technical tools to help each client company achieve their growth objectives and business goals.
Alvanon was founded in 2001 by the late Dr Kenneth Wang. As a medical practitioner he applied his knowledge of human anatomy to develop the world’s first technical ‘fit’ mannequin to be based on 3D shape data of real consumers. Dr. Wang’s innovative, data-driven solution revolutionized the way commercial apparel is sized and fitted. With over 65,000 of its technical fit forms installed in the global apparel industry’s top brands and retailers, it is the largest supplier of fit tools in the world.
It has a head office in New York, European headquarters in London and Asian office in Hong Kong. Alvanon also has manufacturing facilities and a strategic innovations R&D department in Donguan, China. Innovation is a strategic investment area for the company. Its R&D department has grown from two executives in 2011 to 17 in 2015, six of whom are dedicated to advanced software development projects for consumer-facing and retail business solutions.
Alvanon has over 200 employees in its Asian manufacturing and R&D operations and a further 70 dedicated apparel business and product development experts around the world. Alvanon experts work with clients in 89 countries ranging from the largest global omnichannel retail groups and brands through to leading academic institutions and fledgling designers. Alvanon has conducted the apparel industry’s largest ever 3D consumer body shape scan surveys in 20+ countries and has compiled the world’s largest data base of over 400,000 detailed 3D body scans.
Alvanon clients comprise the world’s leading fashion brands, retailers, lingerie, swimwear, sportswear, mail order and corporate clothing companies. Clients include such high profile names as Barbour, C&A, Diesel, Levi Strauss & Co., Littlewoods (and Very), Marks & Spencer and Nike.
Alvanon also has a global mentoring and charitable arm where it donates expertise, time and its world class product development tools to companies, designers and associations committed to restoring manufacturing hubs and skills in ‘local’ markets.
Those of you who do have a general idea of the importance of digital transformation have no doubt given the function a high-level position in your operations, headed by executives with the appropriate skills. Yet all too often, the senior and C-level executives they report to do not want to get too far into the weeds where they have little knowledge, other than the solution is another piece of software or tech process that they are just as happy to leave in the hands of the tech teams. You can certainly exercise this kind of leadership process with the traditional functions of your company: marketing, finance, operations, HR, and others. But, not this, because it requires a holistic and cultural integration into your entire organization.
Oh yes! I almost forgot. It’s also about money. Whatever capital is required to make digitalization work becomes your decision. This is perhaps the most significant reason for you to get into the weeds to better understand and justify the investment.
When done right, the digitalization of your entire value chain yields a demand-driven chain, personalization for the consumer, inventory optimization, seasonless and more accurate and rapidly delivered product as well as a seamlessly integrated chain online and off, (aka: more responsive, flexible, transparent, sustainable and consumer-relevant).
Robin Lewis
A few stats:
- Design and product pre-development time scales can be reduced by up to 50 percent
- Workload and sampling time scales can be reduced by some 30 to 60 percent
- First-time right performance can be increased by up to 50 percent
