We recently published an article by textiles expert and WhatTheyThink contributor Debbie McKeegan, wherein she made an urgent plea to the industry to increase its use of digital technologies to both decrease time to market and improve sustainability. As she notes, this doesn’t mean abandoning analog technologies, by any means. As has happened in many other industries where there has been an analog-to-digital transformation, or where one is underway, the analog technologies still have a role to play into the foreseeable future. Take the commercial printing industry as an example. It’s not likely the next best selling book will be printed digitally when millions of copies are needed in a short timeframe. But a growing majority of book printing is now done digitally in order to reduce inventory risk and make backlists a thing of the past. And when we are speaking of inventory risk, it was historically huge in books—with 40% supply chain waste not uncommon. Selective digital printing of books has helped ameliorate that.

The same can be true in textiles and apparel. Today, the common wisdom is the rule of 30/30/30—30% of apparel production is sold at or near list, 30% hits the discount racks, and 30% ends up in the landfill. Clearly, that’s not a sustainable model.

There are many ways digital technologies can help streamline the process to meet the demands of faster cycle times in today’s highly competitive and Amazon-like retail market, starting with concept and design through production and distribution.