Tolland, Conn. – Gerber Technology announced today that it has acquired San Francisco based Avametric. Avametric develops the world’s leading cloth simulation technology and enables fashion brands to deliver highly accurate 3D renderings of their products on customizable avatars for e-commerce and augmented reality (AR) applications.

This move will position Gerber as the leader in 3D for the fashion and apparel industry. The acquisition follows 12 months of collaboration between the companies after Gerber announced in November 2017 they would be integrating Avametric’s fabric simulation engine into their AccuMark® 3D platform.

“Avametric’s strengths and capabilities are the perfect complement to our fully integrated software portfolio. They have the industry’s best talent pool of scientists, designers and developers for 3D,” said Karsten Newbury, SVP and GM of Software at Gerber Technology. “Our team and many of our customers have already recognized that Avametric has the best fabric simulation engine in the industry and now we are able to connect consumer-facing virtual try-on software with our AccuMark and YuniquePLM® platforms to deliver an end-to-end workflow. This allows our customers to provide their consumers personalized products “on demand”. The deal will also help us to continue to accelerate our 3D developments for our large user base globally – helping them to significantly increase speed and productivity of the creative and development process.”

Interest in 3D is growing with over 60 percent of global fashion and apparel companies planning to adopt 3D technology within the next three years according to a recent survey Gerber conducted with their global customer base. The interest is driven by a need for speed, efficiency and a personalized consumer experience. Technology has become a key competitive differentiator with rapidly fashion trends and consumer expectations.

“Consumers are looking to buy online, but they are still going into brick and mortar stores because they lack confidence in the fit they see virtually,” said Ari Bloom CEO, Avametric. “We believe a transformation is under way as consumers are adopting a virtual try-on experience that accurately portrays the fit they are looking for and our partnership with Gerber is helping us to bridge this confidence gap. Combined with the AccuMark suite and other Gerber products, we can now offer customers a personalized, on-demand shopping experience that significantly compresses the time to market. We are really excited about this opportunity to join an industry leader and make transformative changes.”

The Avametric announcement was made to industry leaders at Gerber’s 20th annual ideation tech conference. Transformation was the core topic as Gerber highlighted key trends in the fashion supply chain like the need to enable speed and personalization, driven by the digitalization of the fashion supply chain. Gerber also made other key announcements including:

• The launch of a cloud-based subscription program in North America for AccuMark, the industry-leading pattern design, grading, marker making and production planning software.
• The launch of YuniquePLM V8 cloud software, which includes a completely new and highly-intuitive user interface.
• The launch of additional subscription options early in 2019 allowing users to bundle together Gerber’s software products as subscriptions (SaaS), making their solutions accessible and affordable for everyone, from start-up to full-scale global fashion and apparel brands.
• A partnership with ExactFlat for non-apparel applications, integrating AccuMark which will allow a user to open any 3D model and convert 3D to 2D patterns which can be passed into and modified in AccuMark.