Early September, the buildings of the High Tech Science Park in Diepenbeek were crowded by a special collection of people. So what was the Fuzz about? A new project under the name Open Garments is launched. Open Garments stands for Consumer Open Innovation and Open Manufacturing Interaction for Extended Individual Garments. This project is going to be realised by the collaboration of different SMEs and research centres. The key participants are DITF, Bivolino.com, KHLim, ColorTextil, TNO and Centexbel.

The leading idea is that the consumer will not only be enabled to participate in all phases of the value creation process, but the user will be empowered to be an active actor in all phases of the value creation of customised, individual and extended garments. She/he will be a designer, producer and sales person. Therefore the consumer will be enabled with appropriate technologies to design and modify the garment, to extend it with individual accessories, to order this extended individual garment, to share the design and to improve it within a user community, and to offer and sell the design and/or the garment.

The key factors that led to the Open Garments’ proposal, are the undoubtly increasing demand for individual and/or customised goods of fashion (garments, accessories, jewellery, bags, belts, and other) and the opportunities of the digital world, of which are relevant for the Open Garment project:

• The recent success of the open innovation / open source phenomenon, performed by virtual communities
• Sophisticated knowledge management and communication methods
• Arising technologies for 3D-garment design and virtual prototyping, for 2D-digital fabric printing and for Rapid Manufacturing (3D-printing)
• Technologies for the production of textiles and garments in small batches

Open Garments’ overall objective is the development of a radically new organisational paradigm for design, production and sales of individual garments. Applying this new model the European Textile and Clothing Industry will be able to create and provide extended garments with a very high degree of customisation in terms of fit, fashion and function at a comparable price in less than 72 hours. This project concept is based on Open Innovation and Open Manufacturing. Open Innovation is the collaboration between enterprises and customers/users for innovation processes, where all participants contribute and share knowledge. Open Manufacturing is hereby a new conception for the production of customised physical goods, in this case of individual extended garments.

It’s supported by the European Commission seventh framework program nanosciences, nanotechnologies, materials and new production technologies – NMP. It is a collaborative project targeted to SME -Activity NMP-2007-3.1-2. New added-value user-centered products and product services.

Nobody is quite sure what to call it, but lots of people are interested in the way the internet makes it possible for people to organise themselves according to their preferences and habits into tiny niches, access to which can then be bought and sold.

A good example is Threadless, an online T-shirt firm based in Chicago. It sees itself as a community in which members can upload T-shirt art, vote for the most promising designs and order them.. The company has about half a million registered users and recieves 600 submissions for new T-shirts a week. Each week’s winning design wins a $2,000 prize, and several thousand people end up ordering it. As the community grows, so the size of the prize, which initially started at $50, will continue to grow too. The firm is considering rewarding the thousands of members who vote each week as well, because they provide valuable insights into market trends that help the company with research and planning. This model could also work in any industry. I am convinced that you could use it for designing cars,…

www.threadless.com