Kohl’s Kelley White on Adopting Browzwear with 3 Simple Tactics – Browzwear Night at FIT 2023

Kohl’s is a leading Omni Channel retailer with over 1,100 locations across the United States. As part of its commitment to providing customers with a diverse range of Brands throughout the assortment of national and private brands, Kohl’s decided to transform its apparel design and art teams’ operations using 3D workflows. This transformation journey aimed to upskill Kohl’s tech design, design, and art teams to work more collaboratively with vendors. However, adopting a new technology can be challenging, and the team needed to employ simple tactics to gain the buy-in they needed to make the transformation journey a little smoother.

1. Understanding

The first tactic Kohl’s employed was understanding. The team spent time building the knowledge of its business teams and vendors to understand their problems, concerns, and capabilities. They also shared their vision, ensuring everyone understood it. By doing this, they connected with their teams and vendors more meaningfully, and everyone walked away united around a common purpose. Some of the problems and concerns Kohl’s teams faced included the need for easier and broader access to 2D tools for pattern adjustments, making sure that anything created in the 3D software was as close to physical as possible for material and color, and finding a way to show variations in print and pattern scale to design, merchant, and vendor partners working virtually.

2. Simplifying

Kohl’s also faced concerns about workload and the commitment needed from vendors, especially those who had not yet invested in Browzwear or up-skilled their staff. To address these challenges, Kohl’s employed the second tactic, Simplifying the solution. The team decided to move forward with only Browzwear to keep the teams focused on learning one solution, avoiding them feeling overwhelmed by having to learn two or more different ways to create 3D models. Kohl’s also streamlined the experience for each team, training the art team in Lotta to see prints, patterns, and colors applied to 3D models and the technical design teams in VStitcher to cover all key functionalities of their existing 2D patterning tool.

3. Partnering

Partnering with Browzwear was the third tactic Kohl’s used. Browzwear worked with Kohl’s to understand key functions its business teams needed, and they walked them through each solution to address those needs. Browzwear also collaborated with Kohl’s to build a training program tailored to highlight key functions important to its tech design teams while encouraging creativity, amplifying collaboration, and improving communication within the process.

Using these three tactics, Kohl’s was able to upskill its apparel tech design, design, and art teams, and half of its designers have adopted the 3D workflow. Kohl’s vendor partners have also invested in Browzwear and up-skilled. The business teams have improved communication and collaboration in their process, and Kohl’s technical design team was able to improve fit by leveraging Browzwear. The team used 3D models to visually walk through the fit with their production design and merchant partners and show them exactly how the proposed solutions would look. This helped the team tell the story visually with clarity on what needed to change and why and helped them gain the alignment they needed to improve the product for the customer, all without ordering a single new sample.

In conclusion, Kohl’s overcame challenges by adopting 3D workflows using Browzwear, and it employed three tactics to gain buy-in and make the transformation journey smoother. Understanding, simplifying, and partnering with Browzwear enabled Kohl’s to upskill its teams and vendors, improving communication and collaboration, and ultimately enhancing the product for the customer.

Key Takeaways:

• Kohl’s successfully upskilled their apparel Tech design, design, and art teams in Browzwear to work more collaboratively with their vendors.
  
  
• The company used three tactics to achieve its goal: understanding, simplifying, and partnering with Browzwear.
  
  
• Kohl’s selected Browzwear as their 3D software to simplify their workflow and avoid overcomplicating the process with multiple tools.
  
  
• Browzwear collaborated with Kohl’s to build a training program to highlight key functions important to their tech design teams while improving creativity, collaboration, and communication within the process.
  
  
• The partnership with Browzwear enabled Kohl’s to improve fit by leveraging 3D models, enabling the team to visually walk through the fit with their product design and merchant partners, resulting in improved product quality for customers.