Producing Innovation

Tukatech
A Case Study
Producing Innovation
About Timex Garments Ltd.
Part of the Timex & Fergasam
Group
18 Manufacturing Facilities in Sri
Lanka, India, and Bangladesh,
with additional offices in USA and
Hong Kong
Founded in 1967
Over 10,000 employees
Company Vision- “To be the undisputed leader in the fashion industry delivering continued value
growth for all stakeholders.”
Developing 800 new styles per
month to produce over 1,000,000
dresses per month using TUKAcad, SMARTmark, and TUKA3D
Customers include Marks & Spencers, Next, Wallis, Debenhams,
Phillips VAn Heusen, Adrianna Papell, Cold Water Creek, Jones New
York, Maiden Form Bay, Jessica
Howard, JC Penny, Sears, LAne
Bryant, Calvin Klein and more.
Tukatech
Timex Garments Ltd’s pattern making team tests fit
with TUKA3D.
Timex is a garment company that embraces the future.
As early adopters of CAD technology, they quickly positioned themselves as one of the most efficient garment
producers in the industry. Today, they continue to push
the apparel industry forward by investing in and developing new technology, and their latest venture, their
own brand, is using Tukatech systems to radically transform the market through new levels of customization
and on-demand manufacturing.
Timex is a Sri Lanka based conglomeration of 18 companies spread over 16 factories in Sri Lanka, India and
Bangladesh. Primarily a producer of women’s apparel,
Timex is one of the five largest garment manufacturers
in Sri Lanka, and the only manufacturer in the nation
that produces dresses. Utilizing their staff of more than
Case Study
10,000 employees, they produce over 1 million garments
in 800 styles each month.
The company’s international
list of customers include Marks
& Spencer’s, Next, Wallis, Debenhams, Phillips Van Heusen,
of our customers run six seasons a month, and a few even
run twelve. It really is all about
speed to marketplace. Tukatech has helped us to limit our
costs, reduce the amount of
hours spent on each style, and
“Cost-wise Tukatech is better. Efficiency-wise Tukatech is better. A style that once took us three days to
design, we can now design in a half of a day thanks
to Tukatech.”
-Arshad Sattar
CEO, Timex Garments Ltd.
Adrianna Papell, Cold Water
Creek, Jones New York, Maiden
Form Bay, Jessica Howard,
Dress Barn, JC Penny, Sears,
Steinmart, Charming Shoppes,
Maggy London, Lane Bryant,
Petite Sophisticate, Macy’s,
Belk’s, Beall’s , Liverpool, Notations, Castle Hill Apparel, Just
in Thyme, Victoria’s Secret,
Eveden, Target, Calvin Klein,
Dawn Joy, Red Cats, Lavieen
Rose, and Redcatusa.
Timex’s mission is to reduce
turnaround times for garment production, and in order
to meet these objectives, the
company has invested heavily in cutting edge technology
like Tukatech to produce highquality, value-added apparel
at exceptional standards. The
company was among the first
in Sri Lanka to use CAD/CAM
software in their pattern making, but did not maximize their
output until switching to Tukatech.
“One of the most important
things in our business is lead
times,” said Arshad Sattar, an
owner of Timex. “They keep
getting shorter, and that means
we have to deliver faster. Some
Tukatech
improve our lead time.”
The company began using
Tukatech in 2004, with a small
number of licenses. After seeing remarkable improvement
in the production turnaround in
factories equipped with Tukat-
ech, the company decided to
install TUKAcad company-wide.
“When the decision was made
to install TUKAcad into all of
our pattern rooms, Tukatech
CEO Mr. Ram Sareen and his
team came in and converted all
35 of our stations in one day,”
said Sattar.
“Tukatech is ’everything in
one’ software, which we have
found to be better than Gerber,
Lectra, or any other system we
have tried,” said Sattar. “Everything we need is included, the
software is updated constantly
and help is available both in
person and on the web.”
Because their Tukatech system dramatically increased
the number of patterns that
Timex’s pattern makers could
make in a day and increased
Timex’s brand, Avirate, uses TUKA3D generated images to
showcase styles in their online store.
Case Study
the number of styles that
could be created in a season,
Sattar found himself with far
greater efficiency from his staff
than he had anticipated.
“We did our best to try all the
software that is available,” said
Sattar. “Cost-wise Tukatech is
better. Efficiency-wise Tukatech
is better. A style that once took
us three days to design, we
can now design in a half of a
day thanks to Tukatech.”
With TUKAcad and SMARTmark, Timex dramatically
improved the efficiency of their
pattern rooms. Rather than
reducing the size of the staff
to save money, Sattar decided
that Tukatech had provided the
company with an opportunity
to expand the scope of their
business. “We didn’t reduce
the size of our staff, because
we didn’t want to. Instead, we
used our better efficiency to
grow as a company and take
on new customers. We were
and continue to be looking at
growth.”
“In the last four or five years,
we’ve seen about 100%
growth. In the next year, we
are expecting to grow another
50%,” said Sattar. He credits
Tukatech with doubling Timex’s
turnover without adding a
single new staff member.
After seeing that Tukatech’s
CAD and marker making software were extremely effective,
Sattar invested in Tukatech’s
three-dimensional sample
making software, TUKA3D. The
unique program generates realistic simulated garments that
are worn by customized virtual
models. TUKA3D creates accurate virtual samples that
Tukatech
Arshad Sattar, CEO of Timex Garmets, Ltd, discusses the
ways in which TUKA3D has changed his company.
demonstrate the fit, weight,
movement and style of any article of clothing. Timex was one
of the first apparel companies
to adopt TUKA3D, and it has
yielded a reduction in the number of physical samples created
and an increase in the percentage of samples (both physical
and virtual) that are approved
the first time.
“We started using Tukatech’s eFit software about three years
ago,” said Sattar. “Although
we initially had problems with
it, we worked with Ram and
the rest of the Tukatech staff
to solve the problems to our
satisfaction. Today, we have
10 e-fit licenses. TUKA3D’s
e-fit allows us to see how the
garment will look on our fit
model, and we can see how
the clothes drape and move in
real-time. 90% of everything
we do can be done on e-fit.
Our new brand, Avirate, is very
much based on the software.”
With six years of growth and
expansion behind them, Timex
decided to start a companyowned brand, Avirate, in 2010.
The brand, which specializes
in trendy women’s wear, is
supported by five retail outlets throughout Sri Lanka and
India. The brand sells a full
selection of clothes, including evening wear, street-wear,
lingerie, shoes and accessories,
and has become so popular
that its stores are becoming
destinations. “We have made
a lifestyle store for ladies in
every aspect,” said Sattar.
“Avirate is small, but we create many styles for the line,”
said Sattar. “We currently
produce about 300 styles every
two months, and that is something we could not do without
TUKA3D.” The pattern for each
of the hundreds of styles is
built exclusively in TUKA3D,
and the simulation is what is
ultimately approved.
In addition to reducing the
amount of physical samples
Case Study
created, Timex takes their virtual sampling a step further by
producing garments sold online only after they have been
ordered. With TUKA generated
images on their website used
in lieu of photographs, any garment that is ordered is input
into the production system and
cut, sewn and shipped to meet
that specific order. While it
may cost a few dollars more to
produce garments on demand,
Tukatech’s automated software
makes it easy and Timex is ultimately saving enough money
on fabric inventory and storage.
“We’ve seen tremendous
growth in Avirate, specifically
in our online sales,” said Sattar. “Our company‘s growth will
come from the brand as well as
our e-commerce initiatives.”
An upcoming initiative will see
Avirate offering garments that
are specifically customized to
meet an online buyer’s exact
measurements. “Right now,
we are planning to have 10-15
dresses available to be custom
made based on Styku’s technology,” said Sattar. Styku, the
virtual fitting room powered
by Tukatech, will allow online
shoppers to create custom
sized dresses based on their
own bodies, ensuring
a perfect fit.
“We get a lot of ecommerce sales in
the US, the UK, and
we ship a lot to Australia, but in Asia, ecommerce is difficult,”
said Sattar. “How can
I get Sri Lankans to
trust that the clothes
I am selling them will
fit? To solve this problem, we will be using
Styku to launch our
line of custom dresses in April, 2012. We
will be able to make
custom dresses that
fit our customers to a The CAD and pattern making room at
gold standard in just
Timex Garments, Ltd’s headquarters
seven days with Tuin Colombo, Sri Lanka.
katech and Styku.”
With dresses sized and cut to
Sattar recently announced that
order, Avirate stands to reAvirate will be installing Styku’s
duce the amount of customer
body-scanners at many of their
returns, something that has
retail outlets. The no-footprint
become a serious issue for the
body-scanners use depth senonline retail industry. “Dresses
sors to quickly and accurately
are a difficult stumbling block
scan a customer’s body in a
for online retailers, because
dressing room. The information
unlike t-shirts or sweatpants,
is used to build personalized
a dress needs to fit right. And
avatars that online buyers can
because Timex is a completely
use to virtually try on clothes
vertical manufacturer with a
at Avirate’s website, providing
retail arm, we can provide this
another level of customizalevel of customization. Eventution and an even better fit. The
ally we’d like to see 5-10% of
system will also provide Timex
our e-commerce customized in
with data about their customer
this way.”
base, which will help them to
create better garments that
designed and sized specifically
for their target market.
“In the garment industry, we
have
so many issues, and TuTukatech is a Los Angeles-based company that provides 2D and 3D
katech is a solution provider,”
software solutions and manufacturing equipment to garment producers.
said Sattar. “In order to be
It also provides web-based product development services and PDM/PLM
systems, supported by brick and mortar centers strategically located in
competitive, we need technolgarment hubs worldwide. With over 12,000 systems sold and about 3,500
ogy, and that’s what Tukatech
competitive systems replaced, Tukatech is the fastest growing garment
is.”•
CAD/CAM company in the world. Tukatech has been ranked by Apparel
About
Tukatech
Magazine as the #1 Apparel software company in the world.