Maggy London Customer Story

Customer Story
M a g g y
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engineers better print placement
w i t h
L e c t r a
t e c h n o l o g Y
Challenge
Solution
Maggy London is known for its dresses, many of which feature
engineered prints. The company produces 5 seasons of 9 lines
every year, both for private label and in-house brands. With
all this activity and a desire to grow, Maggy London ran up
against the limits of manual marker placement. It was slow and
tedious and did not provide the level of precision the company
needed to accurately estimate material consumption and stay
within margins.
MAR K ETS
Womenswear, specifically
dresses with an emphasis
on engineered prints
LOCATION
Maggy London and Lectra have been partners for over 20 years.
When finding a more efficient way to engineer prints became
a necessity, the two companies pooled their knowledge to
develop a solution that worked. “We laid out the platform and
Lectra built it and sent it to us. We beta tested it and it just
continued to unfold. It’s been very successful,” says Lisa West,
Vice President of Operations. Today, Maggy London is able to
import fabrics into Lectra markers to quickly visualize marker
layouts and estimate material use with consistent accuracy.
LECTRA SOLUT i ONS
New York City, USA
lectra.com
W
atching Marker Maker Alex Canoro swiftly position
markers on a fabric backdrop in Diamino, it’s hard to
believe that only a few years ago he was laying them out by
hand in the sample room. “This company works a lot on styles
that use engineered print placement,” he explains. “Trying to
work this out on the table with actual fabric pieces and trying
to make the marker for it was very impractical.”
Precise Print Placement
In the old days, explains Canoro, prints would arrive and
the designers would scuttle pieces about on the table to find
the position that worked best for their design. Then he would
have the task of finding a more efficient way to lay the pieces out.
“It might take six yards to cut one garment for how they wanted it
to look. So I would have to reengineer the print to get it down to two,”
he explains.
Despite 40 years of marker making experience, Canoro still
grappled with the uncertainty of following a mostly manual
process. “There was always a point that I wasn’t sure, from what
I was figuring out on the table to the screen—was it really going
to work?” he says.
Wielding the power of precision
In an industry with an unforgiving margin of error, uncertainty is
enemy number one. Maggy London does a significant amount
of work for private labels and retailers who, West explains,
are now very savvy about cost and time to market. It’s no
longer enough to estimate down to a quarter yard; West’s
margin of error is a matter of inches. “We have to be able
to own the price of a garment and explain what happened if a
yield goes up or down,” says West. “And that’s why the Lectra
implementation became so important to me.”
Pa i r i n g p r i n t s a n d m a r k e r s t o s a v e
on valuable resources
With the new system, Canoro can apply prints directly to markers
on screen—even if those prints are still in development. The
design department and marker development work together to
design a print to fit the markers and get the best fabric usage,
instead of trying to work the markers around the print once it’s
been developed. “The great part is that now I can work with the
designer from the start instead of sending out a print, getting the
fabric and then having them figure out what they want to make.
It saves a lot of time and effort,” explains Teri Kick Pavone, Print
Design Manager.
B e t t e r , fa s t e r d e c i s i o n m a k i n g f r o m
design to production
It’s not uncommon for a designer to ask to see a print that was
designed for one style applied to several others. Now Canoro can
pull up the print and fill multiple styles quickly. “I can see where
M
arkers are placed directly on a background image of
fabric scanned in from real samples, or in this case,
imported from design software. The final result is a perfectly
placed print.
exactly the markers are going to fall on the print. If I see that it
doesn’t work out, I can make my recommendations to the print
department before the screen is sent out,” he explains.
The Lectra implementation also provides product development
with more accurate information, which then gives production more
precision. “The product department can see the mini marker with
the yardages and work with the contractors to tell them this is how
it has to be laid out. There’s no guessing about how it has to be
placed,” explains Canoro.
“We’re able to make decisions—and better decisions—much
quicker,” emphasizes West.
A technology initiative to support
long-term growth
Maggy London’s decision to implement Lectra’s solutions was
part of a broader company objective to make technology an integral
part of business development. While the company still makes
many of its prototypes
We’re able to make
in New York, they are
decisions
beginning to move
— and better decisions —
some of that overseas,
which implies creating
much more quickly.
a significantly greater
number of tech packs. “This is a new opportunity for Maggy
London,” says West. “We need to provide accurate instructions to
our vendors for the best results. We’ve put a lot of effort into it and
it’s really starting to work out.”
Lectra in Fashion
With 40 years’ experience in fashion and apparel, Lectra’s mission is to provide a complete spectrum of design, development, and production solutions
to confront 21st-century challenges. From first creative spark to final product, our professional services address an end-to-end process. We support
the day-to-day operations of our customers in over 100 countries for around-the-clock process optimization. From fast fashion to luxury to ready-to-wear,
Lectra’s 23,000 customers in markets as diverse as casual, sports, outdoor, denim, and lingerie represent every
development and sourcing model imaginable. Beyond suppliers and manufacturers, they are the brands you love
and the stores where you shop.
lectra.com
© Kaledo and Diamino are registered trademarks of Lectra.
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