Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411110023
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GLENN RIFKIN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sales clerks at an Original Levi's Store can use a personal computer and the customer's vital statistics to create what amounts to a digital blue jeans blueprint. When transmitted electronically to a Levi's factory in Mountain City, Tenn., this computer file instructs a robotic tailor to cut a bolt of denim precisely to the woman's measurements.
The finished Levi's, about $10 more than a mass-produced pair, are shipped back to the store within three weeks - or directly to the customer by Federal Express for an additional $5.
``They fit like a glove,'' said Beth Gilmore, 32, who recently paid $56 for a pair of digitally tailored Levi's ordered from a store in Cincinnati. ``I'm tall,'' she said. ``In the past, there's always been a compromise - they're either too big or too little somewhere.''
The service, being introduced gradually by Levi Strauss & Co., is the first of its type in the clothing industry. But it is part of an emerging industrial trend toward so-called mass customization, in which computerized instructions enable factories to modify mass-market products one at a time to suit the needs of individual customers.
Some products outside the clothing industry are already being made this way. Motorola sales representatives using laptop computers, for example, can take orders for pagers that allow the customer to set a variety of manufacturing specifications for the devices. Andersen Windows places computers in retail stores, where customers can design factory-made windows in an almost infinite variety of shapes and sizes. And technology experts expect the approach to find its way eventually into all sorts of assembly-line goods.
Levi Strauss, which has been offering the service since March in Cincinnati, plans to introduce it at a store in New York City scheduled to open Nov. 18, and in Columbus, Ohio, and Peabody, Mass., by the end of the month. Over the next year, the company plans to offer the service at more than 30 Original Levi's Stores throughout the country - some to be operated in a joint venture with Designs Inc., an apparel retailer based in Boston.
The company would not disclose how many pairs of jeans it has sold this way. But since the computer service was introduced at the Cincinnati store, sales of women's jeans there have increased 300 percent compared with the corresponding period a year earlier.
``This is revolutionary,'' said Walter Loeb, a retail analyst with Loeb Associates in New York. ``It has the potential to change the way people buy clothes, and it will allow stores to cut down on inventory.''
The system was developed by a former software developer for IBM, Sung Park. Park, 35, said his company, Custom Clothing Technology Inc., of Newton, Mass., was talking to other clothing manufacturers about adopting his technology for their apparel. He would not identify the companies.
Levi Strauss has started the new program with women's jeans because Park's research indicated that women complained more than men about difficulties in finding off-the-rack jeans that fit properly. Moreover, while the company is already the clear leader in men's jeans, it is not nearly as strong in the women's market, where it often trades the lead with Lee's and other brands.
Although Levi Strauss says it will not turn away men who insist on a computer fit, the company does not intend to promote the service for male customers until it sees how much demand the women's line generates.
``Eventually, this could mean no inventory, no markdowns,'' said Annette Lim, a retail marketing services manager for Levi's. ``You're not mass-producing product and hoping it sells. You've already got a sale.''
That is no small consideration in the nation's apparel industry, in which an estimated $25 billion worth of manufactured clothing each year either goes unsold or sells only after severe markdowns, according to Kurt Salmon & Associates, a research firm.
A touch-screen software system leads a sales clerk through the fitting process and requires no special computer skills.
The software allows for 4,224 possible combinations of four basic measurements: hips, waist, inseam and rise (the measurement from a person's waist in the front, down under the crotch and back up to the waist). The sales clerk takes these coordinates by tape measure and enters them into a personal computer. The software program then produces a stock-code number designating one of dozens of jeans samples on hand that might be closest to the customer's true fit.In Ms. Gilmore's case, she tried on three pairs of these stock jeans, which contain built-in tape measures. Each time, she suggested where the fit could be better, and each time, the sales clerk entered this information into the computer. Within a few minutes, Ms. Gilmore's digital dossier was completeUsing the same touch-screen software, the clerk then entered the order and specified that Ms. Gilmore wanted her jeans to be black. The data file was sent automatically by telephone to a computer in Newton, Mass., operated by Park's company.
From Newton, Ms. Gilmore's order was routed to a Levi's factory in Mountain City, Tenn., where the denim for her jeans was cut to the specifications by a computer-driven cutting machine. The pieces were then tagged with bar codes and sent through the regular mass-production washing and sewing processes used for off-the-rack Levi's.
At the end of the assembly process, scanning equipment separated Ms. Gilmore's jeans, which she received by Federal Express two and a half weeks later.
``This is one of the first mainstream examples of a mass-marketed item becoming mass-customized,'' said B. Joseph Pine II, a management consultant in Ridgefield, Conn., and author of the 1992 book ``Mass Customization: the New Frontier in Business Competition.''
by CNB