Melon Fashion Group uses virtual fitting rooms to link designers, factories

Melon Fashion Group has created a virtual fitting room solution using immersive video conferencing, linking designers in Russia with manufacturers’ staff in China.

Designers for its three brands, Zarina, Love Republic and Befree, are now able to easily collaborate with manufacturing teams all along the design and production process of clothes, using a system created by Orange Business Services.

Melon Fashion Group’s design teams are based in its Saint Petersburg’s head offices, while its manufacturing facilities are located in China. The company was losing several weeks from its production schedule, because it had to ship specimens from the factory back to the designers for each internal product quality evaluation. The Orange solution helps Melon Fashion Group recover this time and eliminate unnecessary transport costs. Now interim fabric and material changes can be made instantly, reducing the risk of poor-quality products – although the final decision will still be made on-site.

The Melon “virtual fitting room” is based on Open Video Presence with video speeds up to 20Mbit/s. The videoconferencing service does not require any specific equipment, and users can connect to a conference from any device, including mobile, to view the fitting results. Design and manufacturing staff can even access the information after the online session has come to an end.

In order to let the designers fully appreciate the quality of the items tested, 500 Polycom RealPresence terminals have been installed in its offices. They feature high-resolution cameras, which support optical zooms of up to 25 times, making it easy to distinguish even the finest points of the products, such as the seam stitching or fabric detail. As a result, designers of all three brands are able to organize test fittings of products in China from Russia, using their tablets and smartphones.

“The virtual fitting room service based on Open Video Presence has enabled us to optimise our designers’ work and speed up the preparation of new products for mass production. In addition, we have avoided the need to create a video server, replacing it with convenient cloud services.

“We plan to continue our move toward cloud services, which are helping us optimize operating processes and achieve cost savings,” said Alexey Morozov, CIO, Melon Fashion Group.

Melon Fashion Group has 558 stores in six countries.

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