sportstyle

30 • January 2021 sportstyle • sportstylemag.com C OVID became a powerful force to make everyone re-think age-old methods and sped up that decision to change," said Wayne Fan, chief strategy officer, Frontier. He gave as an example a popular workshop the company held in Taipei. "We found that as soon as developers — whether from the brand, mill or manufacturer side — had the oppor- tunity to experience our new Digital Product Creation (DPC) tools and understood how best to embrace them for their own use, they discovered how adaptable they are," said Fan. "They also realized how these tools can help them conduct business more productively and cost-efficiently than how they're used to, which is by physical prototyping and sampling. We've had significant adoption of our platform with the mill level and now it is gaining real traction among brands." Fan said he often fields the question of "hand- feel" in the digital space, to which he responds, "If mills can't even get their newest collection in front of customers, there will be no handfeel discussion." He compared the situation to Uber Eats, "if we can't taste the food, how do we order food online? And yet, it's the biggest food order platform in the world. Material development is a process that includes getting lead time, quality specs, factory audits, testing results, compliances, price and more from your vendors; we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater when we enter the handfeel discussion." More and more companies are introducing new innovative platforms with specific relevance to today's corporate climate. Business analyst Denine Pezone, owner/manager of Ardent Associates in Charlotte, NC recently came to know and work with a company called Quartr that is making huge impact on measuring consumer preferences. Quartr is a mobile technology platform that provides companies with a simple way to talk to consumers and reward them for sharing infor- mative feedback. The authenticated community members earn cash for their attention and thoughtful feedback and businesses gain quality data and insights to make smarter decisions and build stronger relationships. "Most impor- tantly, consumers are in control of their data on the Quartr platform," explained Pezone. "At a time when brand actors cannot engage focus groups or in-person testing, Quartr is gaining valuable consumer information." A TIME FOR TECH LEARNING CURVE "If mills can't even get their newest collection in front of customers, there will be no handfeel discussion." WAYNE FAN, CHIEF STRATEDGY OFFICER, FRONTIER

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