California Apparel News

Computer-aided design software maker OptiTex is expanding its horizons.

Based in Petah Tikva, Israel, with U.S. headquarters in New York, OptiTex recently expanded its reach in China and India—and has its sights on growth in North America, as well.

Founded nearly 25 years ago, OptiTex has more than 25,000 active installations around the world—with much of its growth occurring within the last six years, according to OptiTex President Yorum Burg.

Today, apparel makes up about 65 percent of the company’s customer base, with the balance coming from non-apparel manufacturers, such as leather-bag manufacturers, car-seat makers, aerospace companies and industrial-fabrics manufacturers, Burg said. Another growing market is education.

“In the last two years, we saw a large number of leading U.S. universities converting from old legacy systems to the OptiTex platform,” Burg said. “Educators cited that they needed to offer students and then graduates ’patternmaking 2.0’ tools to help them enter the workforce equipped with knowledge and experience in operating the next generation of CAD solutions.”

California Apparel News Contributing Writer Sarah Wolfson recently caught up with Burg to discuss the company’s history—and its plans for the future.

Can you share a bit of history about OptiTex—its mission, its partnerships and major technological advancements?

OptiTex was founded in 1988 with a mission to bring advanced design technologies to assist design houses, retailers and manufacturers in the transition from manual ways of working to automated ones. At the time, the initial steps were not easy as CAD systems, and computers in the ’80s were extremely expensive. Since then, technology has become much more affordable, and we have filled a niche in the market.#8232;OptiTex is unique in the sense that we always believed that we could advance through partnerships. These partnerships have assisted us in identifying how fabrics behave in 3-D as well as proving concepts in research conducted with leading universities. Our product development has been based in Israel since our inception, and our partnerships for development extend to working closely with Intel and NVidia on the performance enhancements of garment simulation on GPUs [graphic-processor units].

What new software systems are in development or have been recently released?

OptiTex is known for its “technology kitchen,” another word for our development center in Israel, where new developments and solutions are carried out every day. In the past 15 years, Israel has found immense success in its high-tech sector, and that same success is found within OptiTex in our systematic developments of our products. For example, OptiTex has most recently released version 11 of our signature software, [and the company] is already into the development of version 12 and the base architectural structure for version 13. Every version carries a host of new features and enhancements with tools that are designed to increase time to market and reduce the time it takes to execute the daily tasks. Many of the OptiTex solutions are unique in the language they are written. This uniqueness can be seen in the way the solution interfaces to other applications and in the integration of platforms. Because of this constant innovation, OptiTex as a CAD vendor offers a wider, more comprehensive solution than other software providers.

In general, how have OptiTex programs provided product and design solutions and efficiencies for your customers?

This is an interesting question, as I have just returned from speaking at the OGTC conference in New Delhi, India, where this year’s theme was all about “outpacing your competition.” These days, companies are faced with the need to be more efficient and deploying tools that will assist these brands, manufacturers and retailers to achieve better results and enhanced relationships. These practices were not respected or well exercised before the recession but, since then, have become a necessity. Because of this necessity, OptiTex solutions have been received with open arms, and in recent years, a large number of large-cap brands, retailers and manufacturers from around the globe are requesting what they identify to be the leading solution out there.

When we discuss efficiency, we can identify the advanced nesting, advanced design solution and the fact that OptiTex is the only integrated 2-D/3-D design system as a means for customers to streamline the product-development process, enhance the communication across channels and experience a CAD platform that offers an angle that is unavailable with traditional legacy systems.

How has OptiTex expanded globally? Has pursuing international opportunities provided more success for OptiTex?

We can safely attribute a good part of the company growth to the markets of Southeast Asia and India. Since 2004, OptiTex has relaunched the OptiTex name and nearly moved out of selling through OEM and other methods into direct selling. That shift has resulted in the software now being sold in 35 countries and in 24 languages. In China alone, our independent reseller has five active offices that sell very well for OptiTex. From a customer perspective, OptiTex has reached deep into the markets in India, where we work with the largest local manufacturers. We also have connected to the largest export houses all the way to China and Europe, where our solutions can be found at retailers, buying agents, local manufacturers and specialty brands such as accessories.

What are the benefits or opportunities for the company in the United States—specifically the West Coast?

The U.S. market has been the second-largest growing market for OptiTex in terms of dollar revenue. The opportunities in the U.S are great—the main reason being the rapidly changing market from a financial perspective. A few years ago, companies were not really interested in smart tools, as their current system was working—or so we all thought.

When the recession hit, the U.S market entered a very busy period of identifying their next step. The general observation was similar to what happened back in 2000, when technology was there to bring us out of that recession. This time around, customers realized that acquiring technology is not enough, but this time they were looking for long-term technologies that could also be measured for ROI in the short term. This is a major change from the previous recession.

The U.S West Coast is an important market, as this is where a large portion of the apparel manufacturing in the U.S. is carried out. OptiTex has experienced a significant growth in this market, and a large portion of our customers are spread all along the West Coast—from Vancouver,B.C., all the way to San Diego. OptiTex’s expansion plans in the U.S are in the making for 2012 [and] 2013. More of these plans will be announced in 2012.

How would you say technology apparel is changing the dynamic within the fashion industry?

Just few years ago, before the most recent recession, the rate of technology use within our industry was low. Three years later, many of the companies who were sitting on the fence of technology advancement are now deciding to use digital means to work. Just think about how our lives have changed as a result of this recession. Now we are thinking differently, consuming differently, planning differently. This was the same for the apparel industry. Customers who thought their solutions were working came to realize in recent years that they were not. It was only then that they went back to the drawing table to figure out what their next steps were going to be. Just as technology was saving us from the bubble-burst recession, technology once again is here to rescue us out of this recession and to launch the fashion industry on a solid platform of accuracy, growth and profitability.