Texbase Inc. has launched MaterialFirst Marketplace, a new feature that gives suppliers and ingredient brands a secure direct-marketing channel to customers within Texbase Image: Texbase
Texbase Launches Exclusive Materials Marketplace
Texbase Inc., a cloud-based data-management and collaboration platform, has launched the MaterialFirst Marketplace, exclusive to Texbase customers.
MaterialFirst gives suppliers a cost-effective and secure direct-marketing channel to customers within Texbase. Suppliers can track library requests and have security around who can view their materials on the marketplace while sales and marketing teams can use the information to grow their companies’ business. MaterialFirst allows brands and retailers to source materials from current suppliers or find new suppliers that have been vetted by others in the apparel industry.
The new marketplace affords the opportunity to speed up the development cycle by allowing developers and sourcing agents to import material information into their Texbase libraries.
“There are several aspects of MaterialFirst that make it unique,” said Texbase CEO Joe Walkuski. “The first thing to note is that it’s exclusive to Texbase subscribers. Suppliers are vetted by brands, creating a curated list of material sources for brands to connect with, and, conversely, suppliers are confident that the inquiries they receive are coming from established customers. Second, we understand the challenge of maintaining content, and to that end we’ve implemented tools that allow suppliers to easily maintain the data describing their collections. Finally, because both supplier and customer are operating on the same platform, we get to do some interesting data integrations. Overall, MaterialFirst has a great future as we continue to evolve its capabilities to provide validated sources of digital material data for our customers.”
Texbase has also collaborated with global textile-testing partner Hohenstein, which allows Hohenstein customers to send test requests and receive test reports within Texbase Connect. Hohenstein specializes in applied research and development around the human to textile to environment interaction, with lab testing that determines compliance, legal requirements, and other specification and quality guidelines.
“The addition of a respected lab like Hohenstein to the Texbase universe of lab partners is so exciting!” said Marci Yamasaki, strategic business development at Texbase. “The ability for our customers to send and receive information with Hohenstein for all aspects of testing is validation of the power of the Texbase system.”
