BORDEAUX – French technology company Lectra has launched a new digital platform which aims to support fashion brands in reconciling profitability with sustainability by boosting efficiency and cutting waste. ‘Vaila Fashion’ was launched in Bordeaux this week where Lectra I joined more than a dozen journalists to meet the company’s leadership team and look under the bonnet of its new offering.
The new platform integrates artificial intelligence (AI) with the Lectra’s decades of expertise in machine learning. Valia Fashion is designed to boost efficiency and – critically – reduce material wastage in various stages of apparel production, from order processing to fabric cutting.
Lectra works with many of the world’s leading fashion brands, including H&M, Zara, Gucci, PVH, Ralph Lauren and Adidas. The company captured the global market for cutting equipment but in recent years has broadened its remit, investing tens of millions of Euros in digitisation, connectivity, data management, and AI.
The company told journalists at its launch event for Valia it spends €20-30m on R&D focused on solutions for fashion – 10 times more than its nearest competitor. With a history stretching back to 1973 and revenues of more than €0.5bn, the company has serious pedigree.
Valia Fashion arrives at a time when the fashion industry is grappling with growing regulatory pressure to reduce waste and environmental impact. Governments and regulatory bodies are increasingly scrutinising the fast fashion model, which is often criticised for its wasteful practices and unsustainable resource use.
There are growing calls for fashion brands to improve their production processes, and Valia Fashion aims to help address these concerns by enabling more efficient and responsible use of materials.
The AI-driven capabilities of Valia Fashion are a key part of its appeal and draw on Lectra’s huge investment in this area. Valia Fashion’s machine learning algorithms can process vast amounts of data in real time, optimising production workflows, material use, and decision-making across fashion supply chains. This is especially important for manufacturers, which in many cases are now handling smaller, more customised orders while facing increased pressure to control costs and minimise their environmental footprint.
Valia Fashion also facilitates better collaboration across the fashion supply chain. By using cloud-based technologies, it potentially allows brands, manufacturers, and subcontractors to work together seamlessly, overcoming geographical barriers. The platform provides real-time insights into ongoing and future operations, optimising resource allocation and enhancing visibility and traceability of materials.
This level of integration helps reduce waste and improves operational efficiency, both key concerns for fashion companies striving to meet new regulatory requirements and sustainability goals.
“Valia Fashion represents a major technological breakthrough as, thanks to artificial intelligence, it truly brings fashion players into a new era, that of Industry 4.0. It will help them make a leap forward that goes beyond any advance made in recent decades. Valia Fashion has no equivalent on the market. It offers the whole fashion industry a totally new way to meet the challenges it faces during production,” said Maximilien Abadie, chief strategy officer and chief product officer at Lectra.
“With Valia Fashion, our customers will be able to streamline and secure their production processes. They will benefit from a fully automated and connected workflow both internally and within their ecosystem. They will also be able to optimise the use of our fabric cutting equipment and their material consumption. We have combined our expertise in the fashion industry with the power of artificial intelligence to enable them, with Valia Fashion, to collaborate more efficiently, preserve their margins and boost their growth – while meeting the requirements of sustainable development, which are increasingly demanding in the fashion industry.”
A more in-depth article on this new technology solution based on my time in Bordeaux will appear next week.
