CD-ROMs in Fashion at The Limited
By Michael Hickins
CHARLOTTE, H.C. - Designers have long sought an effective means to inform merchandisers of the themes and fashion trends, including color forecasts and cultural developments, that influence their design decisions.
The Limited, based in Columbus, Ohio, recently modernized its communications tools to allow designers to do just that. Designers can now create multimedia presentations and store them on CD-ROMs, which can then be easily distributed. The company expects that corporate staff can use this information to prepare more effectively for their selling seasons and tester support field sales staff.
According to John Sano, manager of digital services for The Limited, this technology, which designers at Victoria's Secret first implemented in time for their Spring/Summer 2000 internal presentations, is providing a more efficient way of sharing critical information with merchants. Victoria's Secret is a division of Intimate Brands, which is owned by The Limited. The multimedia applications are from Macromedia, San Francisco.
"Because the designers can mix in still images with audio and video, they can make more impactful presentations," said Sano. who spoke at the Computer Integrated Textile Design Association symposium held here last month. The tools, he said, "are very powerful and enable everyone to be incredibly creative."
Music, video clips and narration can be combined in the multimedia presentations to powerfully communicate the cultural influences that went into design decisions. "The merchants need to know why we went with a Fusion theme or the Bohemian look." said Sano.
In the past, when The Limited merchants and designers met ahead of each major season, merchants were treated to trend presentations that included story boards with fabric swatches and magazine tears, slide projectors showing runway shows, as well as charts and graphs displayed on overhead projectors.
While effective enough in some cases, the mer-chants had to rely on their handwritten notes to be able to bring all the components together once they were back in their offices.
The CD-ROM-based solution not only makes the information portable, but also allows it to be stored in a digital archive.
According to Sano, the problem is especially acute for a company like The Limited, which has its design offices in New York while merchants are located at corporate headquarters in Ohio. "The merchants travel to New York three times a year to understand the designers' ideas." he said. "This way. they have a CD-ROM they can take home with them to refer to."
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