We are living in the online age. While this time sees us witnessing innovation at a truly astounding rate, it is also changing the needs of consumers and how they interact with brands. There is so much choice so, the key to standing out from competitors in terms of customer engagement is to align with and directly address the customer’s challenges or wants.
As a business established out of a need for innovation, Twinbru understands the desire to disrupt the status quo and offer a unique solution for an increasingly digital world. We also know that strategic partnerships offer many mutual benefits and working with other companies can provide more meaningful solutions and insights that weren’t previously possible.
Armed with this knowledge, we’re sharing our experience and success in partnering with James Dunlop Textiles to create a better customer experience with digital solutions.
Seeing the benefit of digital visualisation
James Dunlop has a 110-year history in New Zealand as a supplier of European fabric to retailers. They are a people business, relationship-driven and passionate about the product and level of service they provide. A business like James Dunlop remains successful for more than a century because they are willing to adapt and find ways to address the needs of its clientele.
Today, they are endeavouring to be more digitally relevant and recognised they could connect the digital and physical purchasing journeys. In talking to James Dunlop's customers and the customer’s clients, it became clear that during the interior design process there is a tangible barrier between understanding the design concept and visualising it in the client’s actual home - the imagination gap.
Digital visualisation was the solution to provide customers and clients with confidence in their initial selection and, in combination with the physical fabric swatch samples, offer a compelling sales package. Who did James Dunlop turn to when they knew they needed digital twins? Twinbru.
Initially, the partnership between James Dunlop and Twinbru was creating high-quality digital copies of their physical fabrics. Capturing every thread and fibre, Twinbru delivered photorealistic digital imagery across an extensive range of fabric designs and colourways. Not only were digital fabric swatches created, but the fabrics were also shown in various scenes and on different pieces of furniture. There were clear benefits from this solution:
- The cost and time of sourcing a physical sample were drastically reduced
- The cost of producing new photographs of fabric was drastically reduced
- Clients could see a fabric at scale, instead of imagining it from a small swatch
- Clients could see the fabric on furniture and also get a sense of its texture
- The website was now a source of inspiration with images and digital swatches more readily available to customers
Committing to improved customer experience
The partnership quickly built up an amazing asset base. James Dunlop found that while their customers appreciated the abundance of digital content, they weren’t quite sure what to do with it. The next step was to create a new offering, one that would take their customers on the same digital journey and include their designs as part of the process.
First, there is now a custom digitising service available to James Dunlop customers. This tailored service takes care of digitising customer products like chairs, armchairs, sofas, beds, curtains, and decorative objects like cushions and visualises those projects with thousands of fabric combinations. This creates a huge advantage by creating an immersive and visual experience with great attention to detail. It enhances the customer journey and facilitates project engagement without clients wondering what furniture looks like with different fabrics.
There is also the Visualiser. This started off with taking furniture designs from James Dunlop customers and creating a 3D model. This model is then part of a tool where different fabrics can be shown on the furniture that is readily available to purchase and customise with the chosen fabric. Trade customers of James Dunlop can embed this Visualiser function into their website, providing a virtual storefront of their products that they can market to their consumers.
Today, the Visualiser has expanded to include a curtain option, where drapery can be viewed on different styles of windows. There is also a wallpaper visualiser to see the true scale of a wallpaper pattern within the context of furniture in a living room setting.
A great partnership with a shared passion
One of the reasons this partnership worked so well was the great alignment of the brands. Fabric is in both Twinbru and James Dunlop’s DNA so, both brands speak the same language. Combined with their keen interest in digital solutions and our expertise, building a unique digital content bank as well as contributing to a digital tool was exciting for the teams involved.
The real reward has been generating assets for other businesses to use in shaping their digital journey which ultimately creates a better experience for the end user. With James Dunlop’s clients being given exciting new opportunities to market their products and shaping a more convenient and cost-effective purchasing journey that continues down to consumers, it proves that digital twins of fabric are the way forward.
Combining strengths
Investing in a digital solution can be daunting for businesses. This is why strategic partnerships with a service provider like Twinbru can provide insights that make decisions much clearer. For James Dunlop, it was responding to exactly what their clients needed and then creating content and a solution that supports digital transformation, better marketing and improved communication.
Partnerships and collaboration are key for business development where the combination of expertise and skills can yield great results for both parties. Fabrics shouldn’t be underestimated in their ability to innovate. As this partnership proved, expertise and knowledge of digital twins can yield results that set the industry standard.