Connect@Fashion: a guide to digitising collections, technical sheets and textile collaboration

A collection changes many times before it reaches production. Colours are adjusted, materials replaced, measurements revised, prices renegotiated, samples approved and deadlines recalculated. If this information lives in emails, attachments and parallel sheets, the company loses control over the right version.

Connect@Fashion addresses this problem by organising product development and collaboration around business objects: collection, article, technical sheet, material, supplier, partner, sample and order. Communication is no longer lost in the inbox and becomes linked to the context.

The technical sheet is more than a product description. It is the basis for purchasing, producing, controlling quality and communicating with partners. It should contain materials, colours, sizes, measurements, operations, images, instructions, components, packaging, notes and change history.

When this information is digital and controlled, teams no longer argue about which is the most recent file. The sheet then has a status, responsible parties, approvals and a link to operations.

Textile development involves several participants. Brand, producer, subcontractor, raw material supplier, sales and quality teams each need different information. A collaborative portal should respect this difference: not everyone needs to see everything, but everyone needs to see what allows them to move forward.

Collaboration benefits when requests, comments, attachments and approvals are linked to the correct article or stage. This reduces alignment meetings, duplicate emails and errors caused by information out of context.

Product development should not be separate from management. When a collection moves forward, the information needs to feed purchasing, planning, costs, production and dispatch. If the team has to copy data manually into the ERP, the risk of error increases.

Integration with MULTI makes it possible to leverage data on articles, suppliers, orders, materials and costs. The collaborative platform organises the dynamic development phase; the ERP ensures transactional accuracy when operations move forward.

In chains with many changes, traceability avoids conflicts. Who approved the colour? When did the material change? Which version was sent to the supplier? Which sample was accepted? Without a history, these questions consume time and can generate losses.

A digital process should store changes, comments, attachments and statuses. This is not bureaucracy: it is operational protection. When in doubt, the team can reconstruct the decision.

A good start can focus on one collection, one product family or one set of partners. The aim is to prove that the team gains visibility, reduces version errors and speeds up approval. The company then expands to more lines and integrations.

Training should be practical. Each participant needs to know where to look, how to comment, how to approve and how to identify changes. The simpler the initial process, the faster the platform replaces email as the source of truth.

Connect@Fashion digitalises a reality that already exists: many people deciding on the same product. The difference is that collaboration gains memory, structure and traceability.

For textile companies, this means less loss of context, fewer version errors and a stronger bridge between development, purchasing and production.