American clothing company VF has brought together market intelligence, textile and design innovation to create their next generation of jeans that keep you comfortable even in the height of summer. Innovation in Textiles’ Elizia Volkmann interviewed Stephen Dull - VP of Strategy & Innovation, VF Corp., based in North Carolina about the launch of Cool Vantage and JadeFusion.

“We know customers want performance, comfort and style - it is a magic formula,” says Stephen Dull. Cool and comfort fabric technologies in fashion is a growing trend and denim has been making a steady come back to the fashion mainstream. The demands of the fashion buyers are high particularly in Asia where humidity and temperature are serious issues.

Global technology scan

Dull says: “There are different ways to make denim, some of which are lighter some of which are heavier, the first thing we had was a global scan of technologies and fabrics, so we took the most promising of those and tested. Consumer research said, burning, heaviness, wetness, [were problems]. It was not so much that people wanted to be cooler, they wanted to be drier and more comfortable.” 

During our conversation Dull returns often to the driver being consumer insight: “We are really good with combining technology with design and consumer insight.  With consumer research that is how we got to “refreshment” in denim.  Cool is a lower level benefit.”

Different approaches in different territories

VF developed different approaches for their brands Wrangler and Lee in two different territories, firstly in the USA where they worked with working men including cowboys in the South Western states. “We needed for the heavier denim in the SW where it is worn for work, again there was the resonance of jade in China, but the consumer research we had said it would have high resonance in different areas.” For America the branding was chosen to be CoolVantage for the Wrangler brand.

Working in these two very different territories required different results but central to Stephen Dull’s work over the past ten years with VF has been to build strategies to create new products for different brands within the group.

“We have innovation centres, we have three innovation centres, one is in Alameda, San Francisco California that is an innovation centre on technical apparel, one in New Hampshire located near Timberland, for footwear innovation. Denim innovation [is at] Greensboro, North Carolina.”

[For the denim project]: “We had a corporate innovation group that works with the brands, so I have one particular guy who has a network approach using universities, labs and mills, that’s what we did before we had the centres, it is quite an advanced thing to use advanced networks and that is how we produced JadeFusion [denim], that was done by our small corporate innovation group.  We had 10 - 12 universities, depending on the project, there are some great universities in Japan and China and the UK and NC state has one close by and one of the things we did in the South West, the Cool Vantage product.”

Although much of the focus has been on the fusing of jade powder with yarns to create cooling fabrics, Dull remarked that their approach was to look at the issue of comfort as a whole and that no one single technology provided the perfect answer: “There are two formulations, it is not unlike blending wine, what we looking for all of the current technologies one did one thing but not the other, for consumer research we needed more wicking, more drying, more drying, so there are multiple formulations.” He said of jade: “With Jade had particular resonance in China, but there are other ways to get to a superior technology and benefit for the consumer.”

Importance of design and fit

Developing the fabric was only one part of the story, design and fit were important and ultimately denim has to stand up to many stresses and strains, it has to be comfortable, easy to move in, sit in and for the Cowboys comfortable to ride in. Dull recalls the process: “After we developed the fabric we used Kansai design techniques in Japan. We had the whole thing about Kansai about meeting basic human needs, so it is at the Japanese version of design thinking, we had Kansai consultants who helped with the design so looked at the design aspects of comfort.”

“Again in the US it was different then we went back to NC state and [then when we] went back to the exercises and chamber testing. So we did people in chambers doing exercise and different movements and simulated Bangkok in July.”

The exercises chambers can simulate any type of weather condition, so by simulating extremely uncomfortable conditions they could gain direct physical feedback from the clothes worn, and from the users to find the perfect formula that would make the jeans range they would eventually launch.

Again balancing the different demands was a real challenge. “breathability versus six different things against different fabrics and then we tested with wear testing with consumers in the chambers.”

Communicating the concept

Communicating the concept of this new denim was also a strong part of the strategy.  The denim market is both a long established fashion and clothing market that it makes new innovations difficult to stand out.  VF’s brand Lee has been raising its profile to communicate to a younger more fashion focused consumer engaging with live events and social media. Last year they promoted their stretch denim with their “Move your Lee” campaign, which began in 2012 in Europe. VF worked with street dance crews to create different flash mobs and street happenings and videos and engaged with fashion bloggers and photographers to communicate the innovation and the brand via a multi-channel social media campaign. VF followed this up with poster advertising which is currently running on the London Underground in late 2015. 

For VF the science doesn’t just end with the product: “We have a lab that uses cognitive neuroscience, so there was a lot of work that went through the commercialisation with a 360 marketing campaign.”

As well as using video to tell the story of the product Dull says that: “we drew people in with 3D Jade sidewalk and drew 3 dimensional on the floor of the mall, so people could take photos on things that looked like they were dropping down into a jade mine and use this to tell the story of jade and to draw people into the stores.” Visitors could play around and upload images and videos of themselves to social media.”

Stephen Dull reflects on the campaign: “Asia is a great place to innovate, the consumer is really demanding, they’re used to seeing a lot more innovation that is why we tested in two different places.  A lot of China is pretty warm, and the South West (of the USA) so we went into two places and two markets, Europe will be next.”

www.lee-jadefusion.com

www.wrangler.com/TPC/coll/coll_cool-vantage.html?cm_sp=Cool+Vantage+Launch-_-hpslide-_-image