Fashion icon Burberry is trying to move away from routinely selecting from a very limited palette of materials due to reasons of cost, availability or materials knowledge. Through GRANTA Selector, the organization has been able to ask the question of ‘what if?’ early in a project so that they can identify and assess alternative material and manufacture routes, and develop those alternatives to improve Burberry’s reactivity to market trends, and elevate product quality.
In a webinar, Raw Materials Engineer Richard Waudby offered an example of the development of hardware for use in swimwear clasps, cord ends, and embellishments. One task was to increase the density of the hardware whilst minimizing thermal conductivity and performance issues, within the limits of the current supply chain. Richard commented that GRANTA Selector allowed Burberry to speed up the material identification time to around 30 minutes. “If you did it without Selector, you’d have to acquire the data, vet it, and that could take weeks,” he added.