Special Announcement:
Our next book, The Material Life: Process Innovation for Retailers and Brands, is coming in December 2025.
We’re excited for the release of this book and it could very well be the best book written on the topic of process innovation in apparel!
The best, market-leading brands across the globe know that process innovation and operational excellence are the keys for success today.
Here is a short preview of the book:
This book argues that “how” matters more than “what.” Process innovation, improving how products are developed and delivered, delivers speed, savings, and better margins. Many retailers obsess over what to sell and yet overlook the systems that make selling possible. We show why investing in the “how” lifts the bottom line and provide practical steps to do it.
Starting with materials provides an excellent entry point for process innovation. Materials are the building blocks of every product: fabrics, patterns, zippers, trims, and color. In most retailers and brands, materials are an afterthought. Teams sit far from design and merchandising, often reporting into sourcing and scattered across time zones. That structure breeds hand-offs, rework, delays and a lack of accountabilities.
Product creation calendars compound the problem. Brands run overlapping concept-to-market cycles, so teams juggle multiple seasons at once. Materials teams spend their time firefighting short-term deadlines, pushing decisions, and missing market windows. This erodes profit and gross margin while long-term innovation stalls.
Mindset is the final blocker. More specifically, too many decisions still require a physical sample. This is often called “Touch Crutch” or “No Sample, No Sale.” Meanwhile, industries perform remote surgery and land spacecraft with digital tools. Retail has comparable capabilities: digital material libraries, true-to-life visualization, and approval workflows that reduce sampling and compress timelines.
Process innovation is where speed actually happens. Materials and the decisions, data, and workflows around them are an underrated source of opportunity. This book offers concrete practices and real-world examples to reorganize teams, modernize calendars, and adopt digital tools.
The payoff is faster time-to-market, fewer late products, and measurable margin gains.
These are the direct, positive impacts that leaders today are looking for.
