Ep. 120: Innovation driven apparel

This transcription has been AI generated and therefore may have some inaccuracies.

Ep. 120: Innovation driven apparel

The Textile Innovation Podcast speaks to Ranil Vitarana, chief innovation officer at MAS Holdings.

WTiN: Hello and welcome to textile innovation hosted by WTiN My name is Abi, and I'm the Features Editor and your podcast host. Each month, we will be joined by a special guest to join me and my colleagues as we deep dive into what's new, what's interesting, and what admissible innovations have hit the market recently, we cover everything on the podcast, from sustainability to start ups and the latest research and development, plus we quiz the experts in the field about their products and ideas across the huge spectrum that is the textile industry. So no matter what your interest is. WTiN, have you covered, and we can connect you to everything you need to know right here from our central hub in the UK.

In this episode, I am joined by Ranil Vitarana, Chief Innovation Officer at MAS holdings.

MAS Holdings is an innovation driven company focusing on fashion and lifestyle. It is one of Asia's largest manufacturers of apparel, sportswear and performance wear, among other sectors. Renewal is responsible for developing and implementing next generation platform technologies, open innovation, managing and monetizing the company's IP portfolio, as well as incubating new business adjacencies.

In this episode, we discuss mas focus and strategy. We also explore the company's innovation entrepreneurs which develops consumer driven solutions.

Hi, welcome back to the WTiN textile innovation Podcast. Today, we're joined by Ranil from MAS Holdings. Hi, Ranil, please. Could you tell us more about Twinery, and why did mas holdings launch Twinery, and what is its purpose?

Vitarana: Sure, so I had to take you back a little bit to our early days as we started our business. We had this model where we were would work very closely with our with our customers, and we would be sort of intertwined with the customer and their requirements and their needs, and so much so that we had a lot of joint ventures with our main customers as well, and we felt that having that customer in place in the front end of it, and then having ourselves as a manufacturing partner becoming maybe slightly better Every year in terms of the processes we followed, we were a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper every year, and that was like the operating model that we were very comfortable. And then in 2004 five, we had a big disruption to our business. We had one sort of a product that came out and wiped out about 60% of our business in one category overnight, yes, and that happened in multiple ways. So the the competitor was from China and but the product was constructed very differently, because the competitor was someone who was not even in our radar. He was not a supplier. He was actually a supplier to to us. He was second tier supplier. He came up with the solution, and it was more expensive than the product we were making, and it went into market. The consumers loved it, like I said, it wiped out a lot of our business. And so we then realized that innovating and coming up with newness was equally important to our survival as much as those relationships that I was talking about earlier. So that really led to, I would say, the early stages of innovation, where we thought innovation was a technology function, and we created a technical team, and then we realized that actually innovation is less of a technology function, more of a business function. And so we sort of reconstitute the team, and that in 2013 became Twinery.

WTiN: Thank you for going to that background that was really interesting. Could you tell me more about your role within the company?

Vitarana: So I have, uh, I wear two hats. I am the Chief Innovation Officer for MAS Holdings, as well as the Chief Technology Officer. As the Chief Technology Officer, I look at, I would say non-digital technologies, more around the technologies that involve a product. So whether it's whether it's the material side of it, whether it's sewing or, we'll say. Bonding technologies, things like that, so technologies that actually impact the product. And as part of that, I look at, how do we create these next gen technologies? How do we use open innovation, and how do I manage the company's sort of IP portfolio?

And then, on the as a CIO is around bringing this new thinking to the organization, understanding how the industry is evolving, and looking at new business models and new business verticals for MAS, I can give you an example of it early on, the femtech area developing. So you one of the first in 2014 2015 to come up with the first period pants to the world. And so that has become its own vertical. And similarly, electronics into textiles and things like that. So those become like business verticals for enhance that's really interesting.

WTiN: You just touched upon it then obviously trying to recreate these technological solutions across a huge range of sectors, like you just said, and always looking like it next gen and what's coming up next. You also, you know, do flat knitting and printing, for example. Why have you chosen this approach to cover a huge range of sectors rather than just focusing on one of these?

Vitarana: So mAS operates across multiple product categories. So we do about 20 different product categories out of MAS. That's the first thing. Secondly, MAS is a vast organisation. So we have our own fabric manufacturing, foam molding, printing and various sort of sewing is one part of it, or assembly is one part of it. So what we try to do, as we distill, what does MAS do? And when we thought about it, we sort of brought it into this five different areas that things that we do. So I'll go through that list and give you a few examples of what it is, what we call material formation. So we form materials. So whether it's knitting a fabric or injecting foam, polyurethane foam, into something. It's about creating a material. The second one is around what we call shape modification. So whether we are cutting a fabric, whether we are molding a fabric, we are changing its shape. That's the second area. Third is around what we call surface functionalization. So that might be saying we're putting hydrophobicity on a fabric, hydrophilicity on a fabric, or, you know, softening of fabric, things like that, something that we're doing on the surface of the material.

Then we do what coloration, which is very straightforward, we put color on materials. And then finally, we do assembly. So regardless of where you are, if you take all of MAS it is one of these five things that we are doing, and in order to be the best that we need to be innovating across all five of these areas simultaneously. And so that's why we see a sort of a wide portfolio of products that are, you know, things that we do in that situation. Apart from that, we also look at market trends that are going around and try to understand those. And what do we need to do? So if you take, you know, agility or sustainability, or, we say some kind of fast replenishment, things like that. So those are sort of market trends to which we also need to start innovating solutions. So that also forms part of how we decide what we're going to work amazing and just kind of going off that.

WTiN: Could you tell me how MAS and Twinery approaches these innovations in such a highly competitive and complex industry that is the global apparel and textiles?

Vitarana: Yes, we are predominantly but I would say consumer and customer centric, or customer consumer and customer first. And what we try to understand is that whether there are any unmet or under met needs that we need to solve for. And what we try to do then is to try and give some kind of solution to our customer that is the brand that allows them to win in market by looking at this unmet and undermet means and putting it all together as a solution.

The other thing that we do, at, finally, and that's the differentiation that we have, is that we are always looking at big impact. So it's not about just one off. The, you know, something like that. We are trying to see, how do we create a whole category around it, or, you know, something like that. So we are always looking at, how do we make a big impact with first two world solutions?

And in order to do that, what we've done is we've sort of assembled this really diverse team. So like I said earlier, we will we look at we've originally looked at innovation as a technical function, but we realized more and more that it was much more than that. So only about 40% of our team actually comes from a textile background. Majority of them come from different backgrounds, from things like psychology, medicine, aerospace engineering, so various sort of diverse areas that we brought people from in order to bring diverse thinking into how we go around evolving these solutions.

WTiN: That's really interesting. The whole thing about cross sector collaboration and taking ideas from different industries, thinking about that, could you tell me what the challenges are that Twinery has overcome and hopes to overcome, and maybe, could you add in how those different backgrounds has assisted in that, in overcoming challenges?

Vitarana: Sure. So challenges wise, I think one of our biggest challenges is our location. So we are many, many miles, 1000s of miles away from our market, and that's always a challenge, because it's very difficult to stay on top of what's going on as well as of course, you know, the world now is producing these results and solutions and technologies and things like that. It has really become really important for us to become more global organization than a one country organization. And part of that is around, how do we network, how do we form alliances, how do you form even legal agreements, around how we collaborate, things like that. So that's, I would say, one of the challenges we probably overcome we are better at now than we were a few years ago.

If we look at challenges to overcome, I think one of the biggest ones that we have is around when you're creating this first two world solution, it's all about timing. We talk to consumers, and we say, Yes, this is going to be a trend, or this is going to be something that's going to happen in a need of the future. And sometimes we are ahead of time, and as a result, a project might come to a screeching halt because there is no way to take it to market, and we have to then sort of go on to pause, and then there's whole return on investment side, and this pressure to try and sort of find the right customer to to take it to market and on. That also is a challenge, because not all brands are willing to take things to market, although they may even know that the market needs it. But for various challenges that they might have in their marketplace, it's they are unwilling to do so. So finding that like minded partner who's happy to either risk taking the product to market or is willing to put the marketing dollars behind it, that give the shelf space things like that, finding that ideal partner to go to market becomes a bit of a challenge, question about the people, right? So what, what we find is that this type so, so when you're developing a solution, there's a functional side and an emotional angle to it as well, and making sure that we solve for that emotional angle, why would someone want this solution? Why would they you know, what form factor does it need to be in order for it to be something that resonates, sort of questioning industry norms and saying, I know you used to do it this way, but isn't there another way to do it? How can we break those norms? That's kind of question that we get because we have this diverse talent, and just thinking about that in a bit more detail, you previously mentioned how you are a consumer and customer centric organization, and you also have mentioned about the needs of the market. How does market and consumer needs drive your innovation. You've just touched upon it then.

WTiN: And where does Twinery and MAS start when forming those ideas?

Vitarana: So that was actually a good question, because we've, like I said, it was a challenge. Around, how we had this customer first approach, we've now sort of shifted to a consumer first approach, trying to understand, how is the consumer evolving, and how do we then try and identify these gaps in the market, and how do we sort of drive solutions that address these gaps?

But what we look at is just not looking only at this, you know, these gaps, the thing that we try to understand is, what are the emerging trends, and sort of trying to anticipate more or less where things might end up. This is easier said than done. It inquires a lot of risk taking from that point of view. And I think the more you do it, the better you become, and the more connects you have, the more people that you talk to. So what we would do is we would talk to different experts in different fields. Sometimes we talk to design consultants, sometimes we talk trend analysts. Sometimes we will talk to maybe industry experts, futurists, etc., to just try and distil some of these things into maybe more tangible opportunities. And then we have this stage, gated approach where we sort of decide we have the idea, as we are going through, we are quite happy to kill a project if we feel that it's not going in the right direction, or the feedback that we're getting is not right, and that process is three stages called what's needed, what's possible and what's required.

So like I said, What's needed is around identifying this unmet or unmet need and converting that into what sort of solution? Could it be? And therefore, what? What do we really need to solve for? Sometimes, when you identify opportunity and the real solve that you need can be very not obvious at the beginning, and then what we do is we go through this what's possible phase, which is trying to understand, can bringing together today's technologies, multiples of them. Can it solve the problem? If you can, then that's the best. Do we need tomorrow's problem? Or do we need, you know, something that's going to happen in the future? And then, based on that, we'll decide, okay, we can solve maybe 50% of the problem today, and then we decide, is that good enough to go to market?

Because in in consumers, also there's an evolution of the consumer. So if you take the I don't know, Gillette shaver, they probably knew by the second stage that having five blades is probably where they wanted to be the technology, and I love it. And they went from one, two, and then three, I think, and then five. But so as technology evolves, it allows you to do things. So you might not have the ideal solution, but that compromise solution might really be good enough for you. And the last one is around the what's required. I can give an example as that as well about what does it take for us to take this technology or product to market? Do we need to build a new ecosystem? Do we need to get new customers? And the example I'll give you is when we identify the opportunity around the period priorities. What we found was in the what's needed. One, absorption was important, but smell and leakage was more important.

And then you talk about what's possible, how do we bring this technology together? We actually could at that time, and then what's required was, when you want to go to market, no brand. None of the big brands that we work with actually wanted to take a period product in their assortment. So we had to go find a startup, go and invest into them and go to market through them.

So in 2015 we went and invested in things and and sort of, sort of brought that to market today. Of course, every brand is carrying period products, so that was an example that's actually fascinating. I didn't realize that. That's great to see the whole journey from start to finish. And obviously it's going to be quite a big question the next one, but just going off that obviously, you know, like sort of research and risk taking is needed when you're looking at what the consumer drivers are. But do you think you'd be able to tell us today, what do you think some of the main. Human drivers in the apparel and textile industry currently are, in your opinion, yeah, so some of the trends that we're seeing today, and I think it's obvious to everyone, is this, what we're calling versatility and functionality, people's lives are now such that they go through multiple they do multiple things in a day, and they'd like to have clothing that allows them to do all that. So whether you're going in, I don't know, grabbing a coffee in the morning, or going to the gym in the morning, then going to work, then maybe hanging out, you know, grabbing a coffee with a friend, then doing something else and going and so what you find is that traditional clothing didn't work across all of these things, and there was always this compromise. And so more and more you're looking at having clothing that can go right across the day with you as you go from these different functions. And so for around that, the versatility side comes, and obviously the associated functionality has to be there. And so that, I think, is a big trend. Another one that we're seeing is consumers were more and more able to relate to better crafted product and better quality product. And I think consumers are much more discerning around that now. They don't just buy a brand because they used to buying the brand, they're able to say, no, actually, this product is of poor quality. This product is better quality. It looks nicer, looks smarter. And however, they also want products to last much longer, and so that I would say craftsmanship and longevity is probably another area that I would say, is the area that is sort of taking hold.

Another area is around I think we believe that over the next 10 years or so, material innovation is going to start appearing in our clothing a lot more. And this material innovation is like you know, you are traditionally, you had your cotton, polyesters and nylons. They played three different roles. And now you're starting to see new materials that are combining two or more of the qualities of each of these but are also environmentally sustainable. It allows you to, you know, have better, long lasting products, more functionality, data, all those kind of things. And so you I think that material innovation is going to play a big role in the in the next 10 years or so.

And lastly, I would say aesthetics and comfort. I think people like I said earlier, people are much more, much less brand loyal and more understanding of what they want, and they are going to look for it. So comfort starts becoming a key part of it, and this aesthetics so that these two combine to what we call how a consumer feels, physically and psychologically. So it's both those angles connected, is what we think this, this new trend is going to.

WTiN: That's really interesting. Thank you. And I could probably answer this myself, but what opportunities do you think these drivers will open up for the textile and apparel industry?

Vitarana: So I think the what you see today is that there are brands that are coming up with these as their core value proposition. So historic brands, your larger brands, have a whole heap of products, it's very difficult to understand what they stand for anymore. So there are new brands that are using some of one of these as the as a value prop. So if you take worry, for instance, it's about softness and comfort and things like that. So they'll incorporate these as their key value proposition. And in that sort of situation, company like ours, that are already prepared for that, that can give them this kind of solution, starts becoming more valuable for them, and we can have a much more stronger partnership them, with them, and capture more value as a result of that, that's great.

WTiN: And we touched upon this earlier on, especially with mas hiring people from different backgrounds. But could you tell me a bit more about how Twinery works with brands?

Vitarana: As tech firms and academics, for example, and a bit more about this cross sector collaboration, sure. Abi, so I think the more and more, I think it's clear to everyone that it's very difficult for us to operate in a silo, the need to collaborate, find partnerships and bring different capabilities together, becomes really a, we say, operating model. And not everyone is able to create that kind of operating model and be comfortable around it. And so one of the things that we have done is really created a collaboration model that allows us to interact with these different say, brands, tech firms, academic institutions, things like that. And what we do is we as part of the work we do, we try to understand what these trends are and have sort of almost like, what we call like calling cards. Each of these cards will have a problem description and a solution that we might be looking for. And so as we interact with these we are able to tell them. Here are our problem statements. Are you? Do you have solutions in this? And so it becomes a very say efficient conversation around how you can interact. It becomes much faster. Here are needs. Do you already have something? If, yes, okay, let's like, you know, double click on it and figure out how we do it. And what that allows us to do is to really accelerate that collaboration and innovation and how we bring things to market. One of the things that we've very consciously done in order to do that is that we said we don't need to be the company that invents.

We need to be the company that innovates. And so this is in the in a TRL scale. I'm not sure whether you're aware of the Technology Readiness scale. It goes, it's a it's a thing that are developed by NASA. It goes from zero to nine, so from ideation all the way through to bulk commercial manufacturing in your industry. And so what we've specialised is that from four onwards, is where we have built a lot of our skills and capabilities so that we can work with someone who's doing the inventing, take their product, take their output, convert it into a product, have the right customer in place, and really quickly take it through the scaling journey to be able to manufacture something 100% right, 100% of The time, in millions of units. So that's sort of that's the value prop we bring that makes a super fit with these companies who are inventing.

WTiN: Thank you for explaining that. Could you tell me if there's any lessons that you've recently learned from outside industries that you that can be applied to the textile sector?

Vitarana: Yes, I think the, I think the I would say the main thing is around keeping our eye firmly on the consumer. What we find that consumer is probably evolving faster than brands are able to evolve and and that means that we need to be an organization that is prepared to evolve with the consumer, so that we will always be the most relevant company that the newest brands are the most successful brands always want to work with and so I would say, simply saying, Are you loyal to your customer, or are you loyal to your consumer? And I think my advice is that try to be loyal to the consumer. You can't go wrong.

WTiN: And just like zooming out a bit, how does trying to mean mas holdings, balance new innovations and technologies with cost conscious consumer demand?

Vitarana: Super, super, super question. It's always a challenge, I think, as we do this. But like I said, Being consumer centric means that you're not trying to find a problem, where you find a technology and trying to find a problem. We are always trying to find a consumer need, and as part of finding that need is that we try to understand that how much is that consumer willing to pay? And that's baked into our innovation, I say what we call technical jobs to be done in that we specify also, how much are we willing to pay for this technology and how much value does it add? So how much value can it add? So we can say you can add 10% you can add 50 cents. And in some cases, what we also realize is that when you add something, if you really understand your consumer, you will also be able to subtract something from the product as well. So when you try and give 10 new things, obviously it's going to be unaffordable. So as you're adding one, try and see how you can subtract something else so that you come out at a good because consumers here to understand how they perceive value, and if you're giving value that they can't perceive, then it's actually not worth it.

WTiN: Thank you, makes sense. And just kind of in a bit of a different direction. But looking at the global textile market currently, textile market currently, obviously, with environmental pressures, global legislations, the whole geopolitical outlook at the moment, how do you keep on top of this and turn it into action?

Vitarana: So we are really happy about what's going on, predominantly because this new trend is aligning with one of mas key values, I would say, a core value that we have been constantly having. Mas has been we have prioritised sustainability around the planet, the product and people. So what we mean is, how, how do we, how does our product impact the planet? How does a product in itself, so in manufacturing, how so we might impact the planet by having a fluent and chemicals and stuff like that, the product in itself, might we want it to be sustainable, and the people that we associated with our organization, how do you make sure that they are also having a good life and things like that? So all this has been baked into our core value system in our organization over many, many years from its inception. So we are very happy with this trend, because we feel that it is really playing to one of our core strengths. And so we anticipated this change for a while, and it's been coming for a while as well, I think, and it's nice to see it coming in as legislation. It was due to come in in the US with what's going on. Now, I'm not sure about whether that should be a priority or not there, but Europe, yes. But Europe, we are seeing that coming through loud and clear. And so what we did was we developed technologies and business models that that attacked this problem, which sort of, I would say, around, predominantly, around over production, and how that ends up in landfill. How do we sort of manage that? So we sort of developed a bunch of technologies there, and we also started looking for likeminded brands to work with, who would be happy to take some of these technologies and solutions to market with us, because they also had those as core value propositions. So I think the few things that happened over the years, I think, sort of nicely coming together so that we are in the right place, in the at the right time, in that sense.

WTiN: That's great. And looking at other emerging trends, like technologies such as AI and digitalization, obviously, coupled with winery's wide breadth of innovation products, what, in your opinion, will be the main game changes in the future?

Vitarana: Sure. So I think, I think AI definitely has a as a big role to play. You say, traceability, things like that coming in. But really honestly, the area that I feel that it's going to really impact is this, what we call that this technology will allow the entire supply chain to be interconnected to an extent that the supply chain will be able to react to what's going on in the market and have the right product at the right place, at the right time. And we are, we call this manufacturing at the rate of relevance. The reason is So, if you look at today's value chain, it's about a two year thing. So today I have to decide what fabric I'm going to be selling in two years time, about maybe a year or so before I had to decide what style is going to be selling, and maybe eight months or so before that, I have to decide what colour and what size is going to sell, right? So the chances of you getting it wrong mathematically is really high. This is about reacting to market, as opposed to trying to get them, like force the market to buy a product that maybe they don't want, which is what's happening today. And so this yields to a lot of unsold inventory, markdowns, things like that. And so our belief is that this technology will come and allow us to to connect all these people together, to be able to to have this really more agile sort of supply chain, which is able to react to what's going on in the market much better than before.

WTiN: And is there anything that Twinery is currently working on that you are able to tell me about today?

Vitarana: Sure. So there's a couple of things I sort of alluded to in a couple of questions and go around. I spoke about overproduction as one of the one of the challenges of the business currently. So we developed a printing technology called promptly, which, what should I say? So it was, it's a lot, it's currently onshore in the US and in Tijuana in Mexico. What it does is it allows us to it prints on a blank garment, and it appears like it has been a fully printed garment and and it uses image processing and some other technologies that allows us to print on this garment, and the garment also can have different substrates. So it can may have a cotton fabric with a lace elastic, sorry, a polyester elastic or nylon elastic, and it's able to print on these multiple substrates.

And what we have there is we have a sort of limited SK use in what we call blanks, white garments ready for printing. And these are garments that have been finished and shipped. And then, as the as the as you start selling in market, we can replenish with about a five day lead time So, and there is zero MOQ. So you can say, I sold three garments in medium and two in large, but in a different print, and we can just replenish as you're selling. So as a result, yeah, no waste your working capital cycle is reduced. No inventory to destroy at the end of the season, nothing to mark down, for instance. So, so that's a technology that I would say is in somewhat full swing in the US right now. And the other one is a technology called perceived, which is around, it's a water free technology where we can apply different coatings on garments in garment form. And how that works is So, for instance, if you, if you're talking about your waterproof or your jacket or something like that. Most people throw away their jackets because the water repellency goes away and reintroduce water repellency in that finished garment. And so that allows you to use that jacket for maybe twice or three times as long as you historically used it.

That same technology allows us to clean garments, food source, stain, repellency, various things like that. So we see the rental industry, the resale industry, and say, uniforms, areas like that, where we can really help garments last more than twice their lifetime by allowing them to look stay fresh and look fresh and continue to be functional, that is a huge game changer. Yeah, yeah. We have that tech currently incubating in Scotland. It rains a lot better. It does, it does, and everyone has these really expensive waterproofs and jackets and stuff like that. And so making that last longer has a huge financial benefit.

WTiN: I can imagine that sounds great. Thank you so much for now, my final question is, and it's quite a big one, but what is the vision for MAS moving forward?

Vitarana: So I'm going to keep it very brief, so it's very simple. It continues to be the same vision that we had, which is, how do we continuously look at these consumers, unmet and under met needs, and how do we use a global ecosystem to attack these opportunities. But I think the thing that we have added now is at speed and at scale, and the reason that we've done this is that we feel that the all the cycles in the world have become much, much shorter, and ability to react fast to what's happening in the market, because it's almost by the time you have your solution ready, that trend has evolved, and there's a new trend. And so that comfort levels that we had around being able to be slow, I think, is no longer exists. So being able to do things really, really fast has become, I think, probably a cornerstone of what we're doing.

WTiN: Amazing. Thank you so much now thank you for joining me on the WTiN Textile Innovation podcast. It's been great speaking with you.

Vitarana: Thanks, Abi, thank you.

WTiN: Thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions, you can reach out over x formally, Twitter at WTiN, comment or contact me directly at Abby underscore WTI n, if you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the podcast, please email sales at WTiN.com. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next month.