Hilfigers Virtual Rooms ensure Low Carbon

Painted in green is now the latest style statement in the fashion and
apparels industry. Fashion and apparels giant, Tommy Hilfiger is all excited
about the new technology which they recently deployed in their manufacturing
facilities. The concept, called virtual fitting rooms, aims to reduce carbon
emissions, costs as well as travel. The fitting rooms link Tommy Hilfigers
designers and manufacturing facilities in Amsterdam, New York, Hong Kong and
Tokyo.

As per a five-year managed services contract with British Telecom, Tommy
Hilfiger will deploy virtual fitting rooms in their various manufacturing
facilities. Says Sudhir Narang, MD, BT India, Earlier, high definition
videoconferencing and telepresence were mainly used for enterprise users or
within the enterprise. Now with our integration with Cisco and Tandberg
technology, we see a huge adoption across verticals and markets who are looking
for not only maximizing their RoI, but also reducing carbon footprint and travel
costs using our integrated solution. Tommy Hilfiger believes that such virtual
fitting rooms are the new delivery models for their business and will maximize
their RoIs.

Green Fits Best

The virtual fitting rooms would enable immediate global face to face
communication and collaboration among Tommy Hilfigers designers and
manufacturing facilities. Says Narang, There is an upsurge and acceptance of
this green technology in the market. The contract will certainly benefit fashion
giant Tommy Hilfiger and will also allow them to make faster decisions looking
at the designs of the clothing from one location to another virtually. Because
of our own enterprise wide exchange, we can reduce the carbon footprint and
people need not travel from one place to another to check out designs.

The virtual fitting rooms have some key add-ons such as mobile cameras and
recording facilities, which means that designers working in the New York
manufacturing facility can collaborate faster with the team in Hong Kong, making
them more agile and competitive. Moreover, there is no need for designers to
travel long distances by air to showcase their designs. Says Narang, Carbon
footprint can significantly be reduced by our telepresence solution and we
believe that we could take this forward in a big way in India as well.

Virtual meeting experiences through videoconferencing and telepresence is now
the next big thing. As rightly pointed out that virtual meetings were restricted
only among enterprise users, it is expected that collaborative tools will spread
their wings in a big way as the demand for such tools would increase more and
more from all verticals and industry segments. Green communication and
collaboration will help address the growing concerns of climate change as well.
We hope that the next UN Climate Conference that takes place in Cancun, Mexico
goes virtual and green too!

PC Suraj

surajp@cybermedia.co.in