Fashion is embracing a new dimension.

Brands can now quickly and routinely create ultra-detailed 3D captures of their products to use for design tasks, in their marketing, on their e-commerce sites and in augmented-reality experiences such as virtual try-on, with more applications still emerging. Not so long ago, that required large photogrammetry rigs mounted with an array of cameras and lights that let you photograph an object from all angles. Today, they can produce these 3D twins with as little as an iPhone, a lighted box to serve as a mini studio, a laptop and software from providers like Adobe.

“What makes this exciting is that basically you can create the 3D asset once and derive any kind of content from it,” said Franz Tschimben, co-founder and chief executive of Covision Media, which builds more powerful 3D scanners used by brands such as Zara and Adidas.

The need for 3D imagery is growing as fashion expands into more virtual spaces. For brands to put versions of their products in video games or create immersive content for mixed-reality headsets like Apple VisionPro can require 3D models that developers can use. Last year, LVMH announced an expansion of its partnership with Epic Games, maker of the game Fortnite, as part of an effort to create virtual experiences for its brands and digital twins of its goods.

Shoppers may already see parts of these 3D models on a regular basis. While old-fashioned product photography still rules in fashion, some 2D shots consumers encounter online can be taken from 3D captures. Covision said its work appears on Adidas’ e-commerce site as product shots for shoes such as the brand’s Terrex Free Hiker 2.0.

“It is definitely the thing we see driving a lot of the 3D usage,” said Michael Tchao, who is on Apple’s ProWorkflow team, which tests and refines the company’s products according to the needs of customers and developers.

He called it “the secret big deal of 3D.”

Apple and Adobe highlighted that use and others at an event in New York last week to showcase their 3D technologies to the fashion industry. As part of the presentation, members of Coach’s 3D team demonstrated how they make 3D assets of products like the brand’s successful Tabby Bag by taking a number of smartphone pictures — ideally at least 70, but fewer can work — of the item inside a lighted box, dropping the shots on a laptop and using software that assembles them into a 3D image.

The brand uses them to create detailed mockups of its products — something it couldn’t do just from photos or videos. It can similarly snap a picture of a material swatch, import it into the software’s library, adjust characteristics like sizing to make sure details like leather grain are correctly proportioned and then drop it onto the 3D object. It has also turned them into marketing assets. In keeping with marketing’s trend towards surrealism, it has used 3D models in social media posts like one by a digital artist who depicted a the bag floating through a subway station.

Creating such a detailed 3D capture might have once taken hours or days, Coach said, but now it can do it in about 30 minutes, yielding a model that’s accurate down to the scratches on the hardware. That change is due to advances in technology.

A few years ago, for example, Apple — which Tchao acknowledged wasn’t always the first choice for designers working in 3D — saw broad applications for 3D captures and started building object-capture APIs into its operating systems and adding support for 3D files. It also optimised its systems to make the process of creating 3D models faster and simpler, according to Doug Brooks, a product manager on the Mac team.

While moves such as these helped eliminate the need for specialised equipment, software reduced the need for specialised skill sets. Fashion companies typically had separate roles for working with photogrammetry, using 3D tools and managing and digitising material samples, said Pierre Maheut, who heads up the partnerships team for Adobe’s immersive and 3D tools. Today, one person can handle all those tasks.

Of course, depending on the quality of the capture, it can still be evident you’re looking at a 3D model rather than a photo or video. The Tabby in Coach’s surreal Instagram post still has a digitised feel. But other companies are working to make their models look as real as a regular.

Covision Media’s scanners take some 15,000 pictures that they crunch into a 3D model in a few hours with little post-production finishing required. It’s more like classic photogrammetry, but Tschimben said the company has a unique method of measuring the reflection of light off an object and is faster than other techniques at producing detailed models. He compared it to mass production of 3D.

It now has two different scanners — a first-generation model suited to rigid items like shoes and a newer one for flexible objects such as clothes and bags — that it sells or rents to companies. Tschimben said businesses might keep one of the scanners, which stand about 6.5 feet wide and as tall as 8 feet or so, in their offices but could also put them at factories so they can see accurate models of samples without having to ship the physical product back and forth.

In addition to the current uses of 3D assets, Tschimben sees another big one on the horizon. The ongoing development of text-to-3D generative AI models, similar to those that exist for producing 2D imagery, means brands may one day soon be able to design products in 3D using AI. But for a brand to infuse its stylistic DNA into the output, it needs its own high-quality 3D datasets to train the model on. It’s another reason for companies to capture their products in 3D.

“To do this at scale for a company — let’s say for Adidas — in the future, we could go into this, since they are building up a huge data set,” Tschimben said. “[3D] datasets specifically tailored to their products and their company, they hold a lot of value.”

Adidas AG raised its profit target for the year amid strong demand for classic sneakers like the Samba and a boost from sales of its diminishing stockpile of Yeezy footwear.

The German sportswear company now expects to generate operating profit of around €700 million ($743 million), according to a statement. That’s an increase from the previous target of €500 million, but it still trails analysts’ average estimate of €871 million.

Now in his second year at the helm, Chief executive officer Bjorn Gulden is trying to orchestrate another era of fast growth at Adidas and close the gap with industry leader Nike, which has stumbled in recent quarters with a sales slowdown and inventory missteps. Adidas has also struggled, posting a decline in net sales in 2023. That followed years of crisis under Gulden’s predecessor, culminating in the cancelation of the company’s partnership with the rapper and designer Ye.

Adidas’ depository receipts gained 3 percent in US trading after the surprise announcement, which published after the close of normal trading in Frankfurt. Nike shares also rose, reversing an earlier decline.

Gulden has pledged to return Adidas to growth this year, with momentum expected to accelerate in the second half as the company trims inventories of apparel in the US and Yeezy footwear. The Norwegian CEO seeks steady expansion in both sales and profit in the next few years following the collapse that Adidas experienced during the pandemic era, when demand dried up in China. Adidas also became dangerously reliant on the partnership with Ye, which created a crisis after the celebrity made a series of offensive statements.

Since taking over in January 2023, Gulden has pushed to speed up decision-making at Adidas and embrace a wider array of sports, instead of focusing primarily on big-money athletic events. Gulden claims that investing more into lower-profile sports like weightlifting and wrestling helps build credibility and energy at the brand. He says it hearkens back to the ethos of Adi Dassler, who founded Adidas about 75 years ago.

Even so, the company’s momentum now is heavily tied to casual footwear, with the boom in classic models such as the Samba and Gazelle. There’s also continued demand for the controversial Yeezy footwear. The latest Yeezy drop generated revenues of around €150 million and an operating profit of around €50 million in the first quarter, Adidas said.

Gulden, who has a reputation for offering conservative guidances early in the year, is still assuming that the company will generate no additional profit from perhaps €200 million more in Yeezy sales this year. Adidas also expects unfavourable currency effects to weigh on profits. It intends to finish selling off its Yeezy inventory in 2024.

Adidas reported €5.5 billion in first-quarter revenue, higher than the €5.3 billion estimated by analysts.

The company is becoming an industry darling under Gulden, with shares up about 25 percent in the past year while Nike’s have fallen 26 percent. The American rival has been dogged by cooling demand for chunky basketball sneakers and criticism that it’s moving too slowly in churning out new products. In December, Nike CEO John Donahoe laid out a plan to cut as much as $2 billion in costs over the next three years, including layoffs that will slash 2 percent of the company’s workforce.

Meanwhile, Adidas is drawing praise for its hot-selling gum and rubber-soled terrace style sneakers, including the Samba, Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note yesterday. Morgan Stanley upgraded its recommendation on Adidas to overweight from underweight, and lifted its price target to €235 from €175.

By Tim Loh

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In its first-quarter results, LVMH’s Selective Retailing unit was the French conglomerate’s brightest spot. Sales rose 11 percent on an organic basis, with “remarkable growth” at Sephora cited. Overall sales for LVMH rose 3 percent, indicating that fears that luxury demand was cooling in step with economic growth were well-founded.

Sephora’s store network expanded in the last quarter, particularly in the US, though growth was also noted in Europe and the Middle East. Within the Selective Retailing division, the company’s duty free business is still trading below its pre-Covid level of activity, which LVMH chalked up to the slow resurgence of international travel to flagship locations in Hong Kong and Macau.

Perfumes and cosmetics also grew 7 percent, with fragrances a continued champion. LVMH noted the strong performance of Dior perfumes, many of which are hero products such as Sauvage, J’Adore and Miss Dior. The viral popularity of Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge 540 was another boost. Skincare and cosmetics from Guerlain and Dior also contributed to growth.

The division’s resilience may be a balm for the beauty industry, which has been on unsteady ground since executives at Ulta Beauty signalled demand across prestige and mass was softening in March. The news that it expected its first-quarter results at the lower end of its guidance caused a rout on Ulta Beauty’s stocks, with a wider drop for other beauty firms including E.l.f. Beauty and Coty.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

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Dr Martens shares plunged around 30 percent on Tuesday to a record low after the British boot maker warned of another tough year in its key US market, setting a challenge for its next chief executive.

The company, whose chunky lace-up boots have been a fashion statement since the 1960s, named chief brand officer Ije Nwokorie as its next CEO.

Kenny Wilson, who has been at the helm for six years, has decided this year will be his last as CEO, Dr Martens said, although it did not give a precise date for the handover.

The company has been struggling with customer destocking and reduced orders in the United States from wholesale customers wary of economic pressures.

Its shares have been hammered in recent years by a series of profit warnings and disappointing results that prompted investor Marathon Partners to call for an immediate strategic review earlier this month.

They hit a record low of 65.50 pence in early Tuesday trade.

Dr Martens said its results for the year ended March 31, 2024, would be in line with market expectations, but flagged another difficult year ahead.

“The FY25 outlook is challenging, and the whole organisation is focused on our action plan to reignite boots demand, particularly in the USA, our largest market,” Wilson said.

“The nature of USA wholesale is that when customers gain confidence in the market we will see a significant improvement in our business performance, but we are not assuming that this occurs in FY25.”

The company said it was anticipating a double-digit percentage decline in US wholesale revenues, which would dent overall profits.

It also said it did not expect to hike prices further this year, which had previously enabled it to offset cost inflation.

By Yadarisa Shabong and Eva Mathews; editing by Janane Venkatraman and Mark Potter

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