Assembly

Project Details

Areas of Work

  • Web App
  • Branding

Roles

  • Strategy
  • Creative Direction
  • Graphic Design
  • UX / UI Design
  • Front-end Development
  • Back-end Development

About the Client

Assembly is a venture of the Portuguese supply chain agent behind brands like Balenciaga, JW Anderson, and Stüssy.

With their new offering, they want to unlock professional apparel production for a new generation of brands.

Task & Scope

After setting up the operational structure, the client asked us to develop the MVP of a corresponding web application that lets customers design and order apparel products.

During our engagement, we basically touched every aspect of the business: from the initial branding through the marketing site that introduces the concept to potential customers to the pitch deck, kicking off the fundraising process.

Web App

Definition and launch of the MVP of the web-based tool that lets customers engineer their garments. We developed the product strategy and experience architecture, iterated on features and design based on user testing, and developed and launched the final product.

Brand & marketing

Development of value proposition, narrative, customer benefits to messaging and the marketing page and visual identity.

Fundraising

We developed the pitch deck, kicked off the fundraising process, and secured the first committed capital.

Overview

A professional tool for garment engineering

From the start, we knew that we needed to match the sophisticated production capabilities with a professional tool that gave designers full control over every aspect and detail of their garments.

As a testament to this, we started by launching two key functionalities, all while making sure that they are tightly integrated with the manufacturing process:

Dyeing garments with a selection of over 1'000 Pantone® colors and adding custom neck labels while even selecting the exact position and attachment technique of the label.

After the design process, garments can be easily ordered at the push of a button.

Going beyond the visual design process

During research, we quickly learned that garment production is often a team effort, involving different stakeholders with different needs.

To facilitate this process, we added a sharing functionality that allows for easy collaboration between stakeholders and a control panel with real-time cost and lead-time calculations in order to inform every decision.

What you see is what you get

A big chunk of our effort was spent on making sure that the visual representation of your design decisions was as realistic as possible:

From the exact dye color to the thread that attaches the neck label to the garment, we created a sophisticated system for composing different layers of real-life imagery into a high-quality mockup.

Bringing it to life

We developed a first version of a visual identity and a corresponding marketing site to introduce the concept to potential customers.

Technology

We chose Sanity as the backbone of our app in order to get to market as quickly as possible while providing a streamlined interface for the team at Assembly, helping them manage orders in congruence with supplying all manufacturing partners with the required specs for their production step.

Tech Stack

  • Next.js
  • React
  • Sanity
  • PixiJS / WebGL
  • Vercel

Credits

Typeface

  • Camera & Camera Plain by Dinamo

Development Support: Onno Schwanen