Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) is celebrating after securing its first Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) in collaboration with ThruDark, a high-performance outerwear brand.
KTP is a UK Government scheme funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through Innovate UK, the government's innovation agency. KTPs link forward-thinking businesses with the UK's world-class knowledge bases to deliver innovation projects led by inspired graduates. Each collaboration has three partners – the business, the graduates, and the academics – working together, via a KTP, on an innovation project of strategic importance to the business.
The innovation project being delivered supports ThruDark’s mission to lead a digital clothing revolution, as Louis Tinsley, ThruDark co-founder explains:
“We’ll be working with the academics at AUB to create a series of digital assets that evolve our development process, putting digital creation at the forefront of design and development. We’ll also be working with our supply partners to support our goal to be sustainably conscious and to continue to innovate and push boundaries within our industry.”
The project will digitally transform ThruDark's new product development process to realise growth potential and reduce its carbon footprint. The key objectives of the project are to improve the productivity of new product development by 33%, improve garment fit and therefore reduce the number of product returns by 35%, and reduce the number of samples required to develop new products by 50%.
“ThruDark produces high-end performance products that are meticulously constructed, look great, fit, and last," explains Penny Norman, Course Leader on MA Digital Fashion Innovation at AUB, as well as the project’s Knowledge Base Lead and the KTP’s academic. "The founders personally test new styles and fabrics in the conditions they are intended to perform in, and will sample until they achieve exactly what they require from them. The business’ commitment to pursuing excellence at every stage of a product’s life cycle makes this innovation-focused project really exciting.
“What we can bring to the brand through this KTP is the knowledge and skills to support the team in harnessing digital and creative technologies to further their development and sampling of the best products in the best ways.
Penny says that by digitising the design, sampling, and prototyping workflows, creating virtual prototypes on avatars from brand models and physical patterns, ThruDark will be able to adopt a more inclusive approach to consumers. This will not only reduce physical samples and shorten the time to market for new products, but will also significantly reduce the company's carbon footprint, leading to substantial sustainable gains and economic growth.
“A huge 80% of a garment’s environmental impact can be addressed at the design stage," says Penny. "It is my goal to help designers and product developers in the fashion industry make a positive impact through the implementation of digital design, prototyping and production methods, and to educate graduates to support and drive these positive changes in the industry.”
ThruDark and AUB will be hiring a graduate, who'll work on the project with them from September this year. Their role will include digitising past collections, creating new digital assets and avatars and supporting Penny in up-skilling the ThruDark team to harness these new workflows.
Rob Fanner, Innovation and Business Development Manager at AUB, and Project Manager for this KTP, says, “This was AUB’s first KTP and required a herculean effort by everyone involved. To register AUB as a Knowledge Base partner, then apply for this KTP, in such a short time frame was certainly a challenge.
“We’re thrilled to be embarking on our first KTP with ThruDark, as an AUB Industry Partner we’ve worked closely with them over the last few years. There’s a very natural synergy between our two organisations with a shared ambition to lead the fashion industry in embracing digital innovation, driving necessary changes for greater sustainability. This is an incredibly exciting chapter for us, for ThruDark, for the recent graduate we’ll be hiring, and indeed for the whole fashion industry.”
