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Vision Evolved: One Year of Transforming Apparel Supply Chains with Optica™

optica branded box on conveyor in a warehouse

From "Boosting Margins" to "Visibility on Demand", a look back at 12 months of innovation, partnership, and the new standard for the apparel industry.

Introduction: The Fog, The Fix, and The First Year

One year ago, we launched Optica for the apparel industry. It wasn't just a solutions portfolio. It was our answer to a fashion industry operating in the dark. We built it to solve a critical and complex industry challenge: your supply chain was shrouded in "fog."

When we released our white paper, Boosting Margins: The Power of Enhanced Fashion Supply Chain Visibility, the data was clear. Despite the buzz around digital transformation, most brands still lacked true item-level visibility. Excess inventory, waste, and opacity were eating into your margins and eroding trust.

On launch day, we promised you a portfolio of integrated end-to-end supply chain solutions that connect the physical to the digital. Today, as we reflect back on the first year since launch, we're celebrating a year of proven impact. We've moved from identifying the problem to deploying the solution, helping you turn visibility into your most valuable asset.

Solution Evolution: The power of ecosystem partnerships

We built Optica to grow, evolve, and continually improve, delivering greater impact for our clients. Over the last 12 months, we've expanded the portfolio's capabilities, proving that modern visibility works best as a team effort.

Two major milestones defined our solution evolution this year:

  • Launching Work In Progress (WIP) Tracking with GPRO: We partnered with GPRO to illuminate the "black hole" of the factory floor. For brands, this dedicated WIP tracking solution enables your manufacturing partners to track garment flow in real-time, identify bottlenecks before they become delays, and provide visibility into PO progress. For factories, this means you can optimize production lines, improve efficiency and ensure quality without the guesswork.

  • Materials Traceability with TrusTrace: As global standards tighten worldwide, compliance is no longer optional. Our collaboration with TrusTrace enhances our Materials Traceability solution, enabling you to deliver traceability and intelligence to manage risk, compliance, and impact. By automating data collection and verification for raw material origins, we simplify complex processes and provide actionable insights, enabling you to make informed, ethical, and data-driven decisions.

Hardware Innovation: Tools for Precision

The hardware product components of our solutions help determine how quickly and efficiently you capture and/or print product data. In our first year, we expanded the hardware ecosystem to add new capabilities and enhance existing ones, making it faster, more accurate, and efficient to operate.

The hardware updates include:

  • New QC Verifier + RFID: A game-changer for compliance, designed for Pressure Sensitive labels and Single Tickets to ensure your quality control matches your digital data.

  • New Scan & Encode + RFID Device: Streamlines two critical steps into one smooth motion to speed up your tagging operations.

  • New Single Ticket Printer RFID: Brings high-volume, high-accuracy encoding to the single-ticket format.

  • Re-introduction of LokPrint II: We brought back this industry favorite SNAP accessory to provide robust, reliable printing for care labels and price tickets.

  • New RFID Mini Tablet II: A lighter, faster, more mobile interface for your staff who need visibility on the go.

Software and Platform Innovation: Connected Everywhere

The software platform is the brain of the operation. In 2025, we made the brain smarter and more accessible. We focused our updates on meeting you where you are, whether on a mobile chat app or a packing line.

  • Omni-Channel Support: We know support shouldn't require a separate login. We've centralized our support systems to integrate with the apps your teams already use, including WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Chat. Support is now as easy as sending a text.

  • Enhanced Packing Verification: We expanded software support for our Packing Verification solution with native integration. This update reduces the technical friction of implementation, allowing your warehouses to validate content against packing plans instantly and drastically reduce shipping errors and disputes.

Customer Success: Stories from the Field

The true measure of Optica's success shows up in your operations. This year, we saw global leaders transform their businesses.

  • JD Sports: The "King of Trainers" didn't just adopt Optica - they embraced a Connected Product Journey. By leveraging Optica, JD Sports achieved end-to-end traceability, ensuring its operational efficiency matched its rapid global expansion.

  • Transforming Accuracy at Scale: We also partnered with a large, multi-brand clothing company that struggled with the complexity of managing diverse inventories. Through Optica's RFID-enabled Packing Verification solution, they transformed supply chain accuracy into a competitive advantage, effectively eliminating stock inaccuracies that plague multi-brand retail.

2026 and Beyond: Visibility on Demand

One year in, and we're just getting started.

As we look toward 2026, our roadmap is clear. We're committed to making "Visibility on Demand" the industry standard for apparel supply chains, and beyond. We're already developing the next generation of hardware and software products, as well as RFID-enabled solutions designed to address your most complex challenges, from source to store and beyond.