Explore best apps for fashion design and production

The garment industry is worth billions of dollars, bringing many opportunities to start a business and make money.

Like software makes every industry’s work easier and faster, the fashion industry also benefits from the software. Fashion designers use many apps in their work to bring better results to their businesses.

If you are also looking for such apps, then check out the top 15 recommended apps, but first, let’s find out their advantages in the fashion industry.

Benefits of using apps in the fashion industry

The software is best for different fashion industry purposes, such as inspiration, design, product development, manufacturing planning, etc. Here are the top five benefits:

1. Increased Productivity

Apps increases work productivity, which gives better results in your garment business.

Also, you will be able to operate all working processes faster at the same time. Managing all business operations with software brings improvement in work efficiency and productivity.

2. Improved Design Quality

Software helps designers create sketches and 3D mockups by making the designing process more organized and faster.

The designer can stimulate their sketches by trying different colors, shapes, and patterns on their garments to improve the design. Also, they can easily detect flaws in their designs and can fix them.

3. Easy Design Documentation

The software also improves the documentation process for designs and sketches. It helps the designer to make faster and more precise design documentation. Also, clear documentation helps clothing manufacturers to understand the needs for manufacturing and production.

4. Resource Management

Designers can manage all industrial resources with the help of apps and software. Designers can track all resources such as fabrics for garment manufacturing, available boxes for packing, etc.  

5. Store Management

Designers can create online stores and perform operations from product listing to product delivery. 

You can design your storefront by displaying your products on beautiful mockups, which increases the chances of having more sales. These platforms allow you to accept payment in many options, making a comfortable experience for your customers.

Top 15 recommended apps in the fashion industry

You can check out all these apps, divided into five categories to help you understand their use in different stages.

Category: Inspiration

Getting inspiration for your design is the first step. You can check many platforms to choose the design for garment production. Check out some best platforms for ideas and inspiration. 

1. WSGN

WSGN is a trend forecasting platform that keeps track of consumers’ thoughts, feelings, and product behavior. It helps brands make the correct business decisions by predicting the upcoming trend. Their community includes around 43,000 product designers leading in 32 global markets. You can look out for this platform to check the latest trends.

Price:	Free
Platform:	Web
Foundation year:	1998
CEO:	Arla Buzasi
Revenue:	$51 Million

 

2. Art Authority‌

Explore many fashion inspirations from Art Authority. This platform will let you browse over 100,000+ sculptures and paintings designed by 1,500 leading artists from all over the western world. Anyone can access their visual library and use it for fashion inspiration.

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Web, iOS, Android
Foundation year:	1995
CEO:	Alan Oppenheimer
Revenue:	$5 Million

3. Vogue Runway‌

Check out unlimited access to the world’s latest fashion collections from Vogue Runaway. It contains over 1 million runaway images from over 12,000 fashion shows dating from the 2000s to 2022. 

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Web, iOS, Android
Foundation year:	1892
CEO:	Dame Anna Wintour
Revenue:	$26 Million

Category: Designing

The clothing design apps provide an easy and precise way to create designs faster and better. You can quickly do customizations, which is impossible for traditional on-paper sketching. 

4. Adobe Illustrator

Fashion designers use this Adobe software worldwide to draw sketches and put styling details to help the manufacturer easily understand the designer’s sketches.

You can learn fashion designing within Illustrator by joining free webinars and training classes from Fashion Classroom or Sew Heidi.

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Windows, Android, macOS, iOS
Foundation year:	1987
CEO:	Shantanu Narayen
Revenue:	$17.90 billion

5. Repsketch

If you don’t want to design clothing from scratch, you can use these clothing design apps. Repsketch allows you to re-design and customize existing designs and sketches designed by members of the Resketch community.

You can select various styles ranging from top tanks to gowns and modify them. This software will help you change sleeve type, neckline, etc., quickly or add your logo to garment designs.

You can try its beta access, and it will be launched soon so that you can access its full feature.

Price:	Free
Platform:	Web
Foundation year:	2015
CEO:	Saral Kochar
Revenue:	$5 Million

6. Pret-A-Template‌

You can use this platform as your digital sketchbook. This app lets you sketch your design on iPhone or iPad. It comes with over 500 templates and details like body dimensions, shoe size, etc. 

You can customize your character’s body to try out different styles by selecting large varieties of skin tones, hair colors, and makeup kits.

Price:	Paid
Platform:	iOS
Foundation year:	2013
CEO:	Roberta Weiand
Revenue:	$60,000

Category: Product Development

This phase includes designing, planning, and developing products. You may check all the processes and resources required for garment manufacturing. 

7. Techpacker‌

The designer can use this software to break down tech packs into cards. This software will let anyone handle technical documentation with ease. The designer can avoid the time-consuming and frustrating tasks of creating flat sketches, handling repeated data, etc.

This software handles such challenging tasks quickly, making tech packs 70% faster. These cards can let them perform copy, move, and other operations by bringing the entire team on Techpacker. Also, it integrates it with other apps to take out more use of it. 

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Windows
Foundation year:	2015
CEO:	Saral Kochar
Revenue:	$5 Million

8. CLO3D‌

It is a perfect platform for those who want to visualize their design sketches in 3D structures. Visualization will help them modify their designs more quickly to bring out a better version of their sketches. 

You can pick up a 3D body in the form of an avatar(human body) or 3D dress material(shirts, jeans, etc.). Then you can choose to import or draw your design sketch directly in the software. Once the 3D illustrations of your designs are ready, you can now make some changes in real time to adjust the pattern according to your needs.

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Windows and macOS
Foundation year:	2009
CEO:	Simon Kim
Revenue:	$6 Million

9. Zapier & Workflow‌

This software lets you connect over 750 web apps to create workflows and automate tasks in the background. You can combine all these apps for better communication and project management. 

You can perform multiple tasks on this platform, such as image resizing, uploading designs to Dropbox, etc.

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Web
Foundation year:	2011
CEO:	Wade Foster
Revenue:	$140 Million

Category: Manufacturing

After making garments designs and prototypes, you can find the perfect manufacturing partner to meet all your manufacturing needs and demands fully. 

10. Maker’s Row‌

You can connect with the world’s top manufacturers to produce your design. It covers over 3,900 apparel and accessories-related makers, which are sorted clearly by categories and ratings.

Also, it provides educational resources to learn everything about the garment manufacturing process.

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Web
Foundation year:	2012
CEO:	Matthew Burnett
Revenue:	$5 Million

11. Swatchon‌

It is a wholesale platform that provides fabric for clothing. It locates in South Korea. It ships its products to 52 contours and contains over 100K materials. Swatchon has partnered with many brands worldwide and allows them to order fabrics of all sizes ranging from 3 yards up to 500K yards sizing. 

Price:	Free
Platform:	Web
Foundation year:	2012
CEO:	Matthew Burnett
Revenue:	$5 Million

12. Higg 

This platform helps in business operations such as energy management, customer engagement, business risk management, etc. Higg Materials Sustainability Index allows its designers to order custom materials based on their manufacturing needs.

Price:	Paid
Platform:	Windows
Foundation year:	2009
CEO:	Jason Kibbey
Revenue:	$16 Million

Category: Marketing

Marketing is the last part of the garment designing business. You can follow digital marketing practices to sell and promote products online and make business profits.

13. Shopify‌

This e-commerce platform allows its users to set up online stores for selling their services and products. With Shopify, you can customize your online store, select acceptable payment methods, track orders, etc. Shopify has powered over 350,000 businesses worldwide.

Price:	7 Days free trial, and after that US$29 per month‌.
Platform:	iOS & Android
Foundation year:	2006
CEO:	Tobia Lutke
Revenue:	$4.61 Billion

14. Brandboom‌

Brandboom is a wholesale e-commerce platform. It comes with essential platform platform integration such as Shopify, Stripe, PayPal, and ApparelMagic.

It provides tools and services to help wholesalers manage their businesses, such as customer management payments. It allows delivering products in bulk to their retail customers. You can create a design page for your garments using many Brandboom tools to present them in videos and images. 

Price:	Free with limits and after that $79/month.‌
Platform:	Web
Foundation year:	2011
CEO:	Eric Ni
Revenue:	$5 Million

15. Garmentory‌

Garmentory is an all-rounder marketplace that covers a wide range of products on its platform. You can set up your online store on this platform to showcase your garments to thousands of customers worldwide.

This platform has clothing categories for unisex and all age ranges. Brands can submit their application on Garmentory to start an online store and sell once their application gets approved. 

Price:	Free
Platform:	Web, Android & iOS
Foundation year:	2014
CEO:	Sunil Gowda
Revenue:	$5 Million

Wrapping up

Digital platforms such as apps provide a better solution in the fashion industry. These solutions improve work efficiency and productivity, bringing better results and profits. 

It will be better to use apps and software to notice an overall improvement in your garment business. You can provide digital services and solutions to the fashion industry by developing apps to earn money and make profits. 

You can contact Idea Usher to get overall support for app development in the fashion industry.

Frequently Asked Questions

Check out all these questions and the answers which you might be looking for. Still, if you have doubts about this business and want a solution, comment below, or even better, you can contact Idea Usher.

Q. What are the earning opportunities in the garment industry?

A. You can earn money from the garment industry, such as by garment designing or manufacturing garments. 

Also, you can create online platforms such as apps and websites to let the business owner sell or design their garments online. You can read about mobile app outsourcing to make an online platform for the fashion industry or you can contact Idea Usher.

Q. What is the growth rate of the garment industry worldwide?

A. The business research company, the global apparel market grew from $610.12 billion in 2022 to $652.94 billion in 2023 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.0%.

Q. From where can I manufacture my garment design?

A. You can visit the manufacturing category in the above blog to find out some of the best online platforms, such as Maker’s Row‌. You can connect with many manufacturers and clothing categories for manufacturing from that platform.