How Crocs Revolutionized their Product Review Process with Sketchfab for Teams
Crocs, Inc. (NASDAQ: CROX) is a world leader in innovative casual footwear. Since its inception in 2002, Crocs has sold more than 720 million pairs of shoes in more than 80 countries around the world.
Earlier this year, Crocs announced its commitment to become a net-zero brand by 2030 with a strategic focus on sustainable ingredients, packaging, product afterlife, and resource use.
The challenge: create a more efficient and effective solution for Crocs’ quarterly product review meetings
Four times a year, the company hosted in-person product review meetings at their headquarters in Colorado.
- For every meeting, more than 1,000 samples representing new styles and colorways had to be manufactured in Asia and then shipped to the HQ office in Colorado, where they were displayed to merchandisers.
- Attendees of the four meetings traveled from different parts of the world specifically for these meetings.
This overall process was:
- Costly in terms of sample-making and travels.
- Time-consuming, since people who traveled from abroad, didn’t have access to the samples once the meetings were over and they had traveled back to their countries.
- Inefficient: the production of these samples and the long-distance travel of attendees was no longer a tenable solution.
The solution: Crocs digitized their samples and leveraged Sketchfab’s 3D asset management platform to easily conduct online product meetings.
- In 2018, Crocs decided to try a different approach and digitized all of their sample portfolios in 3D.
- Then, Crocs used Sketchfab for Teams, the 3D asset management platform by Sketchfab to:
- Store and centralize their 3D assets in a secure and seamless way.
- Organize and classify their digital sample portfolio inside folders hierarchies.
- Invite collaborators to their shared Sketchfab account so that they could review samples from the comfort of their home or office.
Sketchfab’s 3D asset management platform: Sketchfab for Teams
The results: The fully digitized process helps save money and time, and minimizes the impact of manufacturing and travel.
- Crocs fully digitized their quarterly product review meetings, thus eliminating the respective travel and shipment costs associated with transporting dozens of people and thousands of physical samples to the meetings.
“Digital samples saved us from manufacturing thousands of physical samples every year, which were once shipped to the HQ for the meetings.”
—Stefano Ferniani, Senior Director of Global Innovation at Crocs
- Crocs’ collaborators can easily review the design of the samples in Crocs’ Sketchfab account on-demand, which helps speed the go-to-market process.
- The fully digitized approach proved to be exceptionally useful and impactful when the pandemic brought travel to a standstill in early 2020.
“The transition was pretty much friction-less, and it proved to be even more impactful when the pandemic his the world.”
—Stefano Ferniani, Senior Director of Global Innovation at Crocs
October 2021
