After garnering
strong local suport for its fashion design CAD products, Fashion Toolbox and the
more advanced CM32 Professional from Colour Matters range, Melbourne-based
software company Fashion Matters is expanding into the New Zeland market via a
partnership with NZ labelling company, Circletech Systems. Fashion Matters
managing director, Mitchell Dobelsky, says the product began selling a few
months ago and has already attracted a great deal of interest from companies
such as Kathmandu.
Dobelsky says there has
also benn strong growth with the Colour Matters products in Australia, mainly
die their focus on the product development and design end of the market. The
products also have wide appeal due to their suitability for both freelancers and
smaller niche operations to larger companies.
Of particular interest
has been the Fashion Toolbox, which sells for $995 and is designed to provide a
more fashion industry-specific alternative to products such as Photoshop,
Illustrator and Corel. “We are better alternative because we have
industry-specific functions that they will never have.” Dobelsky says.
Fashion Matters also
encourages users of its products to collaborate and share information in order
to enchance their use of the software, with customers given access to the
company’s regular newsletters and Fashion Matters’ user group
meetings. “Through the user group we advise people on new technology and
how to use it, how to impacts on their work and how they can actually improve
their work by using it,” Dobelsky says.
In addition to
disseminating knowledge, the user group meetings also act as a great hub for
those in the industry to share information. “Networking is very important
in the industry – that is another part of it.” Dobelsky
says.
As a way of encouraging
its users to reach the program’s potential, Fashion Matters also holds an
annual competition in which users are encouraged to utilize all of the features
of their software to produce a storyboard in order to win a prize, which this
year is a DVD player.
