Issue link: https://docs.hic.us/i/668488
Background Thirty-One Gifts is a direct marketer of personalized goods and accessories based in the United States. Originating as a home-based business in 2003, the company has seen stunning growth and now employs close to 2,000 people. Thirty-One Gifts has been able to capitalize on the current trend of personalized apparel and accessories, which has recently enabled them to expand their business internationally. Personalization is an area of garment decoration that is currently experiencing phenomenal growth because it provides a very high profit margin, especially if opera- tional costs are kept low. The demand has increased as a result of the interests from several different groups including sports teams, clubs and special event groups. Thirty-One Gifts specialize in both print and embroi- dery garment decoration and personalization. They have partnered with Pulse to implement several new technological innovations to help improve their person- alization offerings and processes. The Requirements Thirty-One Gifts came to Pulse for help with creating and implementing a very specific mass personaliza- tion solution for decorating garments. The idea was to offer personalized cartoon characters to appear on bags and other items, such as notepads and cards. They needed their customers to be able to pick from a selection of faces, hair styles and clothes to cre- ate customized characters to represent their family, friends, classmates or teammates to appear on a se- lected garment. The characters are then personalized with the appropriate name and/or number before being sent for production. The challenge here was to create a way to accomplish this in as few steps as possible, while maximizing quality and minimizing manual labor and production errors. Without an automated solution, this type of ser- CASE STUDY #5 ThirtyOne Gifts - Variable Data Templates vice would take an incredible amount of time and manual artistry by graphic designers. Thirty-One Gifts needed a template-based solution to facilitate everything from receiving orders through to production. The Solution Based on the requirements outlined by Thirty-One Gifts, Pulse began working on a Variable Data solution to help streamline their processes. Together, they implemented PulseID, an order processor that actually builds graphic characters from customer orders using sophisticated rules, powered by a scalable vector engine. PulseID is an Automation solution that works by using customizable templates from a standard design pro- gram, such as Adobe Illustrator. This allows for both the text and graphics properties of a design to be swapped or edited without the need to resize or reposition these elements before sending them to production. PulseID is a powerful tool on its own, but is most suc- cessful when coupled with automation, as happened with Thirty-One Gifts. The entire process is streamlined by the use of barcodes, which are automatically gener- ated for each job, eliminating the possibility of human error. This barcode is then scanned into the machine by an operator to quickly produce the personalized product. The PulseID solution gathers information from a compa- ny's existing order processing system to automatically create design files based on their customer-approved specifications.