Holding continuous innovation at the core of their operations to provide more value to its present and prospective customers, Wilcom launched the new software suite – Embroidery Studio E3 – at the IIGM Delhi office recently. The launch was marked by a comprehensive seminar spearheaded by Janos Horvath, Vice President – International Sales, Wilcom and Shailesh Dabhi, Vice President, IIGM – the channel partners for Wilcom in India. In attendance were the embroidery design digitisers from factories all over NCR region using the embroidery solutions from Wilcom. Focused on reaching out to the end users of the software, Janos dedicatedly answered the queries from the audience.
With the launch of the new Embroidery Studio E3 suite, the latest version of the embroidery software, Wilcom is all set to attract users of unlicensed copies to convert to legalized software and work on the new E3 version, which has been launched 8 years after the 2006 version was released. The Embroidery Studio E3 is available in three packages so as to tap markets across all the segment of embroidery manufacturers.
While the Embroidery Studio E3 Advanced Digitising with 40 new features compared to the 2006 version of the software is suitable for people who just want to legalize their versions of Wilcom embroidery software, a higher version is the Embroidery Studio E3 Textile Embroidery Design software, which not only includes the 40 additional features compared to the E2 version, but also offers seamless integration with the latest version of Corel Draw and would be more suitable for saree manufacturers. The top-end version of E3 with a ‘multi-decoration’ suffix in its name for differentiation from the other two products, offers a feature called virtual digitizing, which enables 3D simulation of the embroidery designed, for reviewing the same before it is actually made. It also includes all Wilcom features, that are either unavailable in the lower versions or are payable options.
Wilcom, said at the recently concluded GTE Bangalore
Explaining interesting features from the new version, Janos revealed that with “Virtual Embroidery” now designs with the look of embroidery can be printed through a direct to garment printer and would be suitable for designs that are very expensive if embroidered. One of the major improvements that have been incorporated in the new E3 suite is the overall speed of operations and processing, along with a host of new tools for ease of use and greater flexibility to the designer. Some of the most appreciated features were the knife tools for separating a design into different parts and components, calligraphy tool for making alphabetical logos in English, Russian and Japanese and the ability to define user-specific shortcuts for various operations.
Apart from the price reduction in the cost of E3 suite for converting from pirated ES2006, Wilcom offers numerous other reasons for an embroidery manufacturer to legalize and upgrade to E3. “All the 140+ training videos on our website now only cover the aspects of E3 suite and not the older versions, so basically people can only learn about the new E3 suite from our website. Recently we unlocked our support pages, so that our users can get help easier,” said Janos. For keeping track of the numerous customer feedbacks, recommendations and queries, Wilcom has a software development database, which lists all recommendations and feedbacks received from customers worldwide for their development team to take under consideration, ensuring that most widely requested features and recommendations can be incorporated into the latest version. The company has also added an aspect of remote diagnostic to its E3 suite wherein problems in the software can be rectified by a software team seating in Australia over the internet, avoiding downtime and manual intervention in the service.
“All the 140+ training videos on our website now only cover the aspects of new E3 suite and not the older versions, so basically people can only learn about the new E3 suite from our website. We had also locked our support pages a while ago, so that only the licensed users can view the content.” – Jonathan Wright, Executive Vice President of Wilcom, said at the recently concluded GTE Bangalore
A major thrust area for Wilcom is to protect and safeguard its intellectual property in embroidery software for all kinds of embroidery applications, for which the Australian pioneer Wilcom has been largely relying on surprise raids and legal enforcement for converting illegal users of Wilcom’s Embroidery software to legalized and licensed users. “With the introduction of the E3 suite in India, we would be offering the dual advantage of legalizing and upgrading their existing versions of Wilcom embroidery software – changing the focus of our anti-piracy operations from legal enforcement to value-addition,” shared Janos. So far, the response to this initiative has been stupendous, with Wilcom, converting roughly 1,000 embroiders every year, bringing the tally to 2,800 in India.
Simultaneously, the company has been continuing its anti-piracy operations and recently adopted a much more organized approach by collaborating with the embroidery manufacturers associations of Tirupur and Bangalore, converting large groups of manufacturer at a time. Wilcom has also partnered with Netherland-based firm ITCA for its anti-piracy drive that conducted legal actions for the company in Delhi and Ludhiana. In the coming times, Wilcom would like to expand its reach to regions of Ahmedabad, Chennai and Varanasi. “Although our growth in India is still driven by conversions of pirated and illegal users to legalized versions, we have increased our sales staff both in the number and quality of people, including those who are much more acquainted with the nature of the industry, we are catering to,” avers Janos.
Wilcom is adding another facet to its operations in India by offering education versions of the new E3 suite at a special price to design institutes and colleges like NIFT, IIFT, etc. “As of now embroidery software are not a part of the curriculum in India, hence we would focus on training students on our software and also train teachers to be certified trainers of our embroidery software,” concluded Janos, talking about the long term plans the company has for India.
