NEW YORK, New York -- Designtex, the Manhattan-based design and product development firm, has introduced a new, self-designed format of fabric samples, abandoning the traditional fabric binder-card sampling in favor of a more efficient and environmentally responsible digitally-based format.

Previewed in May at the Hospitality Design Show in Las Vegas and later announced in June at NeoCon in Chicago, Designtex has gone completely digital by converting its entire upholstery line from fabric-based to 100% digital.

"Our new digital sampling gives us new opportunities to market and sell our products in a number of different ways,” said Designtex CEO and President, Thomas Hamilton.  “Designtex is now presenting our products with the highest level of aesthetics and showing products to customers in a manner never before presented. To say I'm thrilled with the response from customers is an understatement.”

Designtex's Director of Marketing, Caroline Vaughn, teamed with a New York City-based photographer and an international print house including its marketing staff to oversee the process of ensuring that the digital binder cards are a more aesthetically accurate representation of the fabrics than the traditional fabric binder cards. As an idea that had been tossed around for years in the industry, Designtex printed high resolution images that brilliantly captured the striking detail and texture of the fabrics, a critical step in the process in order to successfully usher in a new era of digital binder-cards. 

"If you couldn't feel the fabric with your eyes, this wasn't going to work,” said Vaughn.  "You had to feel with your eyes that the fabric was cut velvet, wool, satin, chenille or even a leather." 

This new trend not only gives the client a more accurate representation of a fabrics characteristics, it also provides a value in saved shelf-space for client’s libraries.  Designtex has successfully reduced shelf-space for some of it clients by condensing 10 binders of the traditional format to merely two digital binders.

Dan L. Irving of Illinois-based Lincoln Office, a design firm for office space, sees Designtex’s innovative idea as a “real game changer for the fabric industry” and one that “simplifies the process.”

To supplement the digital cards, Designtex uploaded the catalogue of high resolution images to its website, designtex.com, thereby offering on-demand access to the firm’s entire upholstery collection in the event that a client needs to prepare a job quote or a project board.

"This format is the future; clients have already asked for the complete collection in the new digital format to upload to their own digital libraries," said Vaughn.

Moreover than the value of convenience, the new digital binders also add to ongoing industry-wide “green” efforts; digital sampling is done without the excessive waste otherwise involved in fabric binder cards, much like the firms sample reclamation program of fabric memos which keeps fabric from landfills. 

"Add the reduced energy and material to produce two binders that do the work of ten, a 75% reduction in shipping weight, the elimination of glues and the use of FSC certified, recyclable paper printed with zero VOC soy ink, and the sum is a new model of sustainable packaging for textile sampling,” said Carol Derby, director of environmental strategy at Designtex.