OptiTex Sets Expansion Plans for the Global Market

November 04, 2011

Computer-aided design software maker OptiTex is expanding its horizons.

 

Based in Petah Tikva, Israel, with U.S. headquarters in New York, OptiTex recently expanded its reach in China and India—and has its sights on growth in North America, as well.

 

Founded nearly 25 years ago, OptiTex has more than 25,000 active installations around the world—with much of its growth occurring within the last six years, according to OptiTex President Yorum Burg.

 

Today, apparel makes up about 65 percent of the company’s customer base, with the balance coming from non-apparel manufacturers, such as leather-bag manufacturers, car-seat makers, aerospace companies and industrial-fabrics manufacturers, Burg said. Another growing market is education.

 

“In the last two years, we saw a large number of leading U.S. universities converting from old legacy systems to the OptiTex platform,” Burg said. “Educators cited that they needed to offer students and then graduates ‘patternmaking 2.0’ tools to help them enter the workforce equipped with knowledge and experience in operating the next generation of CAD solutions.”

 

California Apparel News Contributing Writer Sarah Wolfson recently caught up with Burg to discuss the company’s history—and its plans for the future.

 

Can you share a bit of history about OptiTex—its mission, its partnerships and major technological advancements?

 

OptiTex was founded in 1988 with a mission to bring advanced design technologies to assist design houses, retailers and manufacturers in the transition from manual ways of working to automated ones. At the time, the initial steps were not easy as CAD systems, and computers in the ’80s were extremely expensive. Since then, technology has become much more affordable, and we have filled a niche in the market.
OptiTex is unique in the sense that we always believed that we could advance through partnerships. These partnerships have assisted us in identifying how fabrics behave in 3-D as well as proving concepts in research conducted with leading universities. Our product development has been based in Israel since our inception, and our partnerships for development extend to working closely with Intel and NVidia on the performance enhancements of garment simulation on GPUs [graphic-processor units].

 

What new software systems are in development or have been recently released?

 

OptiTex is known for its “technology kitchen,” another word for our development center in Israel, where new developments and solutions are carried out every day. In the past 15 years, Israel has found immense success in its high-tech sector, and that same success is found within OptiTex in our systematic developments of our products. For example, OptiTex has most recently released version 11 of our signature software, [and the company] is already into the development of version 12 and the base architectural structure for version 13. Every version carries a host of new features and enhancements with tools that are designed to increase time to market and reduce the time it takes to execute the daily tasks. Many of the OptiTex solutions are unique in the language they are written. This uniqueness can be seen in the way the solution interfaces to other applications and in the integration of platforms. Because of this constant innovation, OptiTex as a CAD vendor offers a wider, more comprehensive solution than other software providers.

---

 

Follow the link for the second page of the interview