Founded in 1948, PUMA is now one of the world’s leading players in the sportswear industry. The company designs and manufactures a wide range of products for sports and leisure ranging from footwear and technical apparel to accessories distributed in over 80 countries. As a fast-growing global brand, PUMA faces complex challenges daily, particularly in managing workflows between design and production teams. The multinational nature of the group leads to a wide geographic spread: the professionals involved in product development are based in different and distant countries, causing communication between departments to be inconsistent and slowing down sample approval timelines. The continuous back-and-forth between design and production hindered decision-making and delayed time-to-market.

To overcome these challenges and streamline internal coordination, PUMA began collaborating with Browzwear in 2017 by adopting the VStitcher 3D CAD system. The goal was clear: to optimize and digitize product development while accelerating time to market. The project kicked off with the R&D team in Hong Kong, where select developers were trained in using the software. VStitcher made it possible to turn 2D sketches into realistic digital prototypes quickly, facilitating revisions and updates. These virtual samples could be shared in real time with all stakeholders, significantly reducing the number of physical prototypes needed.

Thanks to the results achieved in Hong Kong, the design team in Germany also adopted the solution particularly for the Sportstyle line. This marked the creation of a true digital workflow between departments, making it easier for teams across different continents to collaborate. Information exchange became faster, more direct, and more accurate, leading to improved overall efficiency and a reduction in sample iterations.

Within Browzwear’s open ecosystem, PUMA also integrated EcoShot®, a technology developed by Metail that enables simulation of 3D garments on real people. This tool increased confidence in digital prototypes by providing a precise and photo-realistic preview of the final result at early stages. Being able to see a garment worn on a realistic model made decision-making faster and more informed well before physical production even began.

The effectiveness of 3D prototyping quickly spread to other areas of the company. The PUMA Motorsport division, for example, benefited from the introduction of a vector-based workflow, which improved the efficiency of designing and updating graphics for technical garments and streetwear collections. More and more suppliers around the world are now adapting to this new approach, adopting the same software solutions and contributing to the development of a shared, integrated digital infrastructure.

Digitization has had a positive impact across the entire development process, improving interdepartmental communication, reducing errors, increasing precision, and speeding up market entry. Thanks to 3D design, PUMA has been able to greatly accelerate decision-making during the development phase, resulting in a leaner, more efficient production cycle and a significant reduction in time to market.