Consumer Driven Local Production with the Help of Virtual Design and Digital Manufacturing. Objectives: • To connect enabling virtual design and sales technology to enabling digital manufacturing technology and demonstrate their advantages and benefits; • To demonstrate how virtual design and sales technology can be exploited by the fashion and sports goods industry and how, by means of such technology, consumer driven local production can be established. • To accelerate and support the growth of European creative industries, especially in competing against low cost imports and bring production back to Europe; • Through efficient dissemination create tens of innovative solutions with high market potential for the European creative industries SMEs. How they will be achieved: • A study of consumer attitudes and preferences towards interactive sales networks and customization sets the basis for the project. In order to utilize already available technology and to aim beyond the state-of-the-art, a Kick-Off Round Table Workshop will be organized at the beginning with wide participation by suitable IT suppliers. • The novelties of the project are the inspiring and interactive avatar, radically new product construction system connected to no-inventory continuous from-roll-to-bag production, plus connecting digital consumer driven design to consumer driven manufacturing. • The results of the project will be efficiently demonstrated by Road Show Workshops to be organized throughout Europe in cooperation with local Industry Associations. Relevance to the work programme: • The project will stimulate collaboration between ICT innovative technology providers and creative industry SMEs for wider adaption and deployment of innovative digital solutions. • The aim is to accelerate and support the growth of European creative industries by improving their competitiveness and by bringing production back to Europe.

There is a lack of widely available, easy to use, e-commerce tools adapted to the idiosyncrasy of design-driven customised footwear. Customizable goods are not manufactured until the customer co-design/customize the product and makes a formal order: this implies the absence of physical samples, and supposes a huge number of possible functional, aesthetic and design combinations. Specialized tools are required to offer the customer the co-design possibilities, additional tools for virtual test and for fitting are required to mitigate the absence of physical samples, and specific e-commerce tools are required to adequately offer the product to the potential customer. A notable lack is the absence of a specific CSE (Comparison Search Engine) focused on customizable footwear. ExpandCustom make available to any customizable footwear manufacturer (no matter the big or the small they are) the opportunity to easily and competitively market their products in Internet, by means of a set of specialized tools that allow the fast deployment of a shopping site connected to a CSE focused on customizable consumer goods. ExpandCustom appears to the consumer and to the manufacturer as two sides of a mirror: -For the consumer is a specialized CSE: allow buyers to focus their Internet search on a unique location specialize in customizable footwear, rather than having to navigate through a huge number of sites. -For the manufacturer is a set of tools that allow an easy deployment of a shopping site integrated with existing ERP/CRM and with unassisted CSE feed of products, including functionalities specific to customizable products: co-design tool, virtual models creation/conversion, virtual materials, virtual tester tool and fitting tool. The CSE will be the driver of all Internet traffic to the manufacturer of customizable footwear, and the creation tools will be the brick of the shopping site.