A market place for textile images and patterns

TISSUS - 20718

keywords: image bank, multimedia, textile industry, fashion, clothing

Start Date: 1 October 1995 / Duration: 24 months

[ contact / participants ]

Summary

The global objective of the project is to set up an image bank and its relevant environment for acquiring, tailoring, storing and delivering images to enterprises in the textile industry. The system will help textile enterprises to address their markets (fashion, clothing, decoration, and textiles for technical use) by supporting their creative process, specifically by offering them access to wide collections of historical textile information and images.

From the point of view of customers (textile enterprises, mainly SMEs and micro-enterprises), the Tissus bank is intended to provide cost-effective and attractive services, providing them with access to:

• a virtually infinite textile collection by interconnecting a set of existing collections
• information and products through telematics.

From the point of view of the providers of collections (museums, schools, associations), the Tissus bank ensures a wider audience, and financial return in the form of royalties received whenever the information is commercialised.

The project relies on:

• the technical and market background of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Lyon, which has operated a textile image bank commercially since 1994.
• previous results from CITED (EP 5469), to deal efficiently with copyright and security management.

Three specific objectives are defined to measure the outcomes of the project:

• To conceive and prototype the Tissus bank
• To deliver a system satisfying user needs
• To estimate the commercial viability of the bank and define the exploitation plan.

In order to attain them, the consortium brings together IT service providers with an interest both in developing the solution and hosting the future Tissus services, and a user group representing textile museums, textile industrials and institutions such as Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

From the technological viewpoint, the project mainly requires the development of a set of secure information retrieval services, and a set of added-value services for image processing, pattern tailoring, ordering and/or reserving access to high-quality images.

From the validation viewpoint, a pilot application will cover France (Paris and Lyon), Greece and Italy and will aim to set up and use four textile image banks. A first validation phase will concern regional test-beds for assessing user acceptance of the telematics services and evaluating each regional market. A second validation phase will concern the trans-national pilot. Besides technical validation, its main objective is to obtain accurate economic estimates of: firstly, the additional costs required for operating the trans-national component; and secondly, the potential additional income (increased tariffs and increased audience). This pilot phase will therefore be essential for setting up the commercial exploitation of the project results.

At the end of the project, the consortium intends to exploit the results commercially according to the following guidelines:

1. The four proposers hosting Tissus sites will start by exploiting them independently. For advertising and promotional purposes, basic information services will be available free of charge based on a limited subset of the Tissus banks. The information retrieval services will require payment on a 'time consumption' principle. Each added-value service will imply specific invoicing and payment procedures.
2. Depending on the results of the trans-national pilot, a trans-national Tissus Bank could be exploited according to the same principles.
3. Collection holders will be remunerated on the basis of access to information. They will receive periodic payments automatically computed by the Tissus site with which they work.

Contact Point

Mr Norbert Benamou
SELISA
8-10 rue de Chevilly
F-94260 FRESNES
tel + 33/ 1-49 84 63 00
fax + 33/ 1-49 84 63 01
E-mail: benamou@dialup.francenet.fr

Participants

SELISA - F - C
Chambre de Commerce & d'Industrie de LYON - F - P
R&S INFORMATICA - I - P
EPSILON - GR - P
CYCNOS - F - P
EURITIS - F - A
ENSCI/ANAT - F - A
LYON TEXTILE MUSEUM - F - A
CENTRO VOLTA - I - A
BENAKI MUSEUM - GR - A

TISSUS - 20718, December 1995

please address enquiries to the ESPRIT Information Desk

html version of synopsis by nick.cook@newcastle.ac.uk