The purpose and intent of creating a product pretotype is to validate the product idea before putting in time and money building an actual “sample prototype”. … So there is a key difference between a prototype and a pretotype.

The basic theory, practice and tools for pretotyping were developed by Alberto Savoia while he served at Google (2008-2012) as Engineering Director and Innovation Agitator. Alberto set out to determine the cause of product failures. He discovered that products failed in the market most often because they were not the “right” fit, and not due to poor execution (of course this has its fair share too).

While the above is mostly applied for tech products at design wolf we pally this approach towards building a concept, collection of line sheet that’s going to be validated before we start to make its final sample.

How will that benefit the designer?

When we create a collection we are mostly unsure of its performance in terms of consumer acceptance as it has various attributes which we don’t come to till the product has reached the stores for sale.

Pretotyping I fashion has 3  litmus test that will enable us to validate the concept from a mere opinion to a data-backed prototype. Which will result in at least 30 40% improved full-price sell-through.

3 types of Pretotypes:

1. Style-o-type: It validates the style in terms of its styling and how it helps flatter the client of a particular body type or body shape.
2. Price-o-type: The product in its sketch form gets converted in a 3d form for the end consumer to vividly visualise its intricate details to validate the price sensitivity.
3. Fit-0-Type: This litmus test is done using the x-ray and heat maps to ensure it has ease and comfort for a body shape it’s designed for. This is considered as one of the most critical aspects of style performance and a reason for us to validate to reduce online returns which impacts brand loyalty and bottom line to a large extent.