Heartdub, a software startup that provides cloth simulation fashion design solutions to clients in the clothing industry, secured tens of millions of yuan of investment from Whales Capital and early investors in Zoom.
Founded in Seattle in 2014, Heartdub entered the Chinese market in 2018, and began gathering data on various fabrics and developing its Heartdub One full-service platform. Heartdub One uses a 3D graphics engine to allow collaborative clothing design and render products for digital showcasing, eliminating the need for physical samples. Heartdub Materials, the company’s AI simulation platform, can enable the visualization of different fabrics interacting with each other in real-time.
Heartdub’s technology analyzes the structure of actual fabrics and inputs the data into its physics engine to simulate a fabric’s physical properties like weight and texture to accurately simulate movement, according to CTO Li Ruohao.
Targeting fashion brands and manufacturers, Heartdub operates using a subscription model and charges customers between RMB 10,000 (USD 1,500) and RMB 200,000 (USD 30,900) depending on the scale and nature of their requirements. In addition to supplying major film production projects, Heartdub’s current clients include sportswear brand Li Ning, textiles company Shandong Ruyi, and fashion retail platform provider Mengxiang.com, while it has also provided its visualization services to Dior and Wensli. The company has over 30 employees in China, more than half of which are committed to research and development.
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KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content published by 36Kr. This article was originally written by Lu Jingwen for 36Kr.