Is your product development future-ready?

Épisode 1/3 First article in a series on product development and its future challenges.

In the fast-paced world of footwear and leather goods, product success is no longer defined by manufacturing efficiency alone. Market performance and profitability are decided much earlier—during product development. That’s why we are launching this mini-series to explore current product development challenges and the levers available to optimize them.

And yet, many companies still rely on outdated processes: disconnected systems, endless spreadsheets, too many physical prototypes, and siloed teams.

The real question is: why is product success determined so early? Few companies realize it, but most of a product’s costs, margins, and market value are set before production even begins.

Early decisions—on design, materials, components, variants, and feasibility—directly shape the final return on investment. When these decisions are made in silos, without access to accurate data or the right systems, costs rise and delays multiply.

The hidden costs of an outdated development process

Despite best intentions, many footwear and leather goods companies still use methods that no longer meet today’s market demands. Here’s what it often looks like:

1. Too many physical prototypes

   When digital design isn’t integrated with technical data and costing, physical sampling becomes the default. More prototypes mean higher costs and longer decision-making processes. Brands shifting to digital workflows have reported cost reductions of up to 80% by reducing unnecessary prototypes.

   
   

2. Teams working in silos Design, development, costing, production, and marketing often work on different systems—or worse, manual Excel sheets. Without shared visibility, collaboration is limited, and rework becomes inevitable.

   
   

3. Marketing and sales excluded Product teams rarely involve sales and marketing during development. Market insights arrive too late to influence design, leading to products that look great but miss the market’s needs. Digital workflows now enable pre-production sales, generating revenue before manufacturing even begins.

   
   

4. Manual management of materials and BOMs

   Component data, supplier information, and BOMs are often managed in Excel or by email, with no real-time updates or version control. This causes errors, duplication, and inefficiencies.

   
   

5. No real PDM system—or confusion about it Many brands either don’t use a Product Data Management (PDM) system or confuse it with PLM or CAD file storage. In reality, PDM is the operational backbone of product development: managing styles, variants, materials, BOMs, costing, and documentation in a centralized way.

These inefficiencies aren’t just frustrating—they’re expensive, risky, and unsustainable. Conclusion What if all these steps were connected in one fluid, digital workflow? In Part 2 of our mini-series, we’ll dive into how a unified platform like Romans CAD is reshaping the way teams design and develop products.

Stay tuned