Scotweb.co.uk Debuts World's First Custom Tartan Designer So Anyone Can Now Create Their Own Unique Tartan Skirts, Accessories, Kilts, And Fabric

Edinburgh, Scotland (PRWEB) November 26, 2009 -- Custom designed clothing is hot. And now anyone can wear their own unique fabric. With the new Scotweb.co.uk online tartan designer (http://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartandesign/), it's easy to create a totally original tartan for kilts (http://www.scotweb.co.uk/kilts/), skirts, tartan accessories, homewares, and fabrics.

On 30 November (Scotland's national "St Andrew's Day") Scotland's largest heritage retailer publicly launches this ground-breaking new facility.

This service solves forever the dilemma of how to make sure no one else is dressed the same. But it's much more. Tartan has a unique historical heritage, with family tartans, club tartans, and company tartans, each in unique patterns of colours with their own meanings. The beauty of this service is that anyone can now create their own new tradition, perhaps basing their design on an old favourite, or combining two families' traditional colours into a wedding tartan, for example.

Ordering products in an original tartan design is just as easy as buying any other item from Scotweb.co.uk (http://www.scotweb.co.uk/), already renowned for offering the world's largest range of tartan (http://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartan/) products. Fabrics are woven in finest pure new wools, or else polyviscose and other fabrics, with highly competitive pricing. Large discounts are available for commercial volumes.

Instead of costing hundreds or thousands of pounds for the services of an expert, every business or family can now design their own tartan at virtually no expense, with more creative control than ever before. Tartans designed in the system are already being recorded in the official Scottish Register of Tartans, to ensure their historic recognition.

Dr Nick Fiddes, Scotweb.co.uk Managing Director, says: "This new tartan design facility has been by far the most challenging project we've undertaken in over fifteen years on the web. As a governor of the Scottish Tartans Authority, I wanted to create a facility that would respect tradition, and that our weavers could work from directly. But as an internet entrepreneur, I was determined to open up a process that has been exclusively for experts, and develop a simple and great fun online tool. I think we've succeeded."

"The feedback from our community of pre-release testers has been fantastic. One woman in California has created literally hundreds of designs already, which range from sublime to wonderfully silly. And the first fabrics from our weavers are looking superb. It's amazing after all our hard technical effort to see it being turned into such beautiful materials, simply inspired by someone's creative imagination."

Two years development went into making a sophisticated process simple and intuitive for ordinary users with no expert knowledge. The online tools give full help from start to finish, whilst allowing total creative flexibility to achieve professional results:

* The user can start with a blank sheet, or modify any existing tartan from thousands recorded.

* There's a full spectrum colour picker, or a photo library of actual weavers' yarns to ensure the fabric looks just as expected when woven.

* The interface uses simple click-and-drag functionality, with instant visual results (using patented programming).

* As a design develops there is feedback on its suitability for weaving, and a full fabric preview.

* There is even a panel of world-leading tartan authorities on hand to critique designs before weaving.

Scotweb.co.uk was founded in 1995, as Scotland's pioneer secure ecommerce site. The first company in the world to market kilts, bagpipes, and other specialist Scottish products on the web, Scotweb.co.uk remains the only retailer on earth where customers can find every tartan ever recorded, and then buy fabrics and products in those rare tartans - thanks to Scotweb.co.uk's unrivaled ability to weave specialist tartans to order in short lengths, and to custom tailor individual garments or other products to order.

###