Luxury groups significantly increase their expenses for technology. This is the main result of the fourth edition of the report “Luxury and Technology”, which was created jointly by Bain & Company and the Comité Colbert.
Technology: An essential strategic lever
The study shows: 85 percent of the managing directors: inside it is of the opinion that technology is important for the implementation of your strategy; They even consider 8 percent to be essential. In this area, luxury groups show increasing maturity: 37 percent of them state that they already have the necessary technological skills. The remaining 63 percent said that partially owned them.
On average, luxury groups invest 3.1 percent of their sales in technology. This number is expected. 60 percent of companies in the industry are planning to increase their technology bost by more than 5 percent in the next two to three years, while 28 percent expect an increase of more than 10 percent. This accelerated investment activity is not least due to the need for artificial intelligence. Cyber security and system modernization are also important expenses.
At the same time, the report underlines the importance of closer cooperation between management and technology teams. “Today Cios lead [Chief Information Officers] no longer just; They take a central place in the transformation of luxury houses, ”confirms Bénédicte Épinay, general leaning of the Comité Colbert.
“In a tense economic context, luxury houses are faced with the need to optimize any resource used,” added Joëlle de Montgolfier, global director of the Distribution and Luxury and Research department at Bain & Company. For Montgolfier, the goal is not to “simply reduce them to save money, or increase them to get closer to an industry benchmark”, but “to align them as precisely as possible to the goals of every company.”
This technological transformation is particularly important for the luxury industry. It has to preserve their tradition and adapt to new consumption behavior and at the same time protect itself from cyber threats. This problem, for example, concerned the luxury group Kering, which was victim of a cyber attack in June.
Optimize investments and consolidate cooperation
In order to increase the effectiveness of these investments, the report suggests three strategic levers:
- Adjust technological priorities: Investments must be perfectly tailored to the overall strategy of the house.
- Moderate infrastructures: It is crucial to rationalize technological architecture, eliminate redundancies and promote common platforms to create synergies.
- Internalize competencies: 68 percent of innovation expenditure is currently being awarded to external providers. In order to gain agility, the report recommends internalizing certain skills and using innovative tools such as AI-based programming assistant: inside.
Fashion and artificial intelligence
In addition to the luxury area, two current examples of important partnerships between the fashion sector and artificial intelligence are mentioned: the recent participation of Zara-Mother Inditex in the “intelligent” robot-up Theker Robotics and the potential participation of the meta group (formerly Facebook) in the French glasses group Essilorluxottica.
These examples illustrate a remarkable fact of our time: Today, not only the luxury sector radically encloses the path of technology, but the entire fashion industry, from fast-fashion actors: inside and inditex to glasses corporations.
In addition, the tools of artificial intelligence are now part of the everyday life of many creative in the industry. The Spanish company Desigual, for example, has not only found a creative tool in the AI, but also a way to consolidate its market positioning. As part of its Awesome LAB program, the company uses KI for product design and personalized marketing. These practices are becoming increasingly popular.
The full report “Luxury and Technology: Tailoring Investment Strategies for Greater Business Impact” can be viewed on the Bain & Company website.
This article was used with digital tools translated.
Fashionunited uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the translation of articles and improve the end result. They help us make the international reporting of fashionunited a German -speaking readership quickly and comprehensively accessible. Articles that have been translated using AI-based tools are read and carefully edited by our editor: Correcting inside before they are published. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me by email to [email protected]