If you google the term “Future of Fashion” you will come across a lot of information about technologies such as AR (Augmented Reality), which can be used to project clothing onto the body when you are shopping from home and do not know the fit, for example. And it’s not just the systems that are getting smarter. Our clothes are also becoming smarter and can even monitor and improve our health. The development of design and innovation in products, the so-called “smart clothing”, is increasingly being used in industry and by consumers. Watch the TED Institute’s Janani Bhaskar’s presentation on smart clothing:
Technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence), deep learning and machine learning, which are still in their infancy and may be used in all areas of the fashion industry, are also becoming increasingly popular.
The use of AI, e.g. in goods replenishment, serves to relieve employees by automating the daily micro-decisions and recognizing the hidden sales potential in the mass of articles and areas.
AI is the means to an end. It’s about speed, through automation, deeper insights, through learning algorithms and planning security, through proven forecasts. The consumer should be reached even better and more individually in no-line commerce.
The game changer and decisive factor for further development in the fashion industry is the consumer.
More and more brands and retailers are realizing this and making the switch. Patrick Draijer, owner of YAYA, recognized the added value of automation and intelligent software solutions early on:
“I love data and efficiency, and I knew if we could automate our allocation and replenishment processes, it would give us a big efficiencies.”
In order to recognize and automate the dynamics in consumer behavior, YAYA has been using the since 2019 Chainbalance Smart Merchandise Management solution.
But not only the stronger focus on the consumer is an important goal in the future of the fashion industry. With four percent of the international market value and around 406 billion US dollars, the fashion industry is an important part of the world market when it comes to jobs, for example. At the same time, the fashion industry also bears a great deal of responsibility when it comes to dealing with sustainability.
The fashion industry causes ten percent of all human carbon emissions, is the second largest consumer of the world’s water supply and pollutes the oceans with microplastics. In light of these hard facts, the fashion industry has a great responsibility to change.
The question of the future of fashion cannot be answered precisely, but given the size and relevance of the industry, it is definitely important! To shed light on this question from the perspective of different areas of the market, four experts were interviewed:
In addition to ongoing digitization and product innovations, the structures in wholesale will continue to change, among other things. Wholesale in Germany is still very strong and successful – online and offline. Cooperation and partnerships between retailers and brands will intensify through greater transparency, especially in production and the preliminary stages, and through the consumer-driven market – the classic “buy and bye” in wholesale will increasingly become the exception. Above all, processes such as classic pre-orders are being put to the test in order to become faster and more cost-effective.
Digital fashion and algorithmic innovation are increasingly shaping the design of collections as well as the sale and resale of clothing. In discussions and in cooperation with leading clothing manufacturers and fashion retail platforms, it becomes clear that the path from the digital, virtually available and marketed fashion product (also via NFTs) leads ever faster to the deliverable product, which controls its way to the customer in a much more differentiated way finds. Digital and virtual fashion becomes suitable for everyday use. Especially in fashion retail, algorithmic innovation – the use of advanced analytics and AI – characterizes machine, computer-based vision and recognition and the automated generation of knowledge about hits and bums, virtual try-ons and the use of this knowledge in PLM systems and platforms (from b2b to social media) the fashion scene.
We are currently feeling that customers want advice and inspiration again. The more valuable the event is from the customer’s point of view, the more time it takes to do business. At the same time, however, we have noticed through our online activities that customers react to well-known articles that are not too important. This has nothing to do with the price. Customers do not want to make their way to the store, they want to do this via online shops. We assume that these two trends will develop even more strongly in the future. It remains exciting how we will curate our ranges in the future in order to continue to meet both requirements. We are excited to see how new data can moderate and how AI can support us. The customer expects us to meet their needs on all channels, when they are in our shop they want the great cinema, when they order online they want fast and convenient delivery.
Customer loyalty and customer experience are not new buzzwords. The customer expects a perfect shopping experience online. The measures to optimize the customer journey vary greatly. Finding the right tool for the target group and your business is the big challenge. It doesn’t always have to be the big marketing automation or the headless system. Sometimes it’s the great after-sales customer service over the phone. Curated shopping, live shopping events, 3D fittings, consultations via video chat, on-site customer interactions with the brand. The tool box is large and customer demands are more diverse than ever. Add to that the rapid pace at which new trends in e-commerce come and go. Know your customer and adapt to his/her needs. Accelerated by this development, AI-supported systems will become increasingly important and will be a major driver of further innovations.
