Edited by Christian Thompson
Hello readers and welcome back to this week’s Inflection Point. We will be covering the influence of technology on the fashion industry. Over the past three years, the fashion industry has seen a technological revolution spurred in part by COVID-19. We will use our platform this week to deepen our understanding of what is driving the energy around fashion tech and what technologies to be on the lookout for in the future.
Fashion tech is the use of innovative technologies to create tools for the fashion industry that improve production or consumption. Fashion technology can be harnessed by designers, manufacturers, retailers, and customers with the potential to disrupt the fashion industry. Over the past two years, the impact score for “Fashion Tech” has increased by 287%. The future estimate predicts continued growth for the trend in the coming months.
Some areas of the fashion industry that stand to gain the most from fashion technology are manufacturing, supply chain, promotion, and new ways of shopping. Robotics are one way fashion companies are looking to leverage fashion technology to optimize their manufacturing processes. Over the past year, the impact score for “Fashion Robots” has increased by 125% and is expected to continue to grow throughout the year. Fashion companies want to use robotics to increase manufacturing efficiency and overall product quality. Allowing customers to personalize their clothing has been top of mind for many designers, and robotics provide a cost-effective solution.
One area that is seeing innovation is fashion supply chains. Ever since the pandemic started, supply chain issues have become the new normal for fashion companies. Problems such as overproduction and poor inventory management have resulted in significant losses for many players in the space. Over the past year, the impact score for “Fashion Tech Supply Chain” has increased by 233% and the future estimate forecasts continued growth for the trend. This may be driven by venture capital because according to a report by McKinsey, 23% of all funding in the fashion tech space is being allocated to companies focusing on supply chain optimization. One company generating waves is Fashinza.
Fashinza is a B2B supply chain marketplace designed with the goal of mitigating supply chain disruption. Fashinza aims to increase visibility in supply chains and eliminate overproduction for better demand planning. Over the past year, the impact score for “Fashinza” has increased by 345%. The future estimate predicts continued growth to new all-time highs for the signal. This rapid growth can be attributed to the supply chain difficulties that fashion manufacturers faced because of the pandemic. Be on the lookout for more companies like Fashinza in the future as they just closed a Series B funding round of $100 million.
Other aspects of the fashion industry that stand to change because of innovative technology are promotion and the way people shop. Companies have started to leverage technology to create more catered promotions and a better overall customer experience. Some examples include Zhiyi Tech and the trend of virtual reality changing rooms.
Zhiyi Tech is a Chinese fashion tech company specializing in live streaming promotion. Live streaming promotion is an emerging way fashion companies are targeting and reaching consumers. The main differentiating factor of live streaming promotion is that it allows customers to view products in real time, rather than viewing online images. The goal is help consumers better understand what they are purchasing when online shopping. Over the past year, the impact score for “Zhiyi Tech” has increased by 267%. The future estimate predicts continuous growth for the company over the next months.
This new promotion strategy challenges the current e-commerce model of browsing static photos and reading reviews before purchasing a product. Over the past year, the impact score for “Live Streaming Promotion” has increased by 3995% and our platform expects exponential growth during the summer. The way people shop is also changing as our platform shows that AR/VR changing room trends have been generating consumer energy.
Over the past year, the impact scores for “AR Changing Room” and “VR Changing Room” have increased by 277% and 199% respectively. Consumers are now able to try on certain articles of clothing without having to leave the comfort of their homes. Snap Inc, the parent company of Snapchat, has been developing a new AR tool for trying on clothes and shoes. Snap’s goal for the tool is to create a more seamless online shopping experience. The tool is called “Dress Up” and retailers will be able to integrate their products within the Snapchat app. Snap Inc may be positioning itself at the forefront of better online customer experiences through fashion tech.
Technology will create lasting changes to the fashion industry with the ultimate goal of creating more streamlined processes and mitigating inefficiencies. Brands will gain from the innovations fostered through fashion tech and we believe you will start to see many of the technologies we covered begin to become common practice.
Thanks for tuning into this week’s Inflection Point. We hope you enjoyed it and as always have a great weekend.
Cheers!
About NWO.ai
NWO.ai's predictive platform enables leading Fortune 500 companies and government agencies to anticipate and track global cultural shifts by aggregating, analyzing, and producing actionable reports on human-generated data. We are leveraging petabytes of external, noisy, and unstructured data from various sources –including search, social media, blogs, news, patent databases, and SEC filings and we are continuously adding more sources. Our mission is to answer the what, when, and most importantly, 'why' behind a consumer trend and enable our customers to detect these shifts as early as possible.
P.S. We're hiring! Check out our open positions and let us know if you'd be a good fit for our team. We're growing quickly and adding several engineering, sales and customer success roles to help us decode the anatomy of next.
Thank you for reading. If you liked the piece, please help us spread the word and invite your friends to sign up here.