Designing your own shoes online at Nike or customizing your clothes is becoming more and more popular. The options online vary and customers are willing to pay more for customized products (Deloitte, 2015). Companies are investing in emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence to improve customers experience and create more customer awareness. Artificial Intelligence has been used in multiple ways to contribute to these goals.
First of all, Artificial Intelligence is used to give recommendations about the accurate size. For example, at the Tommy Hilfiger web shop customers are asked to answer several questions about their height, weight, belly shape, and fit preference. Hereby, web shops want to decline the current average of 40% purchase return (Byers, 2020). As a result, this will reduce unnecessary shipping costs and improve customer satisfaction.
Second, Artificial Intelligence can collect and analyze data that help fashion companies in predicting customers preferences (Shamir, 2018). Moreover, this data provides insight in trends and purchase patterns, and will help companies by estimating the desired inventory level of products. As a consequence, Artificial Intelligence can improve the efficiency of sales.
Lastly, Artificial Intelligence is used to make the manufacturing process more efficient. Artificial Intelligence systems can spot faults and imperfections in fabrics. Furthermore, it can check whether the designed color matches the color of the produced textile (Schmelzer, 2019) . According to Capgemini, Artificial Intelligence make processes and operations more efficient so that retailers can save $340 billion annually by the year 2022.
There are many more possibilities with the emerging technologies of Artificial Intelligence. Applying the various options will help the fashion industry to better respond to changing customer demand. In this way, fashion becomes more intelligent and will increase customer satisfaction.
Do you agree that the Artificial Intelligence technologies are adding more and more value in the fashion industry? Or do you have a different opinion?
Byers, G. (2020) ‘Artificial Intelligence is Restyling the Fashion Industry’. Accessed on 15 September 2020 on https://towardsdatascience.com/artificial-intelligence-is-restyling-the-fashion-industry-c2ce29acae0d.
Capgemini (n.d) ‘Building the Retail Superstar’. Accessed on 15 September 2020 on https://www.capgemini.com/research/building-the-retail-superstar-how-unleashing-ai-across-functions-offers-a-multi-billion-dollar-opportunity/
Deloitte (2015) ‘The Deloitte Consumer Review’. Accessed on 15 September 2020 on https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ch/Documents/consumer-business/ch-en-consumer-business-made-to-order-consumer-review.pdf
Schmelzer, R. (2019) ‘The Fashion Industry Is Getting Moer Intelligent With AI’. Accessed on 15 September 2020 on https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/07/16/the-fashion-industry-is-getting-more-intelligent-with-ai/#52ce93e63c74
Shamir, S. (2018) ‘How technology is changing the fashion industry’. Accessed on 15 September 2020 on https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/08/14/how-technology-is-changing-the-fashion-industry/
I think AI certainly has a lot of advantages for the fashion industry in terms of suggesting the right clothing sizes and predicting customer preferences. As you mentioned, the Hilfiger webshop is asking customers to enter their body sizes (height, weight and belly shape for example). I wonder if for some people this might feel a bit uncomfortable and invasive? You are actually exposing your body in a way to the brand’s webshop, which in a sense can certainly help in finding the right sizing but might also be something that some people feel insecure about and rather not share online.
Also you mentioned that it might be beneficial in predicting inventory. I also think another very positive aspect could be that because of the right size recommendation, customers would have to send less clothing back to the warehouses, which helps to create less waste. Because as we know, a lot of those webshops actually do not use the clothes anymore but burn them because it is too expensive to keep it.
I’m curious to see how AI further develops in the fashion industry!
Hey Anne, thank you for sharing your insights on the application of AI in the fashion industry. Whilst I believe that the use of AI will continue to increase in the future, I think that consumers‘ concerns regarding privacy and the use of data will slow this trend. In addition, one cannot neglect the fact that AI is prone to biases caused by the characteristics of past data fed into the system. Thus, recommended clothes could still not fit the customer. Therefore, I believe that it will still take quite some time before algorithms are accurate enough and before consumers are convinced that their data is sufficiently protected.
Thank you for this blog post! It really makes you realize how much our world has changed in so little time! A few years ago, the fashion industry was very far from using AI ! The technology development could also help the fashion industry become more sustainable as fast fashion is the second most polluting industry. Making process more efficient through AI could be one of the solution. A footprint calculator could also indicate on each piece of clothing how much gaz was released in the air to create it! This could help raise awareness. Let’s see if technology can be used to solve sustainability problems!
Thank you for the interesting read Anne! I definitely believe that AI is adding more value to the fashion industry through the above mentioned examples such as personalisation. I think that given the crowded fashion industry, players must adopt digitisation strategies in order to keep up with other players. Whilst I think that AI adds value, I hope that it can add value to profit as well as societal and environmental causes.
Very interesting read! It really got me thinking on the possibilities of AI in the fashion industry, but also definitely on its limits. Like many other reactions, I also wonder about the privacy sensitive information that the AI in the fashion industry requires in order to optimize its potential. The exposing body weight and sizes for the collection of data seems invasive, specially if returning a package is not always an inconvenience for consumers. For it to succeed I think that consumers ought to be convinced of its potential of enhancing convenience in shopping. Only then consumers would be prepared to share such personal information.
I totally agree on the potential of AI to create sales and supply chain efficiency’s. The fashion industry specifically is an industry with large disconnectivity in the supply chain. I can imagine that connecting stakeholders such as suppliers and manufactures within the production process, can really be cost-effictive and make the chain more transparent. On the other hand, maybe that transparency is exactly what is needed in order to make the fashion industry also more sustainable?