The future of fashion - the consumer is the game changer

If you google the term "Future of Fashion" you get a lot of information about technologies like AR (Augmented Reality), which can project clothes onto your body if you are shopping from home and don't know the fit, for example. And it's not just the systems that are getting smarter. Our clothes are getting smarter too and can even monitor and improve our health. The evolution of design and innovation in products, known as “smart clothing”, is gaining momentum in the industry and among consumers. Watch TED Institute's Janani Bhaskar's presentation on smart clothing:

Technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence), deep learning and machine leaning, which are still in a young stage and may well be used in all areas of the fashion industry, are also becoming more popular.

For example, the use of AI in replenishment serves to free up employees by automating daily micro-decisions and finding the hidden sales potential in the mass of products and at point of sales (POS).

AI is the tool to achieve this purpose. It's about speed, through automation, deeper insights, through learning algorithms and planning certainty, through proven forecasts. The purpose is to reach the consumer even better and more individually in the world of no-line commerce.

The game changer and crucial factor for further development in the fashion industry, is the consumer.

More and more brands and retailers are recognizing this and making the change. Patrick Draijer, owner of YAYA, realized 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 efficiency boost."
To identify and automate the dynamics in consumer behavior, YAYA has been using Chainbalance's Smart Merchandise Management solution since 2019.

However, a stronger focus on the consumer is not the only important goal in the future of the fashion industry. With 4% of the international market value and around $406 billion, the fashion industry is an important part of the global market when it comes to jobs, for example. At the same time, the fashion industry also bears a great responsibility concerning the handling of sustainability. The fashion industry produces 10% of humanity's total carbon emissions, is the second largest consumer of the world's water supply and pollutes the oceans with microplastics. Considering these hard facts, the fashion industry has a huge responsibility to transform itself.

The question about the future of fashion cannot be answered precisely, but it is significant in view of the importance and relevance of the industry! To shed light on this question from the perspective of different areas of the market, 4 experts from the fashion industry took part in the research:

In addition to ongoing digitization and product innovations, wholesale structures will continue to change. Wholesale in Germany continues to be very strong and successful - both online and offline. Cooperation’s and partnerships between retailers and brands will intensify due to greater transparency, especially in production and pre-stages, and due to the consumer-driven market - the classic "buy and bye" in wholesale will become the exception. Above all, processes such as the classic pre-order will under scrutiny 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 is becoming clear that the path from the digital, virtually available and fashion product (even via NFTs) is also leading faster to the deliverable product, which finds its way to the customer in a significantly differentiated and controlled manner. Digital and virtual fashion is becoming suitable for everyday use. Especially in fashion retail, algorithmic innovation - the use of advanced analytics and AI - machine-based, computer-based observation and recognition, and the automated generation of knowledge about fast-sellers and slow-sellers, virtual try-ons and the use of this knowledge in PLM systems and platforms (from b2b to social media) is shaping the fashion business..

We are currently noticing that customers are once again looking for advice and inspiration. The higher the quality of the occasion from the customer's point of view, the more time he takes to go to the store. At the same time, however, we are noticing via our online activities that customers are responding to familiar items that do not have a high priority. This has nothing to do with price. Customers don't want to go to the store, they want to do it through online shops. We expect these two trends to develop even more strongly in the future. It remains exciting how we will curate our assortments in the future so that we can continue to meet both demands. To this end, we are excited about how new data can moderate and AI can support us. The customer expects us to meet their demands on all channels, when they are in our store they demand the big buzz, when they order online, they demand fast and convenient delivery.

Customer loyalty and customer experience are not new buzzwords. Customers expect a perfect shopping experience online. The measures for optimizing the customer journey vary greatly. The big challenge is to find the right tool for the target group and the business. It doesn't always have to be the big marketing automation or the headless system. Sometimes it's the great after-sales customer service on the phone. Curated shopping, live shopping events, 3D fitting rooms, video chat consultations, onsite interactions of the customer with the brand. The toolbox is big and the demands of customers more diverse than ever. Add to that the rapid speed at which new trends in e-commerce come and go. Know your customer and adapt to his/her needs. Accelerated by this evolution, AI assisted systems will become increasingly important and a big driver of further innovation.