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When Tech Meets
Fashion & Luxury
Find exciting blog articles on how Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will radically transform the traditional fashion & luxury industry
Introduction
The Fashion & Luxury industry is a dynamic, complex and hypercompetitive ecosystem. Profitability is high with an estimated value of the global apparel & accessories market of 1.5 trillion dollars [49]. Differentiation strategies are the primary driver for economic success in this massive industry. One way to accomplish this is with emerging technologies that fashion companies can adopt.
In fact, Technology and Fashion & Luxury have always intersected, even though both are usually perceived as two mutually exclusive fields. Fashion & Luxury has always been a hotbed for technology: from the invention of the sewing machine to the latest rise of e-commerce. The purpose of the following blog articles is to examine how technology can reshape the Fashion & Luxury industry: from Blockchain in the fashion supply chain, to AI in trend forecasting, to IoT in smart wearables, to virtual try-on AR features on our smartphone, to 3D printers that manufacture personalized products - technology is turning the entire fashion industry upside down.
Blog articles
Paving the Path for Digital Transformation in Fashion & Luxury
The Fashion & Luxury industry often faces the challenge of blending the past with the present. In particular, luxury brands such as Gucci have a unique brand identity or DNA that is enriched by a deep heritage, this often leaves them stuck between yesterday and today. I believe that technology can help fashion and luxury companies bridge the gap between the past, present, and future.
My goal in the previous blog articles was to take a nuanced and realistic view of the opportunities that major technologies such as Blockchain, AI, IoT, AR and 3D printing can provide to the Fashion & Luxury industry. As exciting as the technologies might be, it should not be forgotten that most of them are still in their infancy. I see huge potential for technology to create a more fashionable, customized, transparent, better aligned, and sustainable fashion ecosystem that prevents us from continuing along the current treadmill of misalignment and ambiguity. However, those benefits could only materialize once some of the major concerns surrounding the technologies have been addressed. Concerns such as privacy risks, high energy consumption, complex policy questions, general technology scepticism and potential organizational inertia in the change process.
Some of the problems are so complex that, I believe, they will only be solved when all stakeholders in the fashion ecosystem collaborate and try to find joint solutions. The message and tone at the top should also be clear: There should be room for experimentation with new technologies where failures are not penalized but rather seen as a necessary prerequisite for organization-wide learning. I am convinced that both measures will pave the way for a digital transformation in the Fashion & Luxury industry in the years to come.