Online shopping has drastically grown in people's life during the pandemic. Earlier, when the work was mostly professional at an office space, people spared very less time on mobile phones. Things have turned upside down now. Employees who are on remote working spend their leisure time scrolling through applications in their smartphones. They are often drawn to shopping apps that serve both as a pass-time and fashion guide.
In the age of digitization, artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning-based technologies in the fashion industry are providing automated solutions to everyone starting from manufacturers to app developers, distributors and customers. These disruptive technologies help people leverage digital possibilities into fashion and implement the best into the field. Styling an outfit is an intricate task that involves theme selection, picking of the primary colour, matching of cloth pieces, selection of accessories and getting the right fit. Even choosing a casual wear involves most of the mentioned criteria. Everyone can't have a stylist to guide and select their everyday outfit. However, AI can help in this case. Artificial intelligence is capable of driving a clothes swap app to precise decision-making.
The global clothing and apparel market was valued at US$758.4 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to US$1,182.9 billion in 2022, with a CAGR of 11.8% during the forecast period.
The new wave of change in fashion is shaping the way customers shop. Online applications use technology to filter costumes based on the customer's preferences. Artificial intelligence uses everything from a user's location, to his/her favourite brands, what's trending and so on. A simple 'yes' or 'no' answer from customer helps algorithm to calculate the user's style preferences and curates a selection of brands that ship through their own warehouse.
The increase in the use of mobile applications and the thirst to get more has driven fashion stylists and tech experts to think of extreme ways to deliver their service. Here are some examples of emerging AI mobile applications with contemplating features.
Behold: Behold was founded by Terry Boyle. The application offers a non-binary scale algorithm that puts together outfits based on the consumer's style and shopping strategy. They also compliment the user with direct consultations and curations with celebrity and industry stylists. At Behold, they blend professional stylists, AI personalisation, outfits, and real-time customer feedback into a truly categorized, reimagined way to shop online. This ensures the best in-store shopping experience.
Nate: Nate made its debut this month. The application was launched by Albert Saniger. It enables users to buy anything online with one click of the app, eliminating the multi-step checkout process that most websites require. Nate's foundational principle is 'human inspire, machine creates.' The goal is to foster more human-to-human interaction through Nate's list sharing component, which ultimately eliminates the ideas and products coming to the consumer directly from the brand or platform themselves.
Latitude: The app launched by Anne Christensen curates outfits based on weather forecasts. Latitude provides customers with the feature to buy, save for later, or rent. There is also a live news feed covering culture and politics, as well as a daily inspirational quote and medication program. Latitude users can upload their outfits each day and share them with fellow users of the app in a way that feels far more democratic than fashion's old top-down way of doing things.
There is a huge gap between online shopping platform and shopping applications. Most of the online shopping platforms still operate according to a fairly traditional model. They tell the customers what to buy and how to buy them. Ultimately, no one would want to go through all the 2,000 black pants to select that one, which will suit them. The difference with AI-enabled fashion applications is that users themselves are impacting what's presented to them. The smart applications figure out everything based on the user's style, price-point, type and fit. Online sites can't handle this level of complexity; it has to be tackled more dynamically with technology.
Like every other industry, fashion is also something that consumers can never get tired of. As new fashion styles emerge, the use of technology to convey it to users also spikes. Creating a seamless, personalised mobile shopping experience is at the core of all of these new apps. Whether it's a pandemic or not, people engaging in fashion will definitely increase. The fashion sector is espousing technology to address the rising need.
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