Fashion retail is one of the booming industries in the world, with an estimated market value of about 3 Trillion USD, as of the 2018 report.
Despite its already established nature, Artificial Intelligence is emerged to take fashion retail by storm. AI in fashion retail is completely transforming the way brands design and manufacture their products, to the ways they promote and sell them.
How Artificial Intelligence is being used in fashion retail?
Among the fundamental uses of artificial intelligence in the fashion industry, is the deployment of chatbots, through which fashion brands collect information about the customers. The gathered data of customers helps the data analysts to cater to customers’ unique needs more efficiently and intelligently.
For instance, an online customer looking for a new dress can easily interact with the intelligent agent through a mobile app or website. These AI-based tools help customers to take meaningful decisions.
With each passing day, AI is becoming a more crucial asset to the whole e-commerce industry. Apart from large online shopping stores, brick and motor fashion retailers are also using machine learning and AI algorithms to understand and meet their buyers’ needs more smoothly.
In short, AI can boost the productivity of online retail stores astonishingly by empowering them with high-level data that can be leveraged to improve business operations. Through categorizing the online purchases, sales, returns, store owners can keep a record and analyze which store needs what products.
According to a survey conducted by Capgemini, retailers can save up to $340 billion by the end of 2022, by making their operations more efficient.
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning – Impact in the Fashion Industry
Supported by the personalization, easy availability of big data, and other such services, the fashion industry seems merely impossible without the use of Artificial Intelligence. According to the statistics report, revenues in the fashion market are expected to reach US$664,474m by the end of 2020.
Another research from McKinsey has found that 20 percent of the top-notch fashion brands are subject to generate 144 percent profits of the industry. Today, more and more fashion brands are investing in AI and machine learning technologies to stay competitive in the fierce retail market.
Next, to the role of artificial intelligence in fashion retail, the blog throws light on its notable application and uses.
1. Clothes Designing with AI
With the help of the sophisticated algorithms that analyze the past designs and the best possible trends, AI helps to create new apparel clothing designs along with sewing patterns.
This feature has enabled the fashion retailers to submit their AI-based clothing designs to the cloth manufacturing companies to further simplify the patterns.
For example, Zalendo, Germany based fashion retail, is using AI-enabled fashion designs that are totally based on the customers’ desired colors, style, and other texture preferences.
2. Design and Manufacturing Process with AI
Today, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence algorithms have enabled fashion brands to identify the rapidly-changing AI trends and deliver the most recent fashion accessories to the retail market faster than traditional fashion retailers.
As a result, some well-known fashion brands are satisfying their customers by knowing the seasonal demands and preparing the right supply of the most recent clothing.
3. Virtual Merchandising with AI
AI-powering technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality are now bridging the gap between the online and traditional retail shopping experience.
For instance, with the help of traditional Augmented Reality, customers can get access to any merchandise through digital media.
4. AI in Fashion Retail
Another great application of artificial intelligence in fashion retail is providing automated solutions to data analysts.
They use such data to monitor the customers when they are shopping and visualize their emotions to know what kind of items they like and what they neglect.
5. AI in Retail Fashion with Smart Mirror
The inception of AI-powered smart mirrors has enabled online retailers to further simplify the customers’ shopping experience.
With virtual’ visualization technology in smart mirrors, you can easily see how a dress looks on you without putting on your body. The retailers install the AI-based smart mirrors in the changing room of the shopping store with touch screen glasses that pass on the information about the customers, whether they are inside the room or not.
Not only do smart mirrors tell if a person is inside in the changing room, but also allow the retailers to get the information about the product the shopper has brought into’ the store.
6. AI in Retail Fashion with Recommendation in Ecommerce
Just like online fashion stores, AI has been proved to be a game-changer for the whole eCommerce industry.
When users search or browse anything on the eCommerce websites, the intelligent algorithms of AI analyze your preferences and recommend other similar products based on your color preferences, needs, budgets, and other such factors.
7. AI in Visual Search —Shopping with Your Camera
AI-based visual technology is also playing a big role to transform eCommerce shopping in an imaginary way. Today, customers can find a product using the image rather than typing keywords.
You simply need to capture a photo of the product that you want to buy and upload it to any visual search engine such as Google Images or Pinterest Lens. The visual search engine, help you to find the product online and also recommend to you its close matches.
Visual search capabilities of AI are helping the retailers to capture the eyes of customers to the products they want to find or buy online.
Benefits of AI in the Fashion Retail Industry
Artificial Intelligence is nonstop to boost the retail stores with its outstanding features, providing numerous benefits to the whole retail industry.
From product personalization and better design, AI is impacting the fashion retail market in so many other good ways. Some of the major benefits of AI in the fashion retail industry are as follows:
i. Personalised Customer Experience
The smart algorithms of AI streamline the shopping experience by tracking the customer journey and help them find their desired product.
It is just like a Netflix machine learning system that shows you things based on your previous searches.
ii. Chatbots Customer Service
Another great benefit of AI in the fashion retail industry is real-time communication via chatbots.
In AI-powered retail websites, robots are located inside the store that answers the queries of shoppers and helps them in making informed decisions. From recommending products to tracking sales leads, AI is helping fashion to improve their overall conversion rates.
iii. Reduction in Returned Products
One of the biggest issues in fashion retail was returning to sell items that lead to an increase in operational costs.
Thanks to AI-based product information and personalization that has reduced this problem to a noticeable extent. Due to this feature, buyers are less likely to make the wrong decision.
iv. Improved Inventory Management
Today, with the help of AI-based predictive analysis, retailers can learn the behavior of their existing customers and then plan their inventory stock accordingly.
This way, fashion retail owners can get to know their best and worst selling items, as a result, they plan accurate inventories.
v. Less Manpower through Automation
One of the key benefits of AI in fashion retail is that it allows the brands to automate the repetitive tasks that humans have to perform.
This feature allows the human agents to shift their focus to doing more productive things, while AI-based algorithms handle all the repetitive tasks. For instance, tasks like data entry and customer support services are normally done by chatbots nowadays.
Incorporate AI in Your shopping Brand to Skyrocket It!
The breakthrough innovations in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are continuously influencing the fashion retail industry globally.
Be it the use of virtual assistants to improve the user experience, personalization of products, enhanced logistical operations, and development of sustainable solutions to manufacturing the products, the benefits of AI in retail fashion are endless.
The increasing investments of top-notch clothing brands to incorporate AI are solid proof that AI has incredible market potential.
With more digitalization in today’s era, more and more fashion companies are switching to utilize some state–of–the–art AI tools in their brands and boost their sales and ROI.
Steve Martin is passionate about writing tech and shopping blogs. He loves to share his knowledge with the world through appropriate words. Also, his hobbies include Digital marketing on different best online offers providing platforms. You can read his blogs on online shopping platforms.
