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On March 22, 2023, at The Times Center in New York, BoF hosted the BoF Professional Summit: An Inflection Point in Fashion Tech, presented by Bolt.
Creative innovators, fashion executives and technologists from some of industry’s biggest brands, including Gucci, Levi’s, Puma and StockX were joined by entrepreneurs from buzzy tech start-ups, like Psykhe, Quilt.AI and Cala.
The talks covered three key technology themes shaping the industry in the year ahead:
- Fashion & Artificial Intelligence: Understanding the rapidly expanding use-cases of artificial intelligence for the fashion industry, from forecasting demand and setting prices to product design and new ways of connecting with customers.
- Fashion Tech Solutions: Learning how technology can help to innovate across the fashion value chain, from transforming the path-to-purchase to understanding how to use new community platforms like Discord to connect with customers.
- The Web3 Reality Check: Exploring the long-term opportunity of web3, as brands look for new uses relating to creativity and community. Speakers debated the longevity of this technology — and the return on investment for fashion businesses.
Discover key takeaways from the talks below, and watch the full BoF Professional Summit on-demand now.
Understand Super-Users — And Know Where and How to Reach Them
The programming opened with Michael J. Wolf, co-founder and CEO of Activate, Inc.
From NFTs to the gaming space, the metaverse and e-commerce — Wolf shared where customers are spending time, attention and money — and the opportunities in this space.
“[At present,] the only path to the metaverse is through video games,” said Wolf, before revealing that there are 148 million gamers in the US alone as of 2022, up from 124 million in 2019. “Seventy-seven percent of 148 million gamers in the US are participating in non-gaming activities. It’s where they’re being social, building virtual places, and it’s driven not by money, but prestige.”
Dr Ahmed Zaidi, CEO and co-founder of Hyran Technologies, an AI platform that helps brands and suppliers respond to consumer demand and reduce waste, spoke to How AI Will Transform the Fashion Business.
“Deep learning [in AI] unlocks a new capability to understand your consumer better. In the past, your consumer was ‘Customer 136′. Now, you can capture where they live, what they like, how they want to receive their emails — unlocking a new level of personalisation,” he said.
Place Community at the Centre of Your Web3 Strategies
‘”The most successful brands today are driven by human creativity, intuition, foresight. A brand like Gucci needs to understand how to take advantage of new technologies and go into these communities authentically,” said Robert Triefus, CEO of the Gucci Vault and Metaverse Ventures.
“It is fundamentally important we don’t assume that we know everything, especially when going into a platform. […] Back in the day, we went into The Sims and worked with co-creators to create our experience.”
“There are people who are buyers who try to flip [virtual products], but we’re not making it for them. I’m trying to use web3 technology to accelerate and make the core [AMBUSH] business vibrant,” said VERBAL, co-founder and CEO of AMBUSH, which launched its “Reboot” NFT collection in 2022.
Maju Kuruvilla, CEO of the summit presenting partner Bolt — a checkout experience platform connecting shoppers to retailers in a unified, cross-brand network — also emphasised the importance of community.
“Now, more than ever, you need to understand the consumer at a deeper and individual level. […] My focus is consumer empathy. Don’t get lost at a high-level as you miss out on individuals,” said Kuruvilla in conversation with BoF’s Robin Mellery-Pratt.
Meet Your Consumer Communities in Their New Digital Habitats
Deena Bahri, chief marketing officer of StockX, and Adam Petrick, chief brand officer at Puma, established their brands’ presence on Discord, a chat platform that has become the preferred community hub for NFT projects, as well as a popular space for streetwear and sneaker groups.
“Because Discord is so unique, so human, we look to the platform itself. It’s the customers and the people telling us what they want to hear, like ‘you should be selling these brands and products’,” said Bahri.
It is fundamentally important we don’t assume that we know everything, especially when going into a platform.
As a brand, if you’re looking to join Discord, “be ready for negative feedback and ready to respond to that. Follow those principles and engage the audience with transparency.,” added Petrick.
Align Emerging Technologies With Your Overall Corporate Strategy
Despite “AI” only entering public lexicon in recent years, by 2019, Levi’s had already formally worked AI into its business strategy. Today, it uses AI to colour match threads, to plot what product goes into which store and to map how the weather can impact buying decisions.
“We have learnt that a consumer in Milan is more likely to prefer darker wash denim, unlike in Rome, [where] they prefer lighter wash. [From this information,] we adjust our assortment of products in our stores,” said Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles, global head of digital and emerging technology strategy of Levi’s.
In conversation with BoF’s Brian Baskin on “Adopting an AI-Driven Business Model”, Dr. Bolles shared an announcement of how the company is continuing to work with AI-generated models.
Reinstate Brand Marketing Value and Equity Through AI
Quilt.AI technology has taken “more than 22 billion images [online] and indexed them, […] to understand humanity and how we are diverse, non-binary and so varied [to find the] proximity between brand messaging and the consumers’ messaging.
“We take all the learnings we have from this massive archetypical model and overlay certain brands on it,” said Anurag Banerjee, co-founder and CEO of Quilt.AI, in conversation with BoF’s Rahul Malik on “Using AI to Decode Brand Magic.”
Sharing Chanel as an example, Malik explains: “The archetype of ‘lover’ disproportionately stands out — [how] consumers themselves are playing back in their own social media posts, in which they are wearing Chanel products, tagging the brand, engaging with the brand. It [presents] an eerily similar pattern.”
“Does this mean that the brand should go to where the consumers are? Or should the brand be trying to lead consumers to where they want to go? There is no specifically correct answer to that question.”
Take Stock of Opportunities In the Wake of the Crypto Crash
“Now [the market] is more settled and the smoke has cleared, [it is] a better time to build, especially for the creatives looking to build something more robust and different, without all the noise,” said VERBAL.
What we’re seeing is a lot of that hyper-financialisation pull out a little bit. I think the next 3 to 5 years are going to be staggering.
“The noise has washed out of the system. Unrealistic valuations have settled. I think the next 3 to 5 years are going to be staggering,” said Alice Delahunt, founder and chief executive of Syky in conversation with the Luxury Institute’s Milton Pedraza and Brian Trunzo, metaverse lead at Polygon Labs.
Understand How Consumers Are Re-Taking Control of Their Data
“Web3 has always been about taking control of your identity digitally and your data. Do whatever you want with it – delete it, hoard it, monetise it, that’s your choice, that’s your freedom,” said Milton Pedraza, founder and CEO of Luxury Institute.
“It starts with what one can do with their own data, and what sort of composable things web3 can enable. That’s why loyalty and rewards are dead centred on this issue,” said Brian Trunzo, metaverse lead at Polygon Labs, a software solutions studio.
Use AI Technologies to Augment Physical and Human-Led Processes
While [AI] has democratised the ability to get creative ideas out in the world, true creative genius […] will shine through, as everyone will have the same capability,” said Andrew Wyatt, co-founder and CEO of Cala.
“[Virtual] try-on will augment the shopping experience. It will never replace the look and feel of the garment, but will be a powerful tool to make a purchase decision,” said Vadim Rogovsky, co-founder and CEO of 3DLook.
“Balancing [consumer] intent with discoverability is incredibly nuanced. [We] do it at scale for large retailers for every consumer [like a] personal shopping experience,” said Anabel Maldonado, founder and CEO of Psykhe AI.
The BoF Professional Summit: Artificial Intelligence, Web3 and an Inflection Point in Fashion Tech is made possible in part through our partners Bolt, ShopRunner, SKYPAD and Invisible Collection.
