How AI transforms fashion retail

Artificial intelligence and the fashion industry seem to be an odd fit. The latter is all about bursts of creativity combined with practicality, unexpected and bold solutions, developing unique aesthetics and boldly going where no one has ever gone before while the former is utilitarian, predictable, cold, calculated imitation barely capable of doing anything that requires any form of unsolicited decision making. They are like fire and ice - not exactly compatible.

However, fashion industry is not exclusively about creating new stuff and presenting daring concepts on a catwalk - it is also a big multi-channel business that is highly dependent on retail sales and engaging customer experience. And as any business it needs to be cost-effective and try new ways of engaging customers.

And this is where artificial intelligence enters a game and makes an impressive save.

Over the years it became apparent that artificial intelligence is the best friend of fashion commerce. It can take care of business nice and sweet and is able to take over many parts of operation that are hard to pull off without immense manpower and elaborate computations.

Here are four ways Artificial Intelligence is changing fashion retail industry for the better.

1 Virtual Assistant Personalized Suggestion

One of the most obvious ways artificial intelligence is helping customers to get what they want in a nice and smooth manner is through personalization.

It is no secret that applications gather large amount of various data from your device. This information is segmented and analyzed anyway - so why don’t use it for your benefit.

There several ways personalization is used in fashion retail.

1. Through automatically collected data:

1. Things you already viewed or bought

2. Behavior on the pages over the course of the session

3. Preferences to certain kind of products.

2. Through bot-assisted questionnaire. In this case customer needs to describe what kind of cloth he needs - including color, style, type of material, size, price, etc. Bot will suggest something and gradually customer will move toward that obscure object of desire.

2 Helping to navigate

Another ways AI is transforming fashion retail is through improving the navigation on the online marketplaces.

Usually online shopping consists of mundane surfing through numerous categories and pages of product in vain attempts of finding that one particular thing.

With a little help of gathered user information, Artificial Intelligence is capable of constructing the product feed that will reflect the needs and the interests of the customer to a tee.

3 Clothes Matching

clothes matching algorithms. With a little help of AI user can gather every possible option and select exactly what he or she wants. Because of its usefulness - it is extremely engaging and makes customers come back for more.

For retail brands - it is a smooth way to present their inventory and let customer to discover something on their own.

Take for example Pinterest’s Lens visual search feature - it uses machine vision to analyze items suggest something related. If you like that sweet pair of socks with Homer Simpson but really wanted them to be a little bit yellower - that tool may help you to find out whether there is such variation.

4 Responding to inquiries

With recent development in speech synthesis and natural language processing - conversational interface is the hottest commodity right now. And fashion retail is one the vanguards of its commercial use.

What can be better than simply expressing what you want and getting a coherent response? For example, customer asks where are Metallica t-shirts? and AI provides customized response with all vital information on subject - starting with whether the product is available and ending with purchase options.

In Conclusion

These are the major things that Artificial intelligence is transforming in fashion retail industry. There are many more ways it makes a change - but these most impactful for the customers.