IFF 2022 Event Highlights: A New Dawn of Innovation in the Fashion Industry

Last week, DaveAI participated in the India fashion forum (IFF) event to analyze the fashion retail industry insights and be part of the panel discussions that took place around fashion innovation powered by AI. The global fashion retail industry is progressing towards the decisive phase of adopting various technology-driven strategies to provide greater leverage to each department.

“AI is no more just a buzzword in fashion, the technology today cuts across functions delivering measurable ROI. Every brand we talk to is interested in improving customer experience and also explore how we can help brands be more sustainable. We, at DaveAI, strive to help brands be loved by their customers using our Virtual Avatar powered catalogues & conversations.”

– Sriram PH, Co-founder & CEO – DaveAI

Digitalization allows businesses to formulate a consumer-driven approach that has taken fashion technology from plausible to unavoidable to official in recent years. Factors like Purpose, Experience, Innovation, and Engagement are backing not just the revolutionized industry of fashion but also this event…

Here are the top takeaways:

1. Omnichannel retail:

Today’s retail scenario speaks about businesses retaining around 90% of their customers if they have an omnichannel strategy deployed. With the percentage being huge enough to make brands think about its usage, adopting omnichannel has become easier with the advent of Artificial Intelligence. Strategies like 3D visualizers in online stores to kiosk-based shopping in brick and mortar stores, there are various options available for customers to shop today. Smart mirrors are being deployed to optimize styling recommendations provided by stylists through a virtual try-on feature. Digital assistants like virtual avatars and chatbots are tweaking the CX in a ‘phygital embrace’ wrapped around with the benefits the digital as well as the physical world has to shed light onto. So the scope of omnichannel retail speaks volumes about the digitalization spreading in this industry.

“Creating virtual stores is one strategy that is being considered nowadays to provide services to customers to increase the availability of channels and provide flexibility.”

– Manish Vig, Retail Head, VIP Industries Ltd

2. Luxury brands in Metaverse

Financial and advertising value is providing opportunities for businesses to look for different methods to expand their working methodologies in the Metaverse. CX fluidity being an important aspect of this new world, luxury brands have an immense amount of success potential in this emerging tech bubble. The Metaverse strategies like 3D product renderings, virtual spaces donned with virtual avatars, NFTs, cryptocurrency, and gaming zones are enhancing the creativity of luxury brands to display products in a profitable way. Selling products virtually is specifically beneficial for luxury brands as sustainable fashion is a major feature sought out by these businesses today. So digital fashion will see growth in the coming years to support the fundamentals of these businesses and fulfill the demands of consumers. Metaverse will help revamp the luxury fashion businesses with a set purpose and a tech-tonic shift.

“Metaverse is a channel that will help brands sell more and help consumers go beyond the experience of browsing.”

– Harmeet Bajaj, Product development and communication strategist

3. Impact of technology on CX:

Tech-based services have been found to have a high correlation with an enhanced CX across businesses of the fashion industry today. With customers wanting connection with every retail experience they have while shopping today irrespective of a digital or a physical channel, AI helps build a merchandise plan strong enough to increase customer engagement, minimize customer acquisition costs, and generate a customer loyalty program to boost retention rate.

“Eventually you are serving the same customer. In the customer’s journey of a lifetime purchase, he will prefer online first to offline first. Keeping the customer experience seamless is crucial.”

– Apoorv Sen, Chief Brand & Marketing Officer, Iconic Fashion

With various ideologies contemplated to drive innovation in the fashion industry, the event witnessed well-researched strategies to bring about the required change. Discussions circulated around various other topics like Building Future-Proof fashion retail models, Driving Differentiation in retail with personalized customer experience, Re-imagining solutions for a phygital retail world, Realigning Fashion retail with connected consumption, Building a future-ready brand through digital transformation across the supply chain, etc to contemplate where the industry stands today and hopes to go in the near future. With the fashion industry caught in a whirlwind of technology, optimized changes are around the corner for everyone to witness with a prominent emphasis on 3D avatars, chatbots, virtual stores, and smart mirrors. The fashion revolution is well underway soon to make these strategies a standard.  

“Fashion is an area that is dominated by human creativity and inspiration, hence many are skeptical about involving AI in this field. AI, however, is beneficial to the industry in applying insight gained over millions of purchases across the spectrum into creating design strategies that would increase key KPIs for the products.”

– Dr AnanthaKrishnan Gopal, Co-founder & CTO – DaveAI

DaveAI is an AI-powered sales augmentation platform that helps brands drive sales with advanced product discovery experiences using an interactive Virtual Sales Avatar that mimics a human sales brain, understands customer requirements & provides hyper-personalized product recommendations. DaveAI today Boosts Sales for Retail, BFSI, and Automobile Enterprises.

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