Rosie Gulati shares how innovation in technology and new business models can boost the fashion industry in India
The 21st-century Indian fashion industry is way beyond fabric, colour and patterns. It is now approaching numerous other ever-evolving factors such as the modification of technology, lifestyle, the importance of Artificial Intelligence, customisation and value-adding services to expand the customer base. Technology has played a major role in boosting the industry. The significance of digital evolution is, indeed, escalating at a substantial pace in the fashion industry and is bolstering its growth like never before.
Why invest in both creativity and technology to adapt and outperform peers?
It is viewed as a way to compete and survive in the industry and provide value-added services to the customers in order to achieve several important milestones in the fashion industry. Basically, innovation in this industry is the profitable implementation of ideas that deliver quality and value to the customers. Among many other key mantras of innovation, comfort, customisation, flexible strategies and sustainability matter the most. These factors speak volumes about the brands in the market and also help in attracting the business.
The undeniable fact is that the creative industries — espeically fashion — run, compete, survive and jump on the ability to generate ideas that fascinate the customer base. Design capabilities have emerged as progressively more important in the fashion industry. Design-centric products and aesthetically rich styles are predominant factors that businesses, trends and markets cannot afford to ignore. Indian fashion brands are now focussing more on the design-centric way of dealing with the present fashion scenario. Brands offering uniqueness, effective marketing, trends with comfort, and serving according to the customer’s need, display the ability to convert international runway trends into a viable commercial concept which is a key strength of a brand that wants to survive in the long run and outperform its peers.
Over the years, Indian brands have realised the significance of investing in professional design teams to work towards a highly complex and ambivalent process of product development. Fashion brands are leveraging cutting-edge technology to simplify the complete production process. The Indian fashion brands are boosting the industry by working towards building a platform of smart clothing with sensors that can help them to iterate with features such as touch, gesture, posture recognition, navigation in order to provide the best services in the domains of health, fitness, wellness, et al.
New digital trends reshaping the fashion industry
Understanding the customer’s demands and tastes is reshaping the approach to the clothes designing process and predicting what customers will want to wear next is yet another factor that is reshaping and redefining the fashion industry. By harnessing the data directly from users, brands are finding their way to reach customer’s hearts and minds. Predicting fashion trends with machine learning is now fetching massive benefits, nationally and globally as well.
There are several softwares available in the market for clothes designing that enable customers to come forward and design their own items and scale up the level of satisfaction. Ready-to-use software is easily available in the market and it is easy to integrate into an existing e-commerce website or to offer customisation services. Moreover, “I designed it myself, for myself” leaves a huge impact on the market and future businesses. As per the industry experts, around 80 per cent of customers are attracted to a brand that offers personalised experiences.
Change in consumer behaviours and rise of customisation: Role of innovation
Customised apparel has a good demand and customers now look forward to customising their apparel according to their liking. Today, the product customisation software costs less money and is easily available. Several fashion trends driven by advances in digital tools and technologies are transforming the fashion industry landscape.
The major and new fashion models like customer segmentation, communication, value proposition and distribution channels are among a few models that the fashion industry revolves around. Also, the trends include the ever-increasing impact of faster fashion, discounting offers, social influencers, increasing e-commerce, global extension, consumer approach and more. Catering to the changing needs of the consumer, upgrading themselves according to the buyer’s needs are the need of the fashion industry in India.
Demand, usage and benefits for AI
With the changing times, the fashion industry has witnessed a massive demand, usage and benefits of AI in the apparel industry. Designers are using AI analytics to hyper-personalise the shopping experience and stay updated. The technology caters to various segments of customer’s demands, like sewing patterns, fittings, patterns, making it easier for the customers to compare and choose, aligns prices and style as per customer’s preferences.
Making use of algorithms to analyse previous styles and trends is one of the major benefits of using Artificial Intelligence and is helping the brands to make future decisions. They now use AI to recognise the needs of customers and enhance their shopping experience based on their history of purchases, favourite colours, fabrics etc.
Summing up...
Innovation, technology and new business models are the influencing factors that are boosting the Indian fashion industry. Technology and innovation are indeed transforming most of the aspects of the fashion industry in the country. In today’s world of style and vogue, brands and retailers are focussing on intangible innovations like business models, innovation and networking to fetch long-term benefits and the market seems to have an upward growth trajectory, all thanks to the adoption of cutting-edge technological solutions.
(The writer is the founder of a fashion brand — DressBio.)