Artificial Intelligence in Fashion Retail

Until now we have seen how AI is making steady inroads into the luxury market. AI in fashion retail is starting to become prevalent too. Here’s what is in store in the future of AI in fashion retail!

AI in Visual Search

Since e-commerce is the extended arm of retail, AI-based tech uses computer vision to find objects or clothing online. Customers often click pictures of things they like, and now they can use the same pictures to find these products/clothing or similar items. Such virtual search models are trained with large data sets so that they can recognise the pictures of the clothing or other items. With the help of ML, multiple objects within a picture can also be spotted like in the case of 'shop-the-look' which also creates avenues for potential cross-selling.

At infinite Analytics, we use our proprietary technology Sherlock.Ai, to provide the best of both worlds — keywords-based Semantic Search as well as the new age state-of-the-art Visual Search. By leveraging our proprietary image processing technologies we can enable e-Commerce platforms to provide their shoppers the power of searching by uploading product images or even by using the image URL of a product they are looking for. Moreover, not only do we recommend similar products to shoppers but can provide various cross-sell and up-sell opportunities at various stages of a shopper’s purchase cycle. These recommendations are personalized as they are made on the basis of each shopper’s tastes, preferences, clickstream data, transactional history etc.

Virtual Trials

Retail experiences are getting bigger and better with AI. Take for example Van Huesen's 'Virtual Trial' mirror. The customers have to scan the barcode of the product they like and stand in front of this mirror which will let the user see how this particular garment will look on them in their own reflection. Interactive mirrors in trial rooms house a bevy of features which lets customers compare outfits without actually going through the trouble of wearing all of them.

Virtual Visualization of products

Using smart mirrors in retail stores fitted with touch screen glasses, they can browse the various sizes and colours of a particular piece of clothing and even mix and match them, take selfies and more! H&M's flagship store in Times Square, New York, has smart mirrors which use facial recognition and voice features to interact with shoppers. Shoppers can use the voice feature to click selfies and even download the image on their smartphones. Though the tech is still in its inception the mirror is capable of giving out shopping tips, creating virtual outfits and more.

Interactive holograms for hyper-personalization

As we know that AI enables personalization of ads and personalization of services and experiences , hyper-personalization is the future of fashion retail too. Farfetch Store of the Future (SoF) was envisioned keeping what they call as ‘Augmented Retail’ in mind. They also have a holographic display through which customers can make and order custom shoes and even pick different kinds of leather, colours etc from Nicholas Kirkwood. If this is not hyper-personalization, we don't know what is!

AI & ML in retail can also monitor in-store customer behaviour to know what are the likes and dislikes of customers. Goods and services can thus be made in accordance with the customers' tastes and desires. With all these and more AI and fashion retail are headed for a promising innings.

If you have an e-commerce platform for which you’d like to enhance the user-experience or if you want know more about AI in fashion retail write to us at contactus@infiniteanalytics.com. You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter here.