Across the fashion supply chain, artificial intelligence is making processes more efficient and accurate. Use cases span from planning to point of sale and package delivery, with retailers and brands tapping into the technology’s capabilities for parsing data, personalization, content creation and more.
Sourcing Journal x WWD’s Tech Report: The Artificial Intelligence Issue digs into the widespread developments in AI, including its benefits as well as remaining limitations. The age of AI is upon us, and it is quickly becoming entrenched in our daily lives, including altering how we as consumers shop.
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“We’re underestimating the change that’s happening, and it’s going to come quickly,” noted an anonymous industry insider in the report. “AI is starting to move from just the nerds talking about it, to my mom now talking about it.”
Demand planning
A certain level of uncertainty is unavoidable when fashion buyers place orders, but artificial intelligence and machine learning are helping narrow the gap between inventory demand and stock supply. Startup Flagship RTL—which counts Ministry of Supply and Public Rec among its clients—is using AI to build quicker, more reliable forecasts for brands based on their historic data. These insights support human decision-making, rather than replacing it.
“The goal is to make more good decisions than bad ones,” said Noah Love, product engineer at Flagship, in the report. “And just like a stock portfolio, you’ll have some winners and losers, but it’s about minimizing losses, maximizing gains efficiently and servicing the trends and data you need to make informed decisions without spending endless hours and resources.”
Customer communications
Retailers are also helping shoppers find what they are looking for more easily with natural language processing. Instead of specific product search terms, customers can ask questions about broad needs—such as planning an outfit to fit a party theme—and the AI will fetch products that are a fit. Adding another way to shop, ASOS has rolled out visual search that analyzes submitted images and serves up suggestions. The fast-fashion retailer is also feeding data gleaned from machine learning-powered search—including the chatbot it is testing—into demand forecasts, allowing it to respond to trends.
Etsy is using artificial intelligence to personalize recommendations, whether consumers are shopping for themselves or for a gift. And Adore Me now lets customers create custom patterns on lingerie by inputting text prompts to a generative AI tool.
Merchants including Walmart and Amazon are helping shoppers gauge consumer sentiment about products more easily by having AI comb through reviews and summarize the feedback.
Marketing is also being shaped by AI. Klarna is using generative AI for copy and image creation, shifting more of its campaign development in house. Similarly, Anne Klein is leveraging AI.Fashion’s Persona solution to use a human model’s likeness for AI-generated imagery, saving time and resources in the process. “One of the great things about AI is that it gives you more flexibility to be able to do more with either the same resources or slightly less,” said Doug Weiss, senior vice president of digital, e-commerce and AI for Anne Klein’s parent company WHP.
Logistics
At Amazon warehouses, robots work alongside humans to fulfill orders, taking on repetitive or tiring tasks to protect the safety of workers. Likewise, Walmart has deployed autonomous forklifts to unload pallets.
In transportation, route optimization tools help shippers save time and money. And trucking is getting smarter and safer, with systems that track aspects such as seatbelt use and reduce distracted driving. One place that AI is not making inroads is behind the wheel, as experts say they do not trust self-driving trucks. “On the road, the human is always going to have superior processing power to the machine,” said Ken Evans, founder and CEO of Konexial.
The prevalence of AI is creating demand for new skillsets, but the use of technology must go hand-in-hand with intuition. Retailers will need talent that can leverage their knowledge of the consumer alongside technology to deliver optimal customer service.
“Humans aren’t going to go away,” said Robert Gorin, managing director and the consumer products practice leader at Getzler Henrich & Associates, a Hilco Global company. “AI is still a machine and at the end of the day, people will drive the creative spark and understanding that is layered on top of AI. The power comes from AI plus the human perspective. It’s not one or the other.”
Read the Sourcing Journal x WWD Tech Report: The Artificial Intelligence Issue to learn more about:
- Why artificial intelligence is attracting capital, and how AI efforts affect public companies’ stocks
- To what extent companies and investors are considering AI’s ESG impact
- Which passed and pending regulations are governing the use of AI
- What impact AI will have on retail jobs
- How human intuition and AI insights are combining for more informed decision-making
Download the report here.
