What Do You Get in Return of Your Information From Fashion Industry?
How is customers’ online data being used in fashion industry?!
Technology has changed every part of fashion industry from the designing stage of a garment to advertising and retailing it, and has made it obvious that in the fast-fashion era of fashion industry what will win the game is personalizing the goods and services offered as much as possible. for this purpose companies often time use the data found online, about their target market based on their online activities. As personalization is impossible without personal data of the costumers, some argue that the cost and the outcome of this matter are not comparable due to the moral violation of data privacy; however, the impacts that these data have had on fashion industry’s functionality are undisregardable and are winning people’s heart.
Digital data collection and usage of it has major impact on designing and merchandising stages of fashion, and customers’ taste in fashion, and leads to a more personalized and desirable experience on the costumers’ end. When opening a business, the business owner will have a specific target market in mind that most likely will be willing to buy their items. An essential to selling goods to people is having a good understanding of your target market and technology has brought it to the next level. In today’s world of fast fashion, ready to wear items, and mass production, they key to selling goods to people is personalization, and the key to that is costumers’ data, which fortunately technology allows ways to collect it.
Designing is one of the first steps of garment production which to be done requires specific sizing information. Ready-to-wear or fast fashion products mostly go by a standard sizing and measurement system, chosen for their company, to design and produce their products; however, the standard sizing system cannot cover all sizes and body types that a potential costumer might have. Aside from ready to wear fashion there is tailor-made or made-to-measure fashion, which is when garments are designed and then made based on specific sizes required by costumers, which are usually more expensive than ready to wear fashion garments due to the personalization of the fit of the garment, and the sizing process which used to be done only by specialists and by hand, and are usually hand tailored. On the other side of the past two options there is couture or high-end fashion, which customers have enough control to make some changes at the designing stages, are made fully based on costumers’ sizes, and are the most expensive category.
Measuring the sizes by hand is both time consuming and sometimes inaccurate; however, technology has an answer for this problem and that is body scanning.
A series of body scanning tools such as laser scanners and cameras have been made over the past few years; body scanning has been used for different purposes such as film production or for security purposes at airports; recently it has made its way to gyms for body measurement and calculating the ideal shape the person can be in and the amount of size and weight they have to lose based on their current size and shape; reportedly, gym owners have been selling the data captured by these machines to apparel manufacturers for them to do some data analysis on the data and gather a better understanding of sizes and body types of people to add to their sizing systems. Some couture houses and retailers, such as RedThread, have recently started using it as well, to gather more accurate measuring data of their customers and tailor pieces that best fit their bodies and also modify their sizing system to an updated and more inclusive version of itself.
Alton Lane is an example of a brand using body scanners for measurement aside from hand measuring.Their 3D body scanners looks like a cube, and costumers have to stand in them, without any of their cloth on, for a few minutes for the machine to do its job and convert the information into the measuring system used at Alton Lane. The software on the scanners used for this purposes are customizable to different sizing systems, meaning that it automatically converts the numbers in measuring units used by the brand. Even though so far the body scanning technology has not turned their business upside down (due to customers’ uncomfortableness to be scanned nude), it has already caused a big difference and separated them from the other same level brands. Having this technology has created a more efficient and modern brand image for them which separates them from the others.
Merchandising is an important and inseparable part of fashion industry and is very different today from what it used to be; digital technology has highly impacted retailing and merchandising over the past recent years. in return of usage of online services, with every action, the users are providing the companies behind them with personal data and behavioral patterns which can be analysed and made into useful information in different areas of industry and science, one being fashion industry. Usage of personal information of internet users, and the affecting factors on their taste has lead the company owners to come up with more efficient ways of selling their products.
About You is an example of a start-up company using online data in their business and that is the factor which differentiates them from the rest of online retailing businesses and has lead to them ending up with 283 million euro of revenue, only the first fiscal year of their business. Their difference is in using different methods to personalize the website as much as possible for each user so they can shop more efficiently and enjoy the experience of online shopping further more.
About You is not the only company expanding their sales by personalizing their services, Amazon and Asos are other companies that are trying to use people’s personal data for their businesses’ benefit. Their software personalizes data for each customer based on their personal data, photos, movements, online activities, previous searches and so on and creates a pattern based on their behavior to suggest apparel items to them, which creates a highly customized list of options for each individual. In this condition, the customer is more likely to find what he is looking for and make a purchase than if he was to look through every item, without an specific searching pattern, to find something.
Your data helps predict and create up-coming trends!
Another way of merchandising, made possible by digital technology, is instead of producing apparel products based on peoples current taste, monitoring their behaviors to predict where their taste will take fashion in the near future, and/or guiding their taste towards how you want it to be.
Another way of merchandising is having active users and returning buyers, many companies make online interaction with their users so they feel a connection with the company and stay involved. Smarter companies rather than keeping an eye on fashion influencers, monitor data from those who are inspirations to others, who might not necessarily be a fashion related faces but fairly looked up to by others; these predictions eventually make their ways to pop culture fashion and then down the pyramid to normal peoples’ fashion.
Development of digital technology has allowed new ideas to happen and more accurate and/or efficient way of doing things to be available. It has changed fashion industry and every step of manufacturing apparel from design, and every other step to retailing and merchandising for a more effective version. Also by proving that in today’s world of information overload, individualization of the goods and services offered, can lead to advancement in the sales rate of the business, building a bolder brand image, and a stronger connection with the costumers, business owners will be more and more encouraged to use useful technology to do so.
