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Technology in Fashion Round Up | July

This month we asked Matthew Morgan, the CMO and co-founder of Buying Intelligence, the fashion competitor and marketing analytics platform that accelerates brands and retailer’s profits, to list out a few must reads for those looking to stay on the forefront of the technology wave.

Matthew advises the following to fashion businesses looking into the tech space:

Don’t be diverted by tech adoption in other sectors.

You’re just not comparing apples to apples. I hear this all the time, “fashion is so behind” and “we need to be more progressive”. However, we work in a creative and subjective world – a little black dress from one brand can be very different to one from another. Fashion is very different to, say, consumer electronics where a Samsung DVD player is what it is. To be effective, the technologies we need are complex and as such adopting them takes time. As long as you’re trying new things and have people in your company accountable for both execution and the championing of technology (rather than just worrying about what other industries are up to) you’ll be ahead of many.

No one knows anything.

In addition to the above, this is a brave new world. The bringing together of complex technologies, like AI and machine learning, into the fashion retail environment simply hasn’t been done before at scale. There is no wise, old, grey-haired person out there to show you the way. You need to be wary of anyone who tells you otherwise. No one knows your business like you know your business. Particularly in fashion, there are nuances and things that work specific to your brand and yours alone. Be confident in this knowledge, read, learn what you can, then test and learn everything.

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Here is a short list of some great reads that have helped Matthew do just that:

Accelerating the Future of Fashion: Creatives Deliver Much-Needed Tech Disruption

A collaboration between Microsoft and London College of Fashion has supported six teams of students who co-opted a range of Microsoft hardware, software, artificial intelligence and cloud computing tools to create hugely ambitious (and surprisingly polished) retail-tech and sustainability software and hardware solutions—in just three months.

by Brooke Roberts-Islam

Amazon’s annual Prime Day shopping event has begun in Australia, with tens of thousands of products now available at discounted prices.

Marketing technology and services firm IgnitionOne is estimating Amazon will generate sales of US$6.1 billion this year, which would be a US$2 billion improvement over last year, according to a report by Fortune.

by Heather McIlvaine

China’s influencer incubator

How China’s hyper-professionalised influencer market could be a model elsewhere.

by Chris Stokel-Walker

The Galeries scans 3,500 customers

Throughout June shopping precinct The Galeries hosted a large-scale sculpture, Light Arc, by Australian contemporary artist, Elliot Routledge.
Interested to know how this activation performed, Ragtrader spoke to The Galeries centre manager Kristy Hoare about the gamified shopping experience.

by Imogen Bailey

London-based fashion tech startup Unmade raises €5.3 million to scale its customizable clothing platform

Going shopping for the perfect outfit can be a challenge. On Unmade‘s fashion platform, you can design and customize clothing yourself, before it’s even made.

by Mary Loritz

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Have a suggestion for our August edition?

Email through your top fashion technology reads to info@ausfashioncouncil.com!