As we enter 2013, the technology underpinnings of fashion continue to evolve at an ever accelerating pace. As excitement within the industry surges and ebbs around touchstone technologies such as NFC payment, RFID inventory management, and others, it’s hard to know which technologies will take a back seat and which will be thrust into the limelight. As a business owner, entrepreneur, and technologist who focuses on the fashion industry however, I thought it would be fun to point out the five technological trends receiving a lot of buzz, and where I see them in two years.
So in no particular order, here goes!
Near Field Communications (NFC)
I don’t think that there’s a single technology that has met with more optimism, skepticism, enthusiasm and hope than NFC. It promises to transform the retail landscape like nothing since the mainstream advent of the credit card. Just imagine it, walking into a store, picking out the things that you like, waving your phone (or card, or keychain, or something…) over a pad, enter your pin, and walking out again. No fuss, no muss, no signature required. Indeed, NFC promises to turn each sales tender into the same type of highly reliable, highly secure transaction that occurs in online banking. The benefits are obvious;
- To the consumer, identity theft is nearly impossible as the combination of unique characteristics required in order for a transaction to occur equates to a triple authentication scheme, kind of like asking for your password, date of birth, and last four of your SSN. Much more difficult to come by than a valid CC number and expiration date.
- To the retailer, liabilities involved in such a transaction plummet, and the delivery of payment is considerably accelerated over conventional payment approaches. Therefore, they’re getting the money they’re owed faster, and with less risk.
- And of course, to both we must add pure convenience. No more searching through cards, no more failed magnetic strips, no more question of account balance, and no more of the embarrassing interludes occurring whenever said balances are exceeded!
This is a concept whose time has come, in this writer’s opinion. I see the final kinks of ongoing issues such as international standardization and deployment being worked out in 2013, with corresponding technology offerings coming on in force by Q1 of 2014. Additionally, if rumors surrounding the inclusion of NFC in the iPhone 6 (5s? who knows!) prove out, this will provide the much needed thrust necessary to push this technology to the forefront of the consumer consciousness. Once that happens, adoption will occur very quickly, as will a combined functionality set between Google, Apple, Amazon and other technology players in this space.
Prediction: By the middle of 2015, NFC technology will not only be in the hands of consumers and retailers, but it will work well to boot!
Virtual Garment Sizing
There are a number of competitors setting up shop and selling this concept right now. Fit.me, VirtuSize, me-ality and a couple of others are competing with somewhat different approaches to the same problem. Namely;
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| Me-ality booths in shopping centers are providing consumers with a new shopping experience. |
How can I know that the garment that I purchase online will fit me, and more importantly, look good on me?
This is a challenge that fashion ecommerce has been attempting to tackle for a number of years, and it is also a challenge that continues to grow exponentially with the advent of greater mobile device based shopping. The conventional approach to this issue is to essentially ignore it, let the consumer buy whatever, hope it fits, and if it doesn’t then send it back.
These virtual players are trying to change all of that through approaches such as submitting body measurements, identifying clothing that they already ‘know about’ and comparing fit, and others. And to a certain extent, these approaches are working, but unfortunately, not well.
For instance, after conducting several experiments with Fit.me, I realized that not only did they lack virtual mannequin configurations for people outside of the average band of sizing, but they also lacked the same for numerous configurations that I would characterize as typical. Similarly, VirtuSize offers a very limited selection of ‘host brands’ (being those brands with which you may compare a proposed garment) to choose from.
The real problem though is not that these issues are insurmountable… The heart of the matter boils down to the question of not whether it will fit, but will it fit well, and look good on the individual consumer?
I don’t think that there is a good answer to this question just yet, but I do suspect that one is on the way. So I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this issue will be defeated by 2015, and one or more useful standards will exist by that time to, with some modicum of accuracy, answer the question “Will I look good in this?”
Prediction: By the end of 2015, the majority of consumers will have the ability to shop for garments online secure in the knowledge that what they buy is something that they’ll actually want to wear.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
This is one of those technologies that seems to have it all. It makes inventory vastly more accurate, cycle counts as easy as waving a wand, and terms such as ‘shrinkage’ become a thing of the past. It really is one of those technologies that makes a technologist such as myself wonder, why isn’t everyone doing this RIGHT NOW???
Well, as with everything, the answer to that question is cost. While RFID tech has come down in price significantly over the past several years, the costs associated with it are enormous when compared to UPC encoding. The fact of the matter is, it will always cost less to print out bar codes on hang tags than it will to put a computer chip inside of them.
On the surface anyway. But let’s take a look at the true cost of not doing it.
The idea that RFID technology increases efficiency, in warehouse, shipping and store operations, is certainly no joke. There is plenty of proof out there amongst the large retail and big box stores that the efficiencies to be gained are tremendous. Companies such as Walmart, who have launched programs to aggressively embrace RFID, are already leveraging this technology to enhance their logistical prowess. The relevant fact being of course that Walmart has the power to enforce uniform usage with all of their suppliers.
But how does this break down for the common fashion retailer, that wholesale/retail operation with a couple dozen stores, high hopes, and an eye on eking out every cent from their operations to put towards better marketing and brand expansion?
Well, I’m afraid it doesn’t break down well. Since the majority of small to mid-sized fashion retailers employ 3rd parties for many of their logistical functions, such as warehousing and shipping, they’re constantly on the prowl to reduce the cost of those logistics and improve their margins. This means that 3rd party logistical operations must provide the most competitive prices in order to retain their clientele, and as such are not particularly interested in subsidizing a fashion retailer’s operational spend by footing the cost of these devices, which remain 10-15 times more expensive per-unit than the traditional UPC hangtag approach.
The benefits to be gained are certainly considerable, but this technology is one which only becomes universally useful and affordable whenever everyone adopts it, and that just doesn’t seem to be the case. Nor do I see it becoming the case, due to cost of units as well as retrofitting of systems to enable their usage. It is far more likely that enhanced UPC, which offers similar benefits in terms of in-store shopping experience, and costs no more than a traditional UPC does today, will win the day.
Prediction: Use of RFID technology will continue to grow at a slow pace, and there will be no universal adoption by small to mid-sized retailers in the forseeable future. Large retailers will continue to press forward and reap the rewards.
Mobile Commerce
mCommerce is about the most exciting thing in the universe of retail technology right now. Everyone in fashion has an app, and those that don’t are either scratching their heads wondering how this phenomenon has gotten by them, or else they’re plowing ahead with traditional ecommerce initiatives, blissfully unaware of the ever increasing segment of their customer base that they are at best inconveniencing and at worst outright alienating.
Look at the statistics;
- Fashion brands have seen mobile sales volume grow by more than 35% during the 2012 holiday season
- Mobile tablet transactions have increased by 150% in 2012
- Mobile ad impressions as a sub-sector of advertising has increased by about 800% in 2012
- Technology manufacturers are shipping 75% more tablets, while shipments of PCs has decreased by 27%
- Charting of the data relevant to tablet, mobile, and PC usage indicates a clear trend that combined mobile and tablet usage will exceed PC usage by early 2015.
All of this data leads to one inescapable conclusion. If you are a fashion retailer and you haven’t started working on your mobile presence yet, then you are working on an aggressive strategy to go out of business.
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| Apple, Starbucks and Target are pioneering new, more store integrated app concepts |
To read more on my thoughts regarding mobile technology in fashion and retail, click here.
To steal a relevant snippet from my previous article; Smart, nimble and aggressive retailers are working on mobile integration now, and will already be fully engaged in the development of their 2nd to 3rd generation mobile experience by the time the more traditional 'houses' make their move. The next generation of mobile app will not simply facilitate shopping and provide an optimized mobile experience to the consumer Rather, it will, at a minimum, utilize an omnichannel approach, combined with geolocation, CRM, marketing and other technologies to;
- Motivate consumers into the store shopping experience
- Facilitate the shopping and purchasing experience
- Convert each passerby into a possible sale
- Transform all advertising into a potential sales conversion
- Deliver to the retailer unparalleled and previously unachievable insight into the world of their customer
Mobile commerce will continue to grow, it is as inevitable as the sunrise, and I don’t need to be Nostradamus in order to make the following prediction;
Prediction: By 2015, shopping experiences both in-store as well as online will be facilitated, augmented and fully realized through rich mobile commerce capabilities. This will be the expected norm.
Social Shopping
This is a somewhat new term for a set of phenomena that has been taking place for some time now. Social shopping is a method of ecommerce where shoppers’ friends become involved in the shopping experience. Social shopping attempts to use technology to mimic the social interactions found in physical malls and stores. With the rise of mobile devices, social shopping is now extending beyond the online world and into the offline world of shopping. (Thanks Wikipedia!)
There are several defined categories of social shopping;
- Group Shopping (bargain hunting)
- Shopping Communities (crowd thinking)
- Recommendation Engines (advice)
- Social Marketplaces (buyer to seller connection)
- Shared Shopping (online collaborative group experiences)
For my purposes though, I’m not really going to discuss any of these but rather the extension of the concept into the collaborative online – brick and mortar experience.
Fashion technology innovators, such as;
Magic Mirror, a UK company who has created a video screen system capable of virtually displaying garments on a customer in real time.
And
Armstrong Creative, a Canadian company who has developed a fashion photo booth concept which allows shoppers to gain professional quality photo results and share them instantaneously via social networks
These types of companies are bringing technology to bear upon the in-store shopping experience in new and unique ways. New methods for sharing the shopping experience with friends, leveraging the capabilities of both integrated as well as mobile technologies, has the potential to revitalize the brick and mortar shopping experience, and promote both increased sales as well as increased customer satisfaction, and as these technologies improve, they will do so at ever decreasing costs.
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