The Future of Fashion Retail

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2019

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Will online shopping and AI combine to kill the high street clothing store?

Ed Butler gets himself digitally measured up in order to try on outfits in cyberspace, with the help of Tom Adeyoola, founder of virtual browsing business Metail. Meanwhile Julia Boesch - who runs Outfittery, one of Europe's biggest online fashion retailers, out of her office in Berlin - explains how artificial intelligence is enabling her company to provide customers with the kind of individualised style advice they would normally find in a bespoke tailors.

So is the roll-out of AI-enhanced phone-based services going to revolutionise the way we buy our attire? Yes, says Achim Berg of consultants McKinsey - but not quite yet.

(Picture: Body scan to provide exact measurements at custom tailoring shop Alton Lane in Washington DC; Credit: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.
0:05.7	Coming up, the future of Main Street, the great department stores, for example,
0:10.3	is traditional shopping under threat from online retail.
0:14.9	The High Street is really struggling right now of trying to create a differentiated service to what's online.
0:22.1	And I think the retailers who understand and can do online to offline well will be the ones that flourish over the coming
0:27.0	period. Today we're looking at fashion retail specifically and whether new technology can help
0:32.2	it transform or has the potential of artificial intelligence been overhyped?
0:37.7	We expected AI to have a big breakthrough in 2018.
0:41.5	And I think we have to admit everybody is testing it,
0:44.5	but it will take time to really revolutionize retail.
0:48.3	That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:54.3	Fashion retail is changing dramatically the world over, and it really has to.
0:59.6	The rise of online shopping has placed huge pressures on traditional Western stores,
1:04.7	especially, cutting prices, but also challenging the entire concept of good old retail therapy, the shopping experience, browsing
1:12.9	and hunting down that dream bit of clothing. Well, some people like it anyway. Can artificial
1:18.7	intelligence offer physical stores a way to fight back? Offering a marriage, perhaps,
1:23.7	between the high street or mall and the convenience of online.
1:28.0	Meetail is one company that thinks it can.
1:30.7	Based in Cambridge in the UK, it's a bunch of techies basically bringing to life
1:34.9	some of the possibilities of virtual browsing that weren't previously possible.
1:40.3	On a visit to their offices, I got to see how, with the help of Chief Technology Officer Jim Downing.
1:46.7	What are we calling this?
	...

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