FashTech Digital Incubator
The digital future for the fashion and apparel sector
Fashion and Apparel sector
To succeed in an increasingly digital world, the Fashion/Apparel sector needs to transform to a digital culture
>>> Future direction
The Financial Services sector is already adopting a FinTech approach
The FashTech digital incubator
Provides a full scale of services to enable all those involved in the Fashion/Apparel sector to succeed in an increasingly digital world
Opportunities
The FashTech digital incubator
- is a partnership service developed and provided by
University College London (UCL) and IORMA – The Global Consumer Commerce Centre - offers established business and start-ups alike the opportunity to commercially succeed in an ever-changing digital world
- provides two dimensions. The Technology Dimension and the Commercial Dimension
Challenges
- Global Society and Global Business is reeling from the combined effects of disruptive change brought about by ever accelerating advances in technology. The global pandemic has only served to accelerate the adoption of new technology-based services
- Digital Transformation is causing major organisations to alter their business offerings radically and quickly, whilst at the same time facing the competitive challenge of new Digitally savvy agile start-ups
- New start-up businesses can more rapidly develop and deploy these new technologies to provide first mover advantage in their respective marketplace
- The adoption of technology and the corresponding environmental issues are being increasingly expected, used and recognised by consumers across all their commercial engagement channels with businesses
- Impacts upon jobs and human skills for future jobs are a major underlying consideration throughout
Technology Dimension
Based on the University College London (UCL) proven and successful Financial Sector platform ‘RegulAtion’ and its ‘AIRtech’ digital engine, this platform is now being extended to the Fashion and Apparel sector through the FashTech digital incubator.
Technology aspects such as the following will be incorporated:
- Big Data – very large datasets of historic and real-time financial, economic, social media and alternative data
- Internet of Things (IoT) – the inter-networking of ‘smart’ physical devices, vehicles, buildings, etc.
- Artificial Intelligence – AI and machine learning systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence
- Federated Learning – a machine learning technique that trains an algorithm across multiple decentralized data sources
- Digital Object Identifiers – an identifier for data that is uniquely resolvable, standardized by an international body
- Computer-executable rules – legal contracts and regulations executable by computer
- Blockchain – distributed databases that secures, validates and processes transactional data
- Analytics Technologies
- Chatbots – programs that simulates human conversation through voice commands or text chats
Commercial Dimension
IORMA – The Global Consumer Commerce Centre provides the ‘digital transformation’ commercial research, operations, training/coaching, implementation and financial support services for the FashTech digital incubator.
IORMA is a Foresight Research Organisation concerned with future trends in Global Consumer Commerce and the impacts of evolving disruptive technologies.
The application and impacts of the following will be incorporated:
- Digital mindset and Resistance to change
- Consumer trends (e.g. transparency)
- Socio-economic trends
- Horizon scanning
- Whole life carbon costs
- Fusion of digital aspects in:
- B2B, B2C, D2C – Online, Store trading and Direct to Consumer D2C
- Design, Manufacturing, Materials, Distribution, Packaging, Marketing, Sales, Circular Economy, Counterfeiting and Fraud prevention, Intelligent apparel, End of Life and Waste
- Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Robotics, Virtual Reality(VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), 3D Printing and 3D Knitting, Micro and Mini Factories, AI driven Chatbots, Digital Humans, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), Metaverse
- Materials and impacts upon: Returns, Circular Economy, Production, Manufacture close to Point of Consumption
The Fashion and Apparel Sector Overview
- All 8 billion global consumers wear clothes
- Global apparel market $1.5 trillion in 2020 to $2.25 trillion by 2025 (Source – Statista)
- Possible decline in fast fashion earnings of 10 to 30 percent over 5 to 10 years (Source – UBS 2021)
- 440 million (1 in 8) of the 3.4 billion global workforce are employed in some way in Fashion and Textile production (Source – Common Objective)
- 107 billion units of apparel and 14.5 billion pairs of shoes were purchased in 2016. The amount of items produced for the apparel market is expected to increase by 13% (13 billion units) by 2021 (Source – Common Objective)
- Eighty-five percent of the world textiles end up in the ground or the incinerator (Source – Post Carbon Lab)
- Fashion is responsible for a fifth of water contamination and 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (more than shipping and aviation combined) (Source – Post Carbon Lab)
- By some estimates, fashion is the second most polluting industry after oil, and the damage is unevenly distributed (Source – Post Carbon Lab)
For further information contact
t: 44 (0)207 0961729