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Global growth broadly unchanged amid persistent services inflation

Global growth is projected to be in line with the April 2024 World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecast, at 3.2 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025.

Services inflation is holding up progress on disinflation, which is complicating monetary policy normalization. Upside risks to inflation have thus increased, raising the prospect of higher for even longer interest rates, in the context of escalating trade tensions and increased policy uncertainty. The policy mix should thus be sequenced carefully to achieve price stability and replenish diminished buffers.

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growth; disinflation; financial conditions; world economic outlook; risks

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World Economic Outlook Update, July 2024: The Global Economy in a Sticky Spot

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Global growth is projected to be in line with the April 2024 World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecast, at 3.2 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025. Services inflation is holding up progress on disinflation, which is complicating monetary policy normalization.

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The economy moved into deflation, and an ongoing crisis in the property market — which drives 25% of China’s economy — left apartment sales in August 47% below 2019 levels.

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The economy moved into deflation, and an ongoing crisis in the property market — which drives 25% of China’s economy — left apartment sales in August 47% below 2019 levels.

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Youth unemployment has been high, hitting 20.8% in May (the latest date that China’s National Bureau of Statistics published new figures).

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Countries or regions they believe will be the most promising in the year ahead compared to 2023 in the survey conducted in September

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Countries or regions they believe will be the most promising in the year ahead compared to 2023 in the survey conducted in September

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• Middle East 51%

• India 39%

• Asia Pacific 34%

• North America 8%

• China 3%

• Western Europe -11%

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Pressure on household budgets is likely to prompt a decline in discretionary spend.

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Pressure on household budgets is likely to prompt a decline in discretionary spend.

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In the third quarter of 2023, net intent to purchase apparel was - 25% in the US and - 29% in Europe, according to a McKinsey survey.

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Consumers in Europe reported mixed feelings about the economy in August. Those feelings manifested into a range of behaviors-for example, price became a more important factor in purchase decisions. A greater emphasis on the omnichannel experience, as well as health and environmental considerations, also characterized European consumer behavior in the third quarter of 2023. The following six charts highlight findings from our latest ConsumerWise research in five European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

This snapshot of the European consumer reflects the complicated world around them, one in which uncertainty lingers. The survey results indicate that value may become a more important purchase consideration, but certainly not the only one. European consumers are open to new experiences and to discovering brands across a variety of channels, creating valuable opportunities for consumer goods and retail businesses across the region. Check out our ConsumerWise page, and contact us for more information and additional insights.

To save or to splurge? That is the question confronting European consumers, who have the most optimistic economic outlook they have had in at least a year, in the face of continuing price increases. For some, the answer is "both." The following five charts highlight findings from our latest ConsumerWise research survey, conducted in May 2023 in five European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

The snapshot of the European consumer today reflects the tension between intending to spend and save under the pressure of higher prices, albeit with more nuance than one might find in a typical economics textbook. These sentiment data indicate that value may become a more important driver of purchases-but certainly not the only one.

Check out our ConsumerWise page and contact us for more information and additional insights.

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An update on European consumer sentiment: Uncertainty lingers

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Is European consumer confidence growing in the face of recent global economic challenges? Find out in our latest ConsumerWise research survey.

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In India, consumer confidence reached a four-year high in September 2023.

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In India, consumer confidence reached a four-year high in September 2023.

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India-based executives are more optimistic than western peers, with 85% of respondents to a McKinsey global survey saying that conditions have improved in the six months to August.

Strong investment activity, consistent domestic demand and a policymaker push to invest in infrastructure buoyed the rapid growth.

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Global travel is projected to exceed pre-pandemic flows for the first time in 2024, reaching up to 110% of 2019 levels.

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Louis Vuitton Opens First Italian Café in Taormina, Sicily

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Louis Vuitton Opens First Italian Café in Taormina, Sicily

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Louis Vuitton Opens First Italian Café in Taormina, Sicily

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LORO PIANA AT LA RÉSERVE À LA PLAGE BEACH CLUB SAINT-TROPEZ

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LORO PIANA AT LA RÉSERVE À LA PLAGE BEACH CLUB SAINT-TROPEZ

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FIRST Coach Airways Has Landed in Malaysia

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FIRST Coach Airways Has Landed in Malaysia

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FIRST Coach Airways Has Landed in Malaysia! Fashion Pop-Up Store Built In A REAL Aircraft - Travel Rookie

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The iconic New York fashion house, Coach has launched a first-of-its-kind immersive pop-up experience built in a REAL aircraft. Introducing Coach Airways, the first retail concept where passengers are welcomed onboard to explore and shop a series of Coach collections and exclusive merchandise. Spanning across 4,198 square feet, the space is turned into a ’70s retro Coach-inspired …

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Dior Spa Eastern & Oriental Express | Dior Spa in Southeast Asia

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Welcome to our exceptional spa on rails, the first Dior Spa in Southeast Asia — Toile de Jouy motif, opulent cabins and relaxing treatments await.

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Jacquemus opened a branded beach in Saint Tropez

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Jacquemus opened a branded beach in Saint Tropez

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Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.

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Instagram engagement rates have fallen, by roughly 30% year on year in 2022, while the reach of posts has diminished. (RivalIQ, 2023)

Consumers are showing signs of fatigue towards traditional influencer marketing.

The BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2024 Consumer Survey found that:

68% were unhappy about the high volume of sponsored content on social media platforms

65% were turning less to fashion influencers than a few years ago

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“Attention must be earned in an instant.” That’s according to our analyst Paul Verna. “The dominant ad formats [on social media] are below 15 seconds and in some cases as low as 3 seconds.”

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One lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been soaring consumer interest in healthier lifestyles and nature-focused activities.

LUXURY COLLABORATIONS - Jil Sander and Arc’teryx, THE NORTH FACE X GUCCI, LOEWE X ON and many more examples...

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One lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been soaring consumer interest in healthier lifestyles and nature-focused activities, like camping, hiking and boating. In the US, 82 percent of people said they had participated in such outdoor activities, compared to 60 percent in 2020, while nearly half of survey respondents in the UK report spending more time outdoors than prior to the pandemic. In China, by the end of 2021, more than 400 million people were taking part in outdoor sports, and between 2021 and 2023, the search volume in for "outdoor" on Chinese marketplace Tmall surged more than 600 percent.

This is, of course, good news for outdoor sportswear brands, many of which have also been riding the "gorpcore" trend that has picked up steam over recent years. " Gorpcore " is a colloquial term for trail-running mix (Good Ol' Raisins and Peanuts). Outdoor enthusiasts and young urbanites alike have been gravitating to gorpcore's functional, outdoors-inspired fashion, such as shell jackets and hiking-style sneakers. In 2022, revenues for the outdoor category were 24 percent higher than pre-pandemic times, drawing attention of financial deal makers. Outdoor wear has been a highly active investment category since the pandemic, with deals involving brands and retailers like Moosejaw, Marathon Sports and Topo Athletic.

From Outdoors to the Mainstream

Many of the fastest-growing sports brands of recent years have roots in outdoor performance but have since transcended their core customer bases to attain widespread popularity. In July 2023, The North Face announced its 10th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth, while Amer Sports, backed by a consortium led by Chinese sportswear giant Anta, has said it plans to scale Salomon and Arc'teryx, two of its brands that were born as niche ski and climbing brands, respectively.

A similar evolution is taking place with technical and trail running brands such as Deckers-owned Hoka and On, which found loyal customers within running communities before their innovative, high-comfort solutions found appeal with wider audiences. On reported a 69 percent year-on-year jump in revenue to $1.3 billion for 2022, exceeding analyst expectations, while Hoka is on track to hit $2 billion in annual revenue.

Luxury brands also have a toehold in the outdoors. The North Face and Gucci collaboration, unveiled in 2021, was one of the first big tie-ups between luxury and outdoors. Since then, a wave of performance-influenced footwear collaborations have followed, including those from On and Loewe, Hoka and Moncler, and barefoot shoe maker Vibram and Balenciaga. In terms of apparel, Jil Sander and Arc'teryx collaborated on a collection of sportswear-infused mountain gear, while Adidas and Moncler created a capsule collection of puffers and track jackets. These partnerships have elevated gorpcore, while celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid have taken to combining high luxury fashion with outdoor wear and hiking shoes.

Mid-market brands have been heading outdoors, too: H&M 's summer 2023 "Move" collection featured water-repellent parkas and convertible hiking trousers, while Inditex's loungewear and activewear brand Oysho launched hiking boots within its permanent range alongside a hiking collection for women. Free People similarly expanded its merchandise to include hiking sticks and trekking poles.

In the year ahead, brands are expected to forge ever-closer ties between style and utility as lifestyle brands deepen investment in the outdoors, and outdoor brands increasingly court fashion-focused customers. As such, outdoor specialists are likely to more closely align their products to everyday lifestyles. Merrell, which started as a purveyor of high-performance hiking boots, is among the brands to have developed lifestyle footwear, while Icelandic outerwear brand 66°North named Kei Toyoshima, a menswear design consultant at Louis Vuitton, as creative director in 2022 to enhance its appeal with broader audiences.

Meanwhile, luxury players from Dior to Burberry are moving from one-off outdoor capsules to permanent collections. Prada's Linea Rossa technical line has recently been sported by style makers such as A$AP Rocky. In turn, outdoor labels have started to borrow from the luxury playbook by, for example, opening high-profile flagships and pop-up experiences that elevate their brands. This includes Arc'teryx's latest flagship store in Osaka's Shinsaibashi neighbourhood, which features the first Arc'teryx cafe with food inspired by the brand's Canadian roots, as well as a Japanese menu.

Quieter Styles Ahead

However, as the gorpcore trend cools, brands may be challenged to shapeshift their outdoor offerings. Similar to how the "quiet luxury" aesthetic gained popularity as consumer interest in streetwear waned, "quiet outdoor" styles are likely to gain popularity in the year ahead, with consumer preferences shifting from flashy performance jackets and cargo trousers to elevated garments with minimal logos while still featuring technical fabrics.

Reflecting this dynamic, Arc'teryx chief executive Stuart Haselden said in spring 2023 that the company is investing in sub-brand Veilance to cater to consumers looking for fashion-forward yet minimalist technical clothing without the typical gorpcore hallmarks. Outerwear label Goldwin has introduced simple, loose suiting made from ultra-lightweight wool and bamboo fibre, while Roa Hiking, a brand favoured by rapper Drake, has married a luxury aesthetic with functionality with products such as thermal-lined trousers made from water-repellent nylon fabric.

When it comes to footwear, outdoor-style shoes from performance brands that "sneakerheads" started coveting in recent years are likely to gain even more traction with consumers in 2024. On was the fastest-growing sneaker brand in 2023 on resale platform StockX, with trade activity up more than 15,000 percent year on year, while trade activity for Salomon and Asics was up 202 percent and 72 percent respectively.

This may spur brands to lean further into styles that straddle utility and fashion and can be worn in both urban and outdoor settings. For example, one of Salomon's top sellers is its Sportstyle XT-6 Gore-Tex shoe, which features performance benefits but is designed for use in daily life. The brand has teamed up with Maison Margiela to launch an Autumn-Winter 2023 collection including a "Cross Wader" trainer which bridges technical performance and style, building on the success of the two brands' "Cross Low" sneaker worn by Rihanna at the 2023 Super Bowl.

In the coming year, utility, durability and performance may prove to be a good match for consumers' budgets, increasing the appeal of the outdoor category. As such, brands across all price segments should get ready to embrace the outdoors in its new, blended form and find a place in the shifting competitive landscape.

Indeed, competition may increase across price points and categories, with some outdoor brands skewing apparel towards the high end (Arc'teryx, The North Face) and capturing some of luxury brands' wallet share, while others look to further shake-up the footwear market (Hoka, On, Salomon). The challenge for all brands will be to establish relevancy among diverse customer segments, from technical outdoor-goers to StockX customers, while staying true to the brand's core. Otherwise, brands may risk watering down their identities and losing what makes them distinctive in the first place.

For outdoor brands looking to conquer fashion, embracing a quieter aesthetic may be the key. On the other hand, fashion brands making their foray into outdoor wear may be able to crack the design code but may have to rapidly scale capabilities and suppliers to compete. Redefining the go-to-market strategy to prioritise innovation and extensive testing of materials for performance will likely become table stakes.
This article first appeared in The State of Fashion 2024, an in-depth report on the global fashion industry, co-published by BoF and McKinsey & Company.

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The Year Ahead: How Brands Are Reinventing Outdoor Wear

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The lines between functionality and style will continue to blur as consumers continue to embrace "gorpcore" and competition increases among technical outdoor wear players, according to The State of Fashion 2024.

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Soaring temperatures around the world will make 2023 one of the hottest if not the — hottest years on record. Wildfires torrential rain and flash floods have devasted communities around the world.

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For many fashion businesses, addressing climate-related risks is often a priority that is eclipsed by other challenges they deem more urgent or imminent. However, due to the geographic footprint and structure of fashion's supply chains, it is especially vulnerable to extreme and increasing climate volatility. In 2024, a mindset shift is needed across the industry to acknowledge that maintaining the status quo is no longer an option and climate risk cannot be viewed as a long-term project to be tackled further down the line. The past year has provided ample examples of why climate de-risking needs immediate action given fashion value chains' exposure to extreme weather conditions around the world. De-risking will not be the sole responsibility of manufacturers - brands will also need to revisit their supplier standards and invest to ensure they are sufficiently addressing new climate-related dimensions.

Globally, 2023 will likely be remembered as a year of climate-related disasters, and the frequency of these disasters is only expected to increase due to climate change. Soaring temperatures around the world will make 2023 one of - if not the - hottest years on record, which scientists say is the result of both El Niño weather patterns and global warming. Sweltering temperatures, wildfires, torrential rain and flash floods have devastated communities around the world, leaving behind death and destruction. Few regions seemed to be spared.

Though the human and environmental tragedy looms large, it is also hard to ignore the economic toll. The US, for example, had suffered an annual record, at $23 billion, of climate-related disasters even before 2023 comes to an end, surpassing 2020′s record high. And drought in Argentina in 2023 could cause the country's economy to shrink by 2.5 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. Beyond the Americas, China lost more than $7.6 billion due to severe drought in 2022. Globally, the cost of each climate-related disaster is estimated to have increased 77 percent over the past 50 years, reports the World Economic Forum.

As global warming exceeds its current level of 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels, productivity growth is set to fall. With global warming levels potentially reaching 2.2°C by 2050, global GDP levels could be reduced by up to 20 percent, while warming of up to 5°C by 2100 could lead to "economic annihilation," according to Oxford Economics.

The BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2024 Executive Survey found that executives expect other challenges - notably economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions and inflation - to be vying for their attention ahead of climate risk. Yet, the past year should be a wakeup call for fashion. With fashion still responsible for between 3 percent and 8 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, a mix of short- and long-term strategies can help companies address the climate challenge. Companies, for example, may look to de-risking the value chain and revamping structural and operational legacies, or doubling down on sustainability.

Outsized Risks for Fashion's Value Chain

Every part of the fashion value chain is affected by the climate crisis, not least because so much of the industry is reliant on the countries and regions most directly impacted by climate upheavals, signifying an outsized risk for fashion in comparison to many other industries. By 2030, extreme weather events could jeopardise $65 billion worth of apparel exports and eliminate nearly one million jobs in four economies that are among the most central to the global fashion industry - in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan and Vietnam.

One part of the fashion value chain that is particularly exposed is the production of raw materials supplying manufacturers. Consider cotton, which is sensitive to both droughts and flooding. In India, the world's second-largest cotton exporter, extensive rainfall and pest invasions have reduced its supply to the extent that the country began importing it. Pakistan, too, has been hit by extreme monsoons, while in contrast, drought has hit Texas' cotton producers, leading to abandoned crops and steep production declines.

For manufacturers, flooding is also a growing risk, forcing temporary or permanent factory closures. In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 55 percent of apparel and footwear manufacturing sites could be exposed to rising sea levels and flooding by 2030. Not only are the livelihoods of factory workers impacted, but their health and safety as well. Factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, report suffering headaches, exhaustion from dehydration and lack of sleep due to high temperatures, while 53 percent of surveyed Cambodian workers reported becoming unwell due to heat stress. Meanwhile, as temperatures climb, productivity is expected to fall significantly, estimated to decrease at about 1.5 percent for every degree that temperatures rise above 25°C.

Climate is also impacting fashion's logistic strategies. Across all industries, 90 percent of exported goods are reliant on shipping to reach their final destinations, but an estimated $122 billion of economic activity at ports is at risk from disruptions caused by extreme climate events. The summer of 2023 saw Europe's worst dry spell in 500 years, with ships navigating the Rhine River forced to reduce the weight of cargo in order to continue their journeys. A similar narrative played out on the Panama Canal. In China, drought slowed traffic on the Yangtze River, forcing companies to move goods through alternative, often more expensive routes.

Weather-Proofing Strategies in 2024 and Beyond

Fashion executives in 2024 and beyond should embed climate strategies across their businesses. They may do so by first identifying direct value at risk from potential climate impacts as well as material second- and third-order impacts - such as supply chain disruptions, damage to infrastructure, or financial and job losses - and implementing thorough scenario planning for these possibilities.

Boosting resilience up and down the value chain, particularly in climate risk "hotspots," is critical. Nimble processes are needed to swiftly offset weather-related pressures on suppliers and inventories as well as consumers. Alongside these operational changes, other adjustments must be considered, including sourcing strategies and locations to ensure they also enable flexibility and speed in times of extreme weather events. This may require trade-offs between risk mitigation and cost, speed, capacity and availability of materials.

Action by manufacturers must take the form of prioritising worker health and safety. This can be actioned through operational shifts such as offering more frequent breaks, rehydration amenities and proactive temperature monitoring of the factory floor, alongside capital investments in fan systems.

Longer term, and most importantly, companies should invest in innovation across the value chain aimed at helping to reduce fashion's impact on the planet. This will touch on all areas of the value chain, from new material innovations such as lab-grown fibres, more efficient and ethical product reuse and recycling, and a shift from encouraging make-take-waste consumption culture.

Industry-wide initiatives will be crucial to facilitate progress at scale. Joining pacts such as the Fashion Pact, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and the Fashion Charter is a strong first step, but action must follow alignment. Individual company adaptation should be supported by urgent collaborative change.
This article first appeared in The State of Fashion 2024, an in-depth report on the global fashion industry, co-published by BoF and McKinsey & Company.

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The Year Ahead: Why Fashion Can No Longer Ignore the Climate Crisis

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The State of Fashion 2024 explores how the frequency and intensity of extreme weather-related events are leaving the industry's value chain increasingly vulnerable.

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With their extremely low costs, wide selection of SKUs, and blazingly quick design-to-market turnaround times (e.g., Shein's 10-day turnaround vs. Zara's 21-day), Temu and Shein dominate the worldwide app download market.

Inventory risk is decreased via small-batch manufacturing and direct-to-consumer (DTC) supply chains.

The foundation of their business strategy is data-driven design and real-time demand testing (10k new products/day).

Gamification and community development increase retention (Temu's app conversion rate is 10% compared to the industry average of 2%).

In order to avoid the burden of import taxes, they are currently constructing worldwide warehouses in response to criticism over sustainability and ethics.

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The importance of immersive experiences and emotional storytelling has increased as part of data privacy laws and growing digital ad expenses.

With their informal designs and high-impact partnerships (e.g., Miu Miu, Aime Leon Dore), brands like as Hugo Boss and New Balance are redefining.

There is a boom in cross-industry marketing as companies combine fashion with sports, music, and movies.

With athlete-centered tales, Nike continues to lead the way in cause-driven storytelling.

IRL brand love is developed through pop-ups and exhibitions, such as Galeries Lafayette's Jacquemus.

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Unsold commodities and significant supply chain disruptions resulted from post-pandemic inventory overshooting.

In 2022–2023, textile exports fell 20–40%, and several mills are already running well below capacity.

significant employment losses in nations that produce textiles (for example, more than 1 million in Pakistan alone).

There was a spike in labour unrest (more than 700 strikes in China in H1 2023).

In an effort to restore their ethics and agility, brands are increasingly investigating nearshoring, reshoring, and smart supplier alliances.

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Faster content generation, from design mockups to product text, is made possible by Gen AI (e.g., ChatGPT, picture models).

Risks include bias, false information, intellectual property theft, and an excessive dependence on historical data.

Trend predicting, customer service, and design ideation are among its uses, but human control remains crucial.

It is not new (Siri 2011, Google Translate 2006), but in 2023–2024, its widespread consumer usage skyrocketed.

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Today, LS&Co. announced our partnership with Lalaland.ai, a digital fashion studio that builds customized AI-generated models. Later this year, we are planning tests of this technology using AI-generated models to supplement human models, increasing the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.

Founded in Amsterdam in 2019, Lalaland.ai uses advanced artificial intelligence to enable fashion brands and retailers to create hyper-realistic models of every body type, age, size and skin tone. With these body-inclusive avatars, the company aims to create a more inclusive, personal and sustainable shopping experience for fashion brands, retailers and customers.

"While AI will likely never fully replace human models for us, we are excited for the potential capabilities this may afford us for the consumer experience," said Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles, global head of digital and emerging technology strategy at Levi Strauss & Co. "We see fashion and technology as both an art and a science, and we're thrilled to be partnering with Lalaland.ai, a company with such high-quality technology that can help us continue on our journey for a more diverse and inclusive customer experience."

Today, when you shop on Levi.com or in our app, we generally have one model for each product. We know our customers want to shop with models who look like them, and we believe our models should reflect our consumers, which is why we're continuing to diversify our human models in terms of size and body type, age and skin color. This AI technology can potentially assist us by supplementing models and unlocking a future where we can enable customers to see our products on more models that look like themselves, creating a more personal and inclusive shopping experience.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a top priority for us at LS&Co., and it's important to note we do not see AI-generated models as a sole solution. In fact, over the past year, we've been focused on ensuring that not only is our work diverse, but those working on the content both in front of and behind the camera are reflective of our broad consumer base - and we're continuing to do just that.

LS&Co. is always focusing on our digital transformation journey, and we're balancing digital fundamentals with investing in emerging technology to keep us at the forefront of innovation. Using our innovation framework for evaluating emerging technologies, we're continuing to particularly explore technologies that improve the customer experience, whether in-store or online. We are excited to continue creating innovative customer experiences that are more personal, relevant and engaging, adding value for both our customers and our business.

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LS&Co. Partners with Lalaland.ai - Levi Strauss & Co

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Today, LS&Co. announced our partnership with Lalaland.ai, a digital fashion studio that builds customized AI-generated models. Later this year, we are planning tests of this technology using AI-generated models to supplement human models, increasing the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.

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Critics accuse companies like Shein of greenwashing when they use influencer tours to repair their reputation.

Real sustainability and transparency are being pushed for by authorities and consumers.

Brands are being forced to reconsider their commitments to sustainability and global logistics due to new tax laws (such as the closure of the "de minimis" loophole).

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designboom | architecture & design magazine

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jacquemus creates a surreal blue version of his bathroom in selfridges london

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at selfridges, jacquemus notes: ‘I wanted to create crazy and unrealistic installations, all related to water and bathroom imagery.’

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Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama Is Peak Luxury Collab. Is That a Good Thing?

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're likely quite aware that Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama released a massive collaboration in January 2023 encompassing over 450 individual items. In fact, you've probably been swimming through a sea of LV x Kusama ads, pop-ups, headline coverage, and promotional activations, which encompassed every imaginable region, market, and medium.

Truly, luxury collaborations don't get bigger than LV x Kusama. Is that a good thing?

Admittedly, this team-up was obviously intended to be so huge, so omnipresent, so unmissable that its success actually figures into Louis Vuitton's fiscal report for the first quarter of 2023 - LV x Kusama is impossible to ignore by design.

On the other hand, one wonders if we've reached the point of oversaturation.

Louis Vuitton likely wanted this. It'd rather have consumers sick of hearing about the Kusama collection than unaware that it's happening. The goal was to get eyeballs and thus sales; to that end, LV x Yayoi Kusama is a rousing success.

I mean, even Tom Brady was just spotted carrying an LV x Kusama handbag - luxury doesn't get more mass than that.

But the question is whether the spectacle's scale helped or hindered the collaboration. (And, yes, we enjoy the collection's sheer audacity, but in the midst of Louis Vuitton's Kusama-mania, we've been given pause).

Giant sculptures of Kusama leering over French buildings, Kusama robots ceaselessly dotting paint daubs inside Louis Vuitton windows, slick videos weaving Kusama into the Tokyo skyline, an endless parade of supermodels starring in the LV x Kusama campaigns... it's great deal to take in.

Consumer reactions have been mixed.

Some observers are tickled by the clever presentation others are overwhelmed by the size. On a recent Instagram post uploaded by venerable retail Harrod's, commenters expressed weariness over a perceived lack of creativity, complaining about the repetitive nature of the designs.

In fairness, repetition is key to Kusama's output but, also, we're talking about 450 pieces of Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama here.

The expansive affair is a lor for even the most ardent Louis Vuitton fans to swallow: devoted consumers appear equally divided on the Kusama collaboration.

Furthermore, its magnitude threatens to crush the most powerful element of any luxury team-up: exclusivity.

Louis Vuitton's 2023 Yayoi Kusama collaboration does offer ultra-rare, ultra-expensive goods for the truest aficionados but in its impressive volume, it lacks the sincerity of, say, LV's 2012 Yayoi Kusama collaboration.

Back then, designer/artist team-ups were still quite novel and, even two titans of industry came together, they still felt earnest, as if two peers were organically coming together through mutual respect.

What resulted was a concise (and coveted) collection that nattily expressed Kusama's motifs across then-creative director Marc Jacobs' inimitable designs. It felt thoughtful and essential.

The LV x Kusama of today smacks of corporate planning, comparatively focus-grouped.

How could such a gargantuan collection not lack any sense of intimacy, though?

Well, the Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 collaboration, a similarly headline-dominating team-up, managed that trick by incorporating disparate colorways and fabrications, issuing only a limited numbers of shoes, and hyping up the entire affair with a first-look auction.

It wasn't meant for everyone but it was desired by all. The late Virgil Abloh's name being attached didn't hurt.

Louis Vuitton is taking the opposite tact for its Kusama collection. Want a bag? You got it. Can't afford one? Here's a wallet. Have too many? Try some glasses or perfume.

It's not necessarily a bad thing to reach so far but the effort dilutes potential artistic integrity and, as such, reframes the collaboration.

Speaking of reframing, the buzz around the Kusama line has also dredged up some baggage, and not of the Louis Vuitton kind.

In light of the overwhelming coverage, TikTok users have returned to an article written about Kusama in 2017, wherein a Black reporter was banned from Kusama's studio and even Kusama's presence.

For context, he acknowledges that Kusama, who's resided within a psychiatric institute since 1977, has historically struggled with mental illness.

But he also asserts that in the original Japanese version of Infinity Net, Kusama's 2002 autobiography, the then-73-year-old artist described Black people as "primitive beings" with a "distinctive smell," and bemoaned the presence of Black residents within Greenwich village, where Kusama used to live.

These passages were purportedly edited out of the English version of Kusama's biography.

None of the claims put forth in the 2017 article have affected the ongoing success of Kusama's Infinity Room installations, the demand for her art on the secondhand market, or the marketability of Kusama's name, as Louis Vuitton's enormous collaboration demonstrates.

That marketability is at the heart of this immense Louis Vuitton collaboration, really, and it's the singular reason that it exists.

It feels like consumers are equally fascinated and fatigued by the results but, presumably, all that matters to LV is that people are talking about it.

Jake Silbert is a Japanese fashion-obsessed editor & writer who lives in New York, where he's perpetually hunting the best bagel and collecting .mp3s like an elderly person. Loves: chunky walking sneakers, artisanal clothing, podcasts, *Dark Souls* speedruns. Hates: overripe apples, summer weather

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Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama Is Peak Luxury Collab. Is That a Good Thing?

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Louis Vuitton & Yayoi Kusama's latest collaboration is massive & unmissable, with 450 pieces, robots, pop-ups & loads of ads. Is that a good thing?

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GLOBAL ECONOMY 2025 - According to the IMF (Oct 2024), global GDP growth is forecasted at around 3% in 2025, with major uncertainty due to inflation, geopolitical risks, and slower productivity growth.

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GLOBAL ECONOMY 2025 - According to the IMF (Oct 2024), global GDP growth is forecasted at around 3% in 2025, with major uncertainty due to inflation, geopolitical risks, and slower productivity growth.

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World Economic Outlook, October 2024: Policy Pivot, Rising Threats

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The latest World Economic Outlook reports stable but underwhelming global growth, with the balance of risks tilted to the downside. As monetary policy is eased amid continued disinflation, shifting gears is needed to ensure that fiscal policy is on a sustainable path and to rebuild fiscal buffers. Understanding the role of monetary policy in recent global disinflation, and the factors that influence the social acceptability of structural reforms, will be key to promoting stable and more rapid growth in the future.

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In 2025, volume, not pricing, will drive modest fashion industry growth.

2/3 of executives expect volume growth, while only a minority plan to increase prices—consumers are price-fatigued, especially low-to-middle income groups.

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Global Trade Disruptions - GLOBAL ECONOMY 2025

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Global Trade Disruptions - GLOBAL ECONOMY 2025

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Since 2015, trade restrictions have increased 5x.

Apparel sourcing is shifting away from China toward nearshoring and “friend-shoring” (e.g., Mexico, Turkey).

US apparel imports from China fell 6%

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Global trade has nearly flatlined. Populism is taking a toll on growth

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International trade—a key engine of global prosperity since the fall of the Berlin Wall— has ground nearly to a halt and is set to remain anemic in the coming years. In 2023, trade in goods and services expanded by the slenderest of margins, an estimated 0.2 percent, the slowest pace in 50 years outside of global recessions.

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The fashion sector expects volume, not price, to drive moderate growth. Due to customer weariness from continuous inflation, over two-thirds of CEOs anticipate low single-digit volume growth, while just a small minority intend price rises. As a result, in order to increase their market share, businesses are giving priority to localisation, broader pricing assortments, and quicker fulfilment.
While still important, sustainability is momentarily losing ground to flexibility and value.
Regional dynamics:
- With its expanding mid-market and luxury sectors, India is poised to emerge as the world's fourth biggest economy.
- China's economy slows down, and the spread of "luxury shame" hurts luxury.

- Because of the post-pandemic tourism resurgence and a weakening currency, luxury sales are high in Japan.
Brands are being forced to reconsider their commitments to sustainability and global logistics due to new tax laws (such as the closure of the "de minimis" loophole).

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CONSUMER SHIFTS 2025 - Discovery is broken - AI is fixing it

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CONSUMER SHIFTS 2025 - Discovery is broken - AI is fixing it

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Conversions are being harmed by the abundance of product options:

74% of consumers claim that having too many alternatives causes them to abandon purchases.

80% claim that a bad internet search is a hindrance.
50% of fashion executives believe that the top use case for generative AI in 2025 will be AI-powered product discovery.

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In 2025, 48% of the rise in global expenditure will come from consumers over 50. They own 72% of the wealth in the United States. They are neglected by most fashion brands, prefer in-store exploration, and place a higher emphasis on utility than trends.

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70% of shoppers say they’ll continue buying from outlets or off-price retailers even if they earn more.

1 in 3 U.S. adults bought “dupes” (luxury replicas) in the past year — not just for affordability, but out of principle.

Among millionaires, 50% are open to dupes.

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Physical retail is returning, despite the fact that digital still has the most effect (70 percent of sales are affected by digital channels).

54% of consumers would rather purchase clothing in-store than online.

Sales teams are essential for conversion and loyalty, particularly with younger and ambitious customers who are 1.5–2 times more likely to ask for professional guidance.

However, there is an increasing staffing deficit; by the end of 2025, LVMH alone would need to add 22,000 employees.

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In 2023, Europe's mid- and value-market fashion marketplaces lost $700 million in revenue.

Players like Temu and Shein have upended the market with their lightning-fast algorithms and incredibly inexpensive costs.

In China, 44% of people shop for clothes on social media, and more than 50% do it on Douyin, demonstrating the growth of social commerce.

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Sportswear is growing at a faster rate than the fashion industry (e.g., +5–6% in the US).

It is anticipated that challenger brands, such as Hoka, Salomon, Lululemon, On, Vuori, and others, would account for 57% of industry earnings, up from 20% in 2020.
Drivers of growth:

Two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennials wear athleisure on a weekly basis.

Focus on health and wellbeing: according to 56% of Gen Z, fitness is a major priority.

Local partnerships such as New Balance x Franck Pellegrino for the 2024 Olympics are culturally significant.

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Global Sports Tourism Market Size, Trends, Share 2032 - CMI

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The Global Sports Tourism Market size was valued at $521.2 Billion in 2023 and it will grow $1,050.6 Billion at a CAGR of 8.1% by 2023 to 2032

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The fashion business is trapped between regular stock-outs and surplus inventory, which can range from 70 to 140 billion dollars.

Demand is more difficult to estimate because of climatic unpredictability, multi-channel shopping complexity, and trend volatility (300% variations).

Brands need to improve inventory controls due to margin challenges and sustainability regulations.

Demand modelling, "test and react" tactics, and predictive planning are made possible by technological solutions (e.g., Nextail, Blue Yonder, o9).

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TRENDS 2025 - Sustainability Under Pressure

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TRENDS 2025 - Sustainability Under Pressure

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Sixty-three percent of brands fall short of their own sustainability targets in spite of the climate issue.

In 2025, just 18% of executives regard sustainability as one of the top three risks, compared to 29% in 2024.

Important US and EU laws:

The EU Ecodesign Law (2024) prohibits the destruction of unsold textiles starting in 2026.

California's EPR law mandates plans for recycling and repairs by 2030.

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All informations about „Attitude-Behavior Gap Report“ at Zalando Corporate, Current information about Zalando SE

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Redefining Fashion with AI-Driven Personalization: Shaping the Next Era of Sustainable, Secure, and Sophisticated Experiences

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In an era where technology and consumer consciousness are reshaping industries, fashion brands are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize customer experiences and deepen relationships. AI-driven personalization transcends simple product recommendations; it embodies a holistic appro

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In the ever-evolving landscape of the fashion industry, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping the traditional paradigms of product development.

This synergy of technology and fashion has given rise to a new era, where data-driven insights, predictive analytics, and innovative applications of AI are revolutionizing the way garments are conceived, designed, and brought to market.

In this exploration, we delve into the profound impact of Artificial Intelligence on fashion product development, uncovering the myriad ways in which cutting-edge technologies are not just influencing, but fundamentally reshaping the creative and logistical aspects of an industry that thrives on innovation and trends.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing product development across various industries by offering innovative solutions and augmenting traditional processes. In essence, the integration of AI into product development empowers businesses to make more informed decisions, streamline operations, and deliver products that are not only innovative but also aligned with market demands.

Trend analysis

Trend analysis in product development involves the systematic examination and evaluation of current and emerging trends in the fashion industry. It is a strategic process that helps fashion designers, brands, and retailers make informed decisions about the design, production, and marketing of their products.

The goal of trend analysis is to stay relevant in the ever-changing market by aligning products with consumer preferences and style movements.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a pivotal role in revolutionizing fashion trend analysis by harnessing the power of data and predictive analytics. Here are ways in which AI contributes to and enhances the process of fashion trend analysis:

1. Data Mining and Collection. AI systems can efficiently gather and analyze vast amounts of data from various sources, including social media, fashion blogs, online publications, and e-commerce platforms. This data includes information on consumer preferences, style choices, and emerging trends.

2. Pattern Recognition. AI utilizes advanced pattern recognition algorithms to identify recurring themes, colors, styles, and motifs across diverse datasets. This helps in spotting emerging trends and understanding the evolution of fashion preferences.

3. Real-time Monitoring. AI enables real-time monitoring of social media platforms and fashion-related websites. By tracking hashtags, mentions, and engagement metrics, AI systems can provide instant insights into which trends are gaining traction and popularity.

4. Predictive Analytics. AI algorithms use historical data to predict future trends, forecasting what styles, colors, or designs are likely to be in demand. This assists designers and retailers in making proactive decisions about inventory and product development.

5. Consumer Behavior Analysis. AI analyzes consumer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns to understand the factors influencing fashion choices. This information aids in tailoring marketing strategies and product offerings to better align with customer expectations.

6. Market Segmentation. AI helps in segmenting the market based on demographics, geography, and other relevant factors. This segmentation allows for a more nuanced understanding of regional or niche trends, ensuring that fashion products are tailored to specific target audiences.

7. Competitor Analysis. AI assists in monitoring and analyzing the strategies of competitors in the fashion industry. By understanding what is successful in the market, businesses can adapt their approaches to stay competitive.

Let's review some of the AI trend analysis technologies.

Brandwatch's suite features a consumer research solution with an AI tool that can generate insights from 15 years' worth of data. Its dataset dates back to 2008 and includes over 100 million web sources and over 1.4 trillion social media postings. Subscribers may also view up to 500 new posts in real-time every day.

Blue Silk AI, the Talkwalker platform's heart, is made up of two programs that track trending content: Insight and 1-Click AI classifier. From hundreds of customer reviews, polls, and emails, the Insight function identifies and gathers customer service difficulties, delivery issues, product flaws, and other consumer opinions. All of this feedback is processed and summarized by the AI algorithm in a few phrases. Meanwhile, the 1-Click Classifier allows you to use short descriptions of subjects to classify social discussions, articles, and blogs, as well as filter for relevant consumer data.

In terms of linking diverse data sources and applying analytics to information, Power BI works well with Microsoft spreadsheet tools. Connectors combine data from sources other than Excel files, such as your CRM system, and third-party services like Google Analytics, SAP, Salesforce, Twilio, and Marketo.

Generative design

A branch of AI known as generative AI focuses on teaching robots to create original and innovative material. Unlike traditional AI, which functions according to preset rules, generative AI may learn from data and develop content on its own. This technology uses complicated algorithms and neural networks to identify patterns and generate outputs that are similar to human ingenuity.

Generative design is a powerful approach to product development that leverages algorithms and computational power to explore numerous design possibilities and optimize outcomes.

Generative design enhances product development by providing designers with a powerful tool to explore, optimize, and innovate in the early stages of the design process. It accelerates the generation of high-quality designs, promotes efficiency, and enables the creation of products that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Here's how generative design helps in product development:

Repsketch, for example, is an online vector editing software that generates realistic graphics from your flat sketches. It allows you to change the background, add branding information, material specifications, and so forth. Such realistic visuals can give your fashion team a preview of a final product before manufacturing an actual physical sample, and they can be updated quickly, reducing the number of iterations throughout the sample creation process dramatically. Images generated by AI may also be utilized for presentations and sneak peeks for potential customers.

Artiphoria is another example of using Generative Ai to create digital artworks. It allows users without graphic design skills to make graphics with a single click. It is an excellent tool for creating artwork that will be printed on garments and accessories.

Vmake, on the other hand, is an AI-powered photo and video editing application that allows users to create backdrops and improve photographs and videos for marketing and content development.

Demand forecasting

Demand forecasting is a systematic process of estimating the future demand for a product or service. It involves analyzing historical data, market trends, and other relevant factors to make predictions about the quantity of goods or services that consumers will likely purchase in the future. The primary goal of demand forecasting is to help businesses make informed decisions regarding production, inventory management, and overall supply chain planning.

AI tools can significantly enhance demand forecasting by leveraging advanced algorithms, machine learning techniques, and data analytics to analyze large datasets and extract meaningful insights. Here are some ways in which AI tools can contribute to more accurate and efficient demand forecasting:

1. Pattern Recognition: AI tools can identify complex patterns and relationships within historical sales data, enabling more accurate predictions of future demand. This is particularly valuable in scenarios where traditional statistical methods may struggle to capture non-linear or dynamic patterns.

2. Predictive Analytics: AI tools can perform predictive analytics by analyzing various factors that influence demand, such as seasonality, market trends, economic indicators, and external events. This allows for a more comprehensive and dynamic understanding of the factors affecting demand.

3. Real-time Data Processing: AI tools can process and analyze real-time data streams, providing up-to-the-minute insights into changing market conditions and consumer behavior. This agility is particularly crucial in fast-paced industries where demand patterns can evolve rapidly.

Stylumia deploys its AI and machine learning platform to help fashion and lifestyle brands forecast demand, spot trends, manage inventory, and make better business decisions.

Heuritech analyzes millions of images to give their customers quantitative data on the evolution of the consumer's preferences. Using their platform brands can analyze the predicted visibility growth of shapes, colors, prints, and fabrics, and their forecast market share.

Sustainable practices

AI can play a crucial role in promoting sustainable practices in fashion product development. Here are several ways in which AI can contribute to sustainability efforts:

1. Materials Selection. AI algorithms can analyze and recommend sustainable materials for product development by considering factors such as renewable resources, recyclability, and environmental impact. This can lead to the use of materials with lower carbon footprints or reduced ecological consequences.

2. Energy Efficiency. AI can optimize energy consumption in manufacturing processes and facilities. By analyzing real-time data and making adjustments, AI helps reduce energy waste and lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with production.

3. Waste Reduction. AI can be applied to minimize waste in production processes by optimizing resource utilization, predicting defects, and improving quality control. This reduces the environmental impact and lowers costs associated with waste disposal.

4. Design Optimization. AI-driven generative design can assist engineers in creating more efficient and lightweight product designs. This can lead to the development of products that require fewer raw materials and energy during manufacturing, transportation, and use.

Green Story uses data analytics to cut down on fashion waste. By using their platform fashion brands can gain access to accurate, credible, and verifiable sustainability data. Green Story is also using data to track product usage and reduce premature disposal. The business has created a new app that lets users keep track of how frequently they wear their clothes. The app also offers advice on how to prolong the life of clothing through proper maintenance. Green Story's data-driven approach to sustainability is fostering a more circular fashion industry and lowering waste.

AutoDraw is a web-based drawing application driven by artificial intelligence. It was built by Dan Motzenbecker and Kyle Phillips of Google Creative Lab to make drawing accessible and entertaining for everyone. It enables you to sketch quickly and develop your artwork by combining machine learning with drawings by diverse artists.

Simply scribble something with AutoDraw. Its suggestion tool will then make an educated estimate as to what you're sketching. Then it will propose drawing recommendations produced by many artists and designers to improve the appearance of your artwork.

AI tools can significantly contribute to supply chain optimization by providing advanced analytics, predictive capabilities, and automation. AI tools help organizations optimize their supply chains, improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance overall responsiveness to market dynamics. Successful implementation often involves integrating AI with existing systems and processes, as well as fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making within the organization.

Product lifecycle management

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a systematic process for managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its initial concept and design, through manufacturing and use, to its eventual disposal or retirement.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play a significant role in enhancing various aspects of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), from product conceptualization and design to manufacturing, maintenance, and eventual retirement. Here are several ways AI can contribute to PLM:

1. Supply chain integration. AI helps assess supplier performance, identify potential risks, and optimize supplier relationships, ensuring a smooth flow of materials and components.

2. Predictive Analytics. AI can analyze historical data and real-time sensor data from products to predict when maintenance is required. This leads to more efficient maintenance planning, minimizing downtime, and extending the lifespan of products.

PLM software is being used by many fashion firms across the world to increase visibility and data flow throughout their company and the whole supply chain.

Techpacker PLM software is a data management system that maintains data throughout the product development process, from idea to manufacture. Its primary goal is to provide a central location for managing the product lifecycle efficiently and cost-effectively. Techpacker contains all essential PLM features including rapid design tools, integrations, component libraries, reporting, communication, and custom sections. Its specialized manufacturers' hub, which is used by factories all over the world, provides a platform for brands to easily onboard their chosen vendors.

Logility enables brands to sense and adapt to shifting market conditions, allowing them to run their complex worldwide enterprises more profitably. The Logility® Digital Supply Chain Platform uses a novel combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and sophisticated analytics to automate planning, reduce cycle times, boost accuracy, improve operating performance, break down company silos, and provide better visibility.

Quality control

Quality control in fashion product development refers to the systematic process of ensuring that the products being developed meet predefined standards and specifications. It is a critical aspect of the entire product lifecycle, starting from the design and prototyping stage to manufacturing, distribution, and ultimately reaching the end consumers. The goal of quality control is to deliver products that meet or exceed customer expectations in terms of design, craftsmanship, durability, and overall performance.

By leveraging advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques, AI can analyze large datasets, identify patterns, and automate tasks, leading to more efficient and accurate quality control. Here are several ways in which AI tools can contribute to quality control:

1. Automated Inspection. AI-powered computer vision systems can automatically inspect and analyze visual aspects of products. This includes identifying defects, irregularities, or variations in color, stitching, and overall workmanship. Automated inspection reduces the reliance on manual labor, speeds up the process, and provides consistent results.

2. Quality Analytics. AI-driven analytics can analyze data from various sources, including production processes, inspection results, and customer feedback. This provides insights into overall product quality, allowing organizations to make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.

3. Supplier Quality Management. AI can assist in assessing and managing the quality of components and materials provided by suppliers. By analyzing supplier performance data, AI tools help organizations make informed sourcing decisions and ensure that materials meet quality standards.

4. Automated Documentation and Reporting. AI can automate the documentation of quality control processes and generate comprehensive reports. This not only improves efficiency but also provides a detailed record of quality control activities for audit and compliance purposes.

Advantive is software that helps to maximize product quality, reduce manufacturing costs, and discover production difficulties immediately. This cutting-edge SPC-based software can assist firms in improving quality operations. Advantive's visual models, such as control charts and dashboards, simplify quality control and aid in the faster identification of underlying causes. Team members may monitor quality control procedures from any device and implement cost-cutting initiatives immediately.

Techpacker PLM software lets you create a range of visual reports with a single click. Time and action reports, as well as Gantt charts, are included. Brands can perform in-house quality control, request modifications quickly, and never miss a manufacturing error by capturing fit remarks and points of measurement with Techpacker's Fit Sheets.

Inventory management and logistics

AI can play a crucial role in optimizing inventory management and logistics by leveraging advanced algorithms and machine learning capabilities. By integrating AI into inventory management and logistics processes, organizations can achieve better accuracy, responsiveness, and cost-effectiveness. Implementing AI solutions often involves collaboration across different departments and the integration of AI tools with existing systems to create a more intelligent and adaptive supply chain.

Here are several ways in which AI can help enhance efficiency and accuracy in these areas:

Modern technologies use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to improve all aspects of inventory management, including demand forecasting, real-time tracking, and automatic replenishment.

SkuVault provides sophisticated AI-driven inventory management features. It supports real-time inventory tracking, demand forecasting, and smart reorder points. SkuVault enables organizations to eliminate overstock and stockouts, streamline warehouse operations, and increase order accuracy.

Fishbowl is a famous inventory management program that incorporates AI. It provides sophisticated reporting, multi-location tracking, and automation. Fishbowl improves inventory efficiency, accuracy, and supply chain visibility.

Supplier management

Managing suppliers using AI involves leveraging artificial intelligence technologies to enhance and optimize various aspects of the supplier relationship, from sourcing and negotiation to performance monitoring and risk management. Here are some ways to manage suppliers using AI:

1. RFx Automation. Employ AI algorithms to automate the Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Quote (RFQ), and Request for Information (RFI) processes. This can streamline communication with suppliers and speed up the bidding process.

2. Supply Chain Visibility. Implement AI-powered supply chain visibility tools to track and monitor supplier performance, delivery timelines, and inventory levels. Use predictive analytics to identify potential disruptions and proactively address supply chain issues.

The IBM Sterling® Supply Chain Intelligence Suite is an AI-powered optimization and automation solution developed for businesses that are trying to tackle supply chain disruptions through conventional transformation. Through actionable insights, improved processes, and intelligent automation, the technologies in the suite assist in facilitating a digital supply chain transformation, boosting supply network robustness and sustainability, increasing agility, and accelerating time-to-value.

Ironclad is Ai Contract Management Software that helps draft, edit, negotiate, sign, and store contracts. This platform allows brands to handle a variety of different contract types, including legal, sales, finance, HR, marketing, procurement, and more.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can significantly enhance marketing and customer service for fashion brands by providing personalized experiences, automating routine tasks, and analyzing vast amounts of data to derive actionable insights.

Social media and content management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can significantly enhance the effectiveness of social media and influencer marketing strategies for fashion brands. Here are several ways AI can be applied to optimize these areas:

Social Listening.AI-powered social listening tools can monitor social media platforms for mentions of the brand, relevant hashtags, and industry trends. This helps fashion brands stay informed about customer sentiments and market trends.

Pulsar AI technologies assist brands in identifying and analyzing current social media trends. Their clients have access to detailed and actionable insights that get to the heart of what matters most to their consumers, businesses, and society.

Braze is a customer engagement platform created as a software as a service (SaaS) to enable companies to build relevant and memorable experiences that encourage deeper consumer/brand connections. Braze enables users to create dynamic audiences and launch tailored customer journeys in minutes.

Anyword is a copywriting tool that helps create ads, social media, and blog posts. Simply enter your website and target consumer, and their copywriting machine will generate compelling content in minutes.

Virtual try-on and fitting

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in enhancing virtual try-ons and fittings for fashion brands. By leveraging advanced algorithms and computer vision technologies, AI can create realistic and personalized virtual experiences for customers. By incorporating AI into virtual try-ons and fittings, fashion brands can not only provide an engaging and immersive online shopping experience but also reduce the likelihood of returns by helping customers make more informed purchase decisions.

Here are several ways AI contributes to virtual try-ons and fittings:

1. Body Measurements and Analysis. AI algorithms can accurately measure and analyze body dimensions using images or videos uploaded by users.

2. Virtual Fitting Rooms. Ai enables the creation of virtual fitting rooms where users can visualize how clothing items will look on their digital avatars.

3. Clothing Simulation. AI can simulate the way fabrics and clothing items drape and move on the virtual avatar, providing a more realistic representation of how the actual garment would behave.

4. Personalized Recommendations. By analyzing user preferences, purchase history, and style choices, AI can offer personalized product recommendations for virtual try-ons, increasing the likelihood of customer satisfaction.

5. Face and Emotion Analysis. AI can analyze facial expressions and emotions during virtual try-ons to assess user reactions to different styles. This data can be used to refine recommendations and understand customer preferences better.

6. Cross-Platform Integration. AI enables the integration of virtual try-on features across various platforms, including websites, mobile apps, and social media. This ensures a consistent and accessible experience for users.

Banuba is a platform for virtual try-ons. It uses a try-before-you-buy platform and an AI recommendation engine to help marketers increase sales, minimize returns, and enhance engagement.

Google has introduced a generative AI virtual try-on tool. Shoppers may pick a model to digitally try on clothes from labels such as H&M, Loft, Everlane, and Anthropologie by clicking on goods with a "Try On" symbol. The technology will let customers see how the items would appear on persons ranging in size from XXS to 4XL, with various complexion tones, body shapes, and hairstyles.

Visual search

Visual search in AI refers to the capability of an artificial intelligence system to recognize and analyze visual information, such as images or videos, and retrieve relevant results based on the content of the visual input. Instead of using text-based queries, users can initiate searches by providing images as input, and the AI system identifies and returns similar or related visual content.

Key components and functionalities of visual search in AI include:

1. Feature Extraction. The system extracts distinctive features from the input image, converting it into a numerical representation that the AI model can process and compare with other images.

2. Similarity Scoring. The AI system assigns similarity scores to the retrieved results, indicating how closely they match the input image. This helps rank the results based on relevance.

3. E-Commerce Applications. Visual search is widely employed in e-commerce platforms, allowing users to find products by taking pictures or uploading images. The system identifies the product or similar items, streamlining the shopping experience.

4. Augmented Reality (AR) Integration. Visual search is often combined with AR technologies, allowing users to point their device's camera at real-world objects to receive information, reviews, or related content.

Canto is a digital asset management software that helps businesses all over the world optimize the value of their digital assets. Canto has capabilities such as facial recognition, version control, and asset collaborative procedures. Canto's easy interface design is one of its primary advantages, allowing users to simply search and filter through their digital assets.

Royal Cyber developed an AI-based visual search solution that allows clients to buy online as if they were in a real store. Customers may locate things quickly and shop for a full look.

Folio 3 is a visual search solution driven by AI. It may be used by fashion firms on their websites and apps to change the way their customers search for their items. Folio 3 is an AI-powered visual search solution that allows consumers to effortlessly search and locate items by leveraging photographs and images to connect real and digital experiences. Customers can locate what they're seeking more quickly and make more informed purchasing decisions.

In conclusion, the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence on fashion product development is reshaping the industry's landscape, ushering in an era of unprecedented innovation and efficiency. From the initial stages of design through production and beyond, AI is proving to be a powerful ally, offering predictive insights, enhancing creativity, and optimizing processes.

As we navigate the intersection of technology and style, the symbiotic relationship between AI and fashion becomes increasingly evident. Designers are empowered to explore new frontiers, utilizing generative design tools to unlock once unimaginable possibilities. Virtual try-ons and fittings, powered by AI, provide consumers with immersive and personalized experiences, blurring the lines between the physical and digital realms.

Moreover, AI-driven trend analysis ensures that fashion brands stay ahead of the curve, aligning their offerings with evolving consumer preferences. The marriage of data analytics and creativity gives rise to a harmonious blend, where the artistry of design meets the precision of algorithms.

In the fast-paced fashion world, adaptability is key, and AI emerges as a catalyst for agility. Whether it's streamlining supply chain processes, optimizing pricing strategies, or revolutionizing marketing approaches, Artificial Intelligence serves as a driving force behind the industry's evolution.

As we look to the future, the synergy between human ingenuity and machine intelligence promises a dynamic and continuously evolving fashion landscape. The journey of AI in fashion product development is not just a technological revolution; it is a narrative of limitless possibilities and a testament to the boundless creativity that emerges when humanity embraces the tools of tomorrow. The runway of the future is illuminated by the fusion of fashion and AI, guiding us toward a new era where innovation knows no bounds.

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How Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing the Fashion Industry

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Discover the transformative role of artificial intelligence in reshaping creativity, product development, and logistics of the fashion industry

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How Artificial Intelligence Is Revolutionizing Fashion E-commerce

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Explore how artificial intelligence in fashion boosts e-commerce with tailored shopping, virtual try-ons, and smart support to drive sales and reduce returns

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How can AI and automation enhance customer experience management strategies?

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How can AI and automation enhance customer experience management strategies?

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This article first appeared in The State of Fashion: Technology, an in-depth report co-published by BoF and McKinsey & Company.
It's no secret that fashion brands need to make highly personalised customer experience a cornerstone of their digital businesses. Their customers expect nothing less. Consumers have had their personalisation expectations redefined by the likes of Netflix, Spotify and Amazon. Shoppers expect brands to provide them with product choices and experiences that are tailored to their individual preferences. Indeed, 71 percent of global consumers want companies to deliver personalised communications and products, and 76 percent are unhappy when this is not offered.

Not so long ago, a personalised experience in fashion was something only very high-end, luxury shoppers could receive. Luxury boutique associates would lavish attention on key customers, manually recording an individual's personal tastes and shopping habits in notebook after notebook to help them tailor their service. Building a long-lasting rapport with these shoppers was an exclusive, elaborate, not to mention inefficient, exercise.

Fast forward to today and brands are facing a convergence of factors that make personalisation a priority. Declining brand loyalty among customers and increased competition for attention from social media platforms, along with tightening regulations and moves by Apple and Google to modify access to third-party data, are all impacting the ability of brands to connect with customers online. Now more than ever, personalisation can hold the key for brands to capture market share.

Shoppers expect brands to provide them with product choices and experiences that are tailored to their individual preferences.

That said, the fashion industry today generally confines personalisation to marketing recommendations for customer sub-segments, based on past purchases or online browsing history, held back by talent and technology constraints. There's scope to go further. For the first time, businesses have tools that enable them to work with all types of data across channels in real time.

This is evident in e-commerce, where platforms powered by cloud-based technologies could run AI or machine learning algorithms to accelerate the processing and analysis of Big Data on customer behaviour. The result of these analytical capabilities would mean brands are equipped to provide hyper-personalised, one-to-one experiences - similar to those of the sales associate in an exclusive boutique, but available to customers across all fashion segments, from high street to luxury.

Offering hyper personalisation will require companies to reimagine how e-commerce operates. Search-based shopping is likely to shift to the individualised discovery of products and styles offered in the right size and fit. All customers will have a curated experience on their own versions of brand websites and marketplaces, from landing page to payment, akin to their experience on social media feeds. With this, companies will use personalisation technology to build experiences that drive customer engagement and, ultimately, loyalty.

Fashion retailer Zalando has taken steps towards this vision. It uses data analytics to offer its customers millions of tailored "Zalando interfaces." By incorporating preferences into its algorithm, product displays are automatically tailored to each customer, from size to their favourite brands. The retailer is also exploring 3D body scanning technology to enhance size and fit selections.

Another company embracing this opportunity is The Yes. The fashion marketplace has built an extensive product taxonomy while also deploying machine learning and computer vision to synthesise hundreds of data points for each product. The algorithm then translates shopper preferences into a personalised exploration feed.

Meanwhile, styling service Stitch Fix tailors products to customers' tastes and needs and uses a discovery tool called "style shuffle" to help users indicate designers they like. Fast-fashion player Shein offers each customer a scrollable feed of products powered by a real-time recommendation algorithm informed by myriad data points across social media and other channels.

Offering hyper personalisation will require companies to reimagine the way that fashion e-commerce operates across platforms - a potentially complex, fast-evolving challenge.

Accelerating first-party data collection
Looking ahead in the luxury segment, hyper personalisation is set to also play out in physical stores. Store associates can leverage first-party data to provide customers with a unique experience no matter which store they enter, taking in-store clienteling to the next level. What's more, as technologies advance, it is feasible that brands will be able to create digital wardrobes for each customer along with personalised styling recommendations.
Creating a 360-degree customer view
Offering hyper personalisation will require companies to reimagine the way that fashion e-commerce operates across platforms - a potentially complex, fast-evolving challenge that can overwhelm brands. This can be managed by:
Aligning the 'human touch' and AI

Challenge: Changes to data privacy laws and restrictions on third-party data collection in various jurisdictions have rendered data management platforms and third-party cookies less relevant.

Solution: Brands need to maximise their first-party data collection to enable personalisation across platforms and channels. This can happen, for example, through loyalty programmes that help identify and link customer purchases online and offline. In-store apps can also track offline browsing behaviour, and brands can create campaigns that collect data in exchange for loyalty points or discounts. In these efforts, brands need to be mindful of adhering to data privacy regulations (e.g. GDPR in Europe).

Scaling personalisation solutions

Challenge: When shopping for fashion, customers can generate a vast amount of data across channels and platforms - ranging from location data to website or app engagement time. This data tends to be unstructured, in multiple formats and scattered across different databases. In isolation, this provides little or no insight.

Solution: Brands need to establish a complete customer profile connected to a unique ID across data sources and channels. A customer data platform is needed to host all data assets and consolidate the customer view, as are rigorous data standardisation and cleaning processes. The result is brands could create a single dataset that joins up customer preferences and behaviours at a granular level across platforms, channels and product categories. For retailers, this could also span data from different brands. Companies should consult current data legislation when creating these customer profiles.

Challenge: Fashion customer behaviour can be difficult to predict, not least because of fashion's rapid trend cycles and the low levels of repeat purchasing among individual shoppers. Furthermore, a stand-alone personalised algorithm might not align with a brand's strategic priorities without human intervention.

Solution: Players need to develop advanced AI models, such as those that display products and photo styles best suited to the individual customer, or models that use advanced size and fit algorithms. These models should incorporate behavioural data, such as login time and add-to-cart behaviours, along with nuances relating to the brand's market and segment positioning.

Challenge: A significant platform upgrade is required to deliver sophisticated, hyper-personalised e-commerce content, which is informed by thousands of data points and delivered across multiple channels with ultra-fast loading times.

Solution: A company's portfolio of design and distribution tools needs to include content management systems that can standardise, centralise and distribute digital elements to support marketing alongside content delivery networks that help deliver thousands of unique landing and content pages. Their portfolio should also include an e-commerce platform for their website and app, so that brands can deliver personalisation to every customer across all journeys.

A priority for executives should be to establish hyper personalisation as a core competency. Brands will need to invest strategically across all their data and analytics activations, from collection to cross-channel implementation. In many cases, this will mean setting up a dedicated cross-functional team, comprising product managers, marketing domain experts, software engineers and data scientists. Brands that set themselves up to win will hone their ability to deliver intelligent, targeted marketing and e-commerce solutions for every customer.

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The Opportunity in Hyper-Personalising Shopping

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This article first appeared in The State of Fashion: Technology , an in-depth report co-published by BoF and McKinsey & Company. It's no secret that fashion brands need to make highly personalised customer experience a cornerstone of their digital businesses. Their customers expect nothing less.

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M&S using AI as personalised style guru in hopes to boost sales

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Shoppers can use technology to advise them on outfit choices based on their body shape and style preferences

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Future of AI in Fashion Industry: AI Fashion Trends 2025

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Top AI Fashion Trends. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly altering the fashion world by introducing new possibilities. By 2025, AI technologies are set to drive significant innovations in the fashion industry

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How Generative AI is Revolutionizing Fashion Retail in 2025

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The fashion industry is undergoing a massive transformation, driven by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI, in particular, is making waves by reshaping how brands design, produce, and market their products.

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Amazon rolls out an AI fit tool to reduce returns

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The US’s largest fashion retailer is aiming to improve online fit and reduce returns, while sharing insights with brands to inform future product development.

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Here's the challenge facing brands and retailers: Communicate clearly with a vast array of consumers who speak thousands of languages, hail from countless different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds, and make purchasing decisions based on highly personal preferences. It's no easy feat to reach all of these consumers on a broad scale in an authentic way.

For some time now, companies have been trying to address customer needs through personalization, using data and analytics to craft more relevant consumer experiences. The goal is to present consumers with compelling offers and tailored, resonant messages at the right time. Today's customers want more of this. As previous McKinsey research revealed, 71 percent of consumers expected companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76 percent got frustrated when it didn't happen. When companies get it right, however, they can create significant value.

Companies often deploy tactical, manual, and stand-alone solutions to engage their customers. But retailers are now entering a promising new era of personalization. To reach consumers where they are and how they want to be met, marketers can embrace two powerful innovations: AI-driven targeted promotions, and the use of gen AI to create and scale highly relevant messages with bespoke tone, imagery, copy, and experiences at high volume and speed.

These innovations lay the groundwork for growth. Using improved analytics models, brands and retailers can better provide valuable offers to microcommunities wherever they want to engage. Meanwhile, gen AI enables marketers to create tailored content that is relevant to those groups. Brands and retailers can better connect with customers by using language that speaks to them and by providing communications that resonate and give consumers a reason to engage.

To unlock the potential of targeted promotions and content, marketers should prioritize efforts to boost their underlying marketing technology stack. A robust framework built on better data, decisioning, design, distribution, and measurement is essential. With improved analysis through technology, marketers can gain deeper insights into customer behaviors and preferences, provide improved personalized experiences, and incorporate tactics that feed into a long-term personalization strategy for growth.

The promise of targeted promotions

For both companies and customers, the old way of managing promotions-blunt offers to large groups of people-is no longer cutting it. Retailers face pressures due to economic uncertainty, changing consumer preferences, and, in some cases, declining profits. Meanwhile, previous McKinsey research suggests that 65 percent of customers see targeted promotions as a top reason to make a purchase.

Many retailers view AI and gen AI as a way to reverse the downward trends and accelerate growth. An increasing number are starting to experiment with AI to improve mass promotions. But companies can be more strategic by employing AI for targeted promotions, using data to tailor discounts based on people's shopping preferences or their affinity for different types of offers (see sidebar "What customer segmentation can look like"). With a more granular approach to customer segmentation, retailers can craft promotions that target specific customer life cycle stages (such as new-customer acquisition, customer retention, repeat purchase, or risk of churn) or specific business objectives (such as promoting a particular brand or category or encouraging cross-selling).

In a world saturated with promotions, companies can use targeted offers to stand out. Retailers that get this right can help ensure a better shopping experience while also enjoying better margins from saving on promotional costs and fueling more conversions. Ideally, marketers can develop a program of targeted offers at scale that accomplishes the following:

applies business rules and algorithms to determine offerings and timings of delivery

builds flexible, fit-for-purpose coupons (such as tiering discount rates so that those who buy more save more, limiting usage to certain categories or time periods, or designing offers that include or exclude certain premium categories or brands)

delivers targeted promotions through all available marketing channels, such as through a company website or app, push notifications, text messages, or emails

activates personalization with an always-on cadence where relevant

accompanies offers with clear, highly relevant communications, such as with dynamic recommendations that update in real time for individual customers based on their purchasing or browsing history

With this variety of targeted offers, marketers can create a seamless omnichannel experience for customers, in which they receive targeted, streamlined promotions without conflicting or overwhelming information from other places. Companies should be smart about how much margin they're giving away when and where, encourage specific objectives rather than overly broad ones, and ensure that promotions are offered at the right time to the right people (see sidebar "How one retailer unlocked growth by launching targeted offers"). From what we've observed, companies that push incremental sales through targeted promotions can see a 1 to 2 percent lift in sales and a 1 to 3 percent improvement in margins.

Relevant marketing through gen AI-enhanced personalized content

To truly enhance the impact of targeted promotions, companies can use gen AI to highly tailor copy and creative content that resonates more strongly with groups and subgroups of consumers than traditional marketing communications. Marketers have long aimed to improve the customer experience and influence consumer decisions by creating convenience or offering better prices. The next step is to make the buying experience even more convenient or enjoyable through greater relevance.

Traditionally, addressing small consumer groups with customized content has been cost-prohibitive and practically infeasible. Generative AI allows marketers to develop such content at scale at lower cost. While many marketers are currently piloting gen AI programs for this purpose, most are doing so manually with one-off experimental tools and use cases; they are not automating or integrating to reduce the bottlenecks of operational inefficiencies, nor are they evaluating content performance.

Smarter use of gen AI can help unlock more cohesive personalization opportunities with touchpoints and interactions more tailored to what customers want. Currently, there is no consolidated suite that does this end to end. But with thoughtfully integrated solutions that align people, processes, and platforms, marketers can deliver more rigorous content creation, smoother orchestration across teams, and seamless implementation of targeted promotions and content.

While content creation today is highly manual, gen AI can accelerate and magnify the entire process, helping channel operators, creators, and analysts become more productive. As more marketing material gets fed into a robust, foundational content data model, gen AI can learn from a feedback loop and create more copy that can be tailored for personalization. One important thing to note: As organizations increasingly use gen AI, it is critical that they build models to validate and govern gen AI-created content in order to establish guardrails against bias, toxicity, and hallucinations, and to ensure that content is in accordance with enterprise standards and design systems.

To see what's possible for better workflow in the future, it helps to look at how the ecosystem operates-both today and in the future-across the three stages of content production (table).

Our experience so far shows speedy results. We've seen some marketers deploy gen AI to personalize content development 50 times faster than a more manual approach (see sidebar "How a European telecom used gen AI to enhance marketing materials").

Technology as a foundational differentiator

To better target promotions and gen AI-boosted content, companies can turn to a tech stack that brings everything together. In 2019, McKinsey published " A technology blueprint for personalization at scale," which described a "4D" strategy (data, decisioning, design, and distribution) for marketing technology. We add one more critical element to this: measurement (exhibit). (It's not a "D," but it's just as relevant.) Marketers can establish a solid foundation for growth through personalization by ensuring these five elements use the latest technological innovations and integrate with each other seamlessly (see sidebar "A tech-enabled evolution from mass discounts to targeted offers").

Data

By improving data collection and analysis, marketers can gain deeper insights into customer behaviors and preferences. And while many enterprises have invested in data lakes (storage platforms that hold, process, and analyze structured and unstructured data) and customer data platforms (software that centralizes and unifies customer data from multiple sources to create a single view of each customer), better targeted offers and content requires expanding data architecture in five categories:

a promotions subject area that includes the history of offers and redemptions

a content subject area that includes the history of content delivery and engagement

universal (and potentially gen AI-enabled) metadata and taxonomy, which can improve the flow of automation

a robust analytics infrastructure and MLOps (machine learning operations), with dedicated feature stores to rapidly deploy and scale ML models

new data pipelines and integrators, prompt stores, and vector databases to build or customize large language model implementations

Along with granular transaction data, these additional data assets are the backbone of AI-powered decisioning to predict customer behavior in any channel and can be a true differentiator in today's market.

Decisioning

To develop new targeted promotions and content through more robust targeting, companies can also benefit from refreshing their decision engines with new AI models. Their tasks include the following:

Promo propensity predicts the likelihood of a customer making a purchase due to a promotion, based on previous customer purchasing and engagement behavior. This can lead to better customer satisfaction and targeting with the right level of discount to improve margins.

Promo uplift (or promo effectiveness) predicts promotion ROI (uplift) by analyzing customer behavior during promotion and no-promotion periods.

Content propensity predicts the likelihood that a customer will respond to a piece of content. Propensity scores enable the automated delivery of the best content that will encourage a customer to respond to a call to action.

Content effectiveness measures the effectiveness of content by analyzing customer response. Highly effective content can be reused or thematically replicated in future campaigns.

Model outputs are then fed to a decision engine that ranks and determines the best offer and content to show a customer at a given point in time.

Design

Innovative design ensures that content is both engaging and relevant. A sophisticated design layer that oversees two critical workflows (offer management and content production) helps manage the process, fueling both operational excellence and agility.

Targeted offers work best with an integrated offer management system to catalog, manage, deliver, and redeem them across any channel, including e-commerce and point of sale. Meanwhile, content management begins with gen AI tools for creating copy and developing creative assets, handling versioning, and auto-formatting content as varied as billboards and mobile devices. Digital assets are stored in a single, centralized digital-asset-management (DAM) system.

It's crucial that both the offer management and DAM systems are well integrated into all downstream channels. This enables easy search, reuse, and dynamic delivery of assets.

Distribution

Achieving true, real-time personalization requires sophisticated architecture that delivers seamless and consistent messaging to the right audiences at the right time as customers traverse channels.

This critical infrastructure combines core capabilities:

instant processing of customer signals, fed to journey orchestration and decisioning platforms to optimize the right message and channel across customer touchpoints

front-end tools that support a company's website, app, and email (such as content and campaign management systems, as well as dynamic content optimization), built with dynamic modular templates and API integrations to render personalized content in real time

interoperability and integrations across multivendor platforms

Measurement

A comprehensive marketing technology stack requires thorough measurement to facilitate ongoing optimization and improvement. To validate the ROI of personalization efforts, rigorous incrementality testing, standardized performance metrics, and measurement playbooks are essential.

Businesses need actionable intelligence for continuous improvement. Marketers can implement closed-loop measurement by aggregating data from all channels into a centralized reporting engine that produces self-serve dashboards for distinct stakeholders-from executive leadership tracking revenue and margin impact to marketing operators optimizing campaigns in real time.

To unlock the next frontier of gen AI-enabled personalization, marketers can begin with a thorough assessment of their opportunities by making the following moves:

mapping out the areas where targeted offers and more relevant content can drive the highest value

identifying the lifetime value events that they want to encourage

conducting a tech diagnostic to identify missing tools

reconfiguring processes in areas such as talent, data, tech, analytics, and marketing operating models to optimize for targeted promotions and content development

Excellence in execution sets the leaders apart from the followers. Success hinges on seamlessly integrated platforms backed by well-trained teams that can fully maximize investments. To improve performance, marketers can focus on operational efficiency, eliminate redundant systems, and establish robust governance. This can help bring together disparate tools into a unified engine for more relevant and personalized customer engagement, contributing to real growth.

We are celebrating the 60th birthday of the McKinsey Quarterly with a yearlong campaign featuring four issues on major themes related to the future of business and society, as well as related interactives, collections from the magazine's archives, and more. This article will appear in the third themed issue, on the Future of Growth, which will launch in May. Sign up for the McKinsey Quarterly alert list to be notified as soon as other new Quarterly articles are published.

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Unlocking the next frontier of personalized marketing

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As more consumers seek tailored online interactions, companies can turn new technology like generative AI to create truly personalized marketing experiences.

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Intelistyle is a personal fashion stylist chatbot that uses Artificial Intelligence to help you find the perfect outfit for any occasion tailored to your style, bodytype and skintone.

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How AI is Slashing Fashion Ecommerce Returns by 60%: The Secret to Happier Shoppers and Higher Profits

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Mirrorsize is a leading provider of 3D body scanning and measurement solutions for online apparel shopping.

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Drew Green, James Scutt, and Talia Quaadgras, March 20, 2025

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Consumer Preferences for Privacy and Personalization, 2025 | Global Research Report | XM Institute

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Consumers around the world shared their preferences for personalization and concerns with the privacy of their personal information.

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How AI-Driven Personalization Is Transforming the Retail Industry | Entrepreneur

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AI will be one of the driving forces behind maximizing personalization and changing the face of retail as we know it today.

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Balancing Personalized Marketing and Data Privacy in the Era of AI

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A proactive approach to data governance is no longer optional.

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Generative Ai In Design Market Size, Growth, Report By 2032

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Generative AI In Design Market size was estimated at USD 3.39 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 29.62% from 2024 to 2032

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Virtual ‘Try On’ Features: Do They Create Biometric Privacy Concerns for Retailers?

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Retailers’ virtual “try-on” features have come under attack lately by lawsuits claiming violations of consumers’ biometric privacy rights. The increasing risk of litigation highlights a new area of compliance concern for retailers as online shopping has become the new normal for many consumers.

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Street Fight | StreetFight follows the dynamic disruption taking place in multi-location (MULO) marketing.

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What Retailers Can Learn from Spotify and Netflix | Street Fight

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Peter Messana believes retailers have a lot to learn about personalization from their counterparts in entertainment such as Netflix and Spotify.

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A unique styling suite to deliver innovative shopping experience to customers worldwide

YOOXMIRROR will allow customers to embrace their inner stylist, as they use the APP to mix and match products and styles instantly sharing their look on their social media.

New feature will showcase 250 products per week and 9 unique fashion themes

Avatar Daisy will be one of the models to choose from, to bring the outfits to life. She will guide users around the YOOXMIRROR interface and, in a fashion first for a brand, takeover the YOOX Instagram account.

Today, leading online lifestyle store YOOX has announced the launch of YOOXMIRROR - a new AI-powered virtual styling suite designed to entertain customers while they express their personality, exploring the very best of the YOOX fashion offering in a new, interactive and engaging way.

Conceived and designed by the YOOX Research & Development team, the immersive styling suite displays more than 250 products per week across 9 unique fashion themes, which are presented in a "stories" format.

Customers will be able to express their style, instantly seeing how the outfits suit them, sharing their looks with friends and gaining immediate feedback before purchase or saving their favourite items directly into their DreamBox (the Wishlist feature on YOOX).

To welcome and guide users around the YOOXMIRROR interface, YOOX has developed a chic and fashion-conscious avatar called Daisy, who will not only model the outfits and guide customers around the suite but also, in a fashion first, take over YOOX's Instagram account.

Behind what might look like a playful APP feature lies a complex technology: building upon the work of the YOOX merchandising team, sophisticated algorithms detect visual elements (colour, pattern, and shape) within a product image, while Deep Learning networks extract product attributes to select alternative items, which work best with each other.

Virtual Reality technology will fit the selected items on a 3-D model, bringing them to life against evocative immersive backdrops.

Combining AI with the unrivalled knowledge and expertise of the YOOX merchandising team, YOOXMIRROR represents the next stage in YOOX's exploration of Man & Machine synergies.

"The introduction of YOOXMIRROR represents an important move for us, offering our customers something personalized and memorable which is also a brand-new way to explore the very best of YOOX. We are so excited by the potential of this initiative that we will not limit our avatar Daisy to the styling suite - taking over our IG she is going to become the personification of YOOX, allowing us an even more direct contact with our followers and customers." - Paolo Mascio, President of YOOX

YOOXMIRROR will debut on YOOX' iOS APP from December 10 th.

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A unique styling suite to deliver innovative shopping experience to customers worldwide YOOXMIRROR will allow customers to embrace their inner stylist, as they use the APP to mix and match products and styles instantly sharing their look on their social media.

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Apple and Hermès Unveil the Apple Watch Hermès Collection

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Wearable Technology Market to Hit New High of US$ 885.65 Billion By 2033 | Over 180 million Smart Watches Were Shipped in 2024 Says Astute Analytica

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/PRNewswire/ -- The global wearable technology market was valued at US$ 218.27 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach US$ 885.65 billion by 2033, growing at…

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The Connected World: Exploring the Impact of Smart Wearables Across Industries | Total Telecom

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Here we delve into the world of smart wearables and how they are impacting various industries.

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Ever wondered where wearable technology comes from? Condeco explores the fascinating history of wearables that now play such a big part in our lives.

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Explore the latest trends in wearable devices with our article. The diverse possibilities offered by health and fitness, GPS, VR and AR wearables.

Wearable technology has revolutionized the way we interact with electronic devices. Today, in addition to the usual Bluetooth headphones and smart watches, wearable devices are represented by AR glasses, smart socks and even smart swimsuits.

While wearable technology initially gained traction in the fitness industry, Apple's groundbreaking launch of the iWatch in 2015 propelled it into the mainstream technological landscape. This event marked the beginning of a significant shift towards wearable devices with capabilities far beyond simple step tracking.

Today, wearable technology has transitioned into numerous industries such as healthcare, wellness, and even fashion. In this article, we will delve into the latest trends in wearable technology, exploring its expanding applications and the potential it holds for shaping our future.

Example of a wearable device. Source: Unsplash

Trend 1: Less visible, looking more like jewelry or clothing

The wearable technology industry is experiencing a significant shift towards discreet and stylish devices that resemble jewelry, departing from the conventional fitness bands.

A noteworthy development in this industry is the emergence of a jewelry bracelet designed for personal safety. This innovative device is equipped with various features including a built-in siren, GPS module, and accelerometer. Its functionality enables users to effectively deter potential threats, transmit accurate location data, and gather movement-related information.

This trend has been successfully embodied in wearable NFC payment technology. As we move towards a cashless society in 2023-2024, the demand for contactless and convenient payment solutions is on the rise. Tech companies are partnering with financial institutions to improve security and streamline transactions, making wearable payments an essential aspect of our digital lives.

McLEAR, in collaboration with renowned financial and technology institutions such as Visa, has developed a cutting-edge payment ring that incorporates NFC payment technology solution. This revolutionary innovation not only offers the convenience of contactless payments but also boasts exceptional features such as waterproof and hypoallergenic materials, as well as a stylish and user-friendly design.

Trend 2: Wearable medical devices (healthcare and wellness)

The COVID-19 pandemic has further emphasized the need for real-time health monitoring and early detection of potential risks. This has led to a rise in the development of wearable devices in healthcare. Examples include heart monitors, as well as smart patches, etc.

Abbott, a renowned leader in healthcare innovation, has pioneered significant advancements in cardiac monitoring with the introduction of the world's first Bluetooth-enabled Insertable Cardiac Monitor (ICM).

The Assert-IQ ICM offers superior accuracy in detecting arrhythmias and provides electrogram (EGM) details with exceptional clarity. The device's advanced capabilities enable healthcare professionals to examine intricate details of a patient's heart rhythms, facilitating more accurate diagnoses. This enhanced visualization empowers medical practitioners to provide targeted and personalized treatments.

Smart patches are thin, flexible health wearables that can be attached to the skin to monitor health parameters or deliver medication. These patches often contain sensors to track physiological parameters like heart rate, body temperature, and blood oxygen levels.

Lief Therapeutics has developed a wearable patch called Lief. It tracks stress levels by measuring heart rate variability (HRV), a clinically-proven biomarker of stress, in real-time.

Corvolution, a German startup, has created a sensor patch named Mesana to address circulatory diagnostics and cardiovascular prevention. This discreet patch is worn on the chest and uses two electrodes to measure ECG. It automatically activates upon attachment to the body and also collects temperature, acceleration, and air pressure data. This data is then sent to Mesana's data center for analysis. The results offer a comprehensive health overview, including 16 different values categorized into sections such as Stress and Relaxation, Fitness and Activity, and Sleep and Risk.

Trend 3: GPS integration

Global positioning system (GPS) has become an essential tool for various industries, including transportation, logistics, and emergency services. The development of GPS technology has been instrumental in improving our accuracy and reliability in determining our location and finding the most efficient routes. The upcoming generation of GPS, known as GPS 3, has showcased significant advancements in its capabilities, particularly in terms of enhanced precision and security features. Moreover, personal GPS devices and smartphone applications have enabled individuals to navigate unfamiliar places with ease, fostering a sense of security and convenience.

Wearable devices have become increasingly popular for their integration of GPS trackers, which enable the monitoring of wearers' locations and the provision of location-based services. One major application of wearable GPS trackers is in the tracking of physical activity. Many fitness wearables utilize GPS sensors to track metrics such as distance covered, speed, and workout routes. Furthermore, GPS trackers can be utilized to navigate through unfamiliar terrain, making them useful in emergency situations and military operations. The safety and security provided by GPS trackers has also made them a valuable tool for parents who wish to monitor the whereabouts of their children.

In 2021, Apple released their AirTag, a wearable device that allows users to attach a small device to any item and track its location any time. While many adults are using AirTags for their luggage, some clever parents are also attaching them to their children and their belongings.

Trend 4: Smart clothing

Smart clothing not only brings about convenience and comfort, but also reduces the risk of losing or misplacing separate gadgets. From smart socks to jackets, pants, and even swimsuits, the options are endless.

Tesla suit is the world's first full-body haptic suit that merges physical sensations with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) experiences. The Tesla Suit aims to enhance immersion by enabling users to feel what they see, hear, and feel in virtual environments. The suit is embedded with motion capture sensors and haptic feedback systems, providing realistic tactile sensations, temperature changes, and electrostimulation as feedback. It is targeted towards various applications such as gaming, training, rehabilitation, entertainment, and simulations.

A pair of Sensoria smart socks can provide you with data on your foot placement while walking or running. Connected to an app, these socks provide valuable insights and tips to improve your technique. They track your steps, speed, altitude, and distance traveled, enabling you to see your progress and reach new fitness goals.

If you're into yoga, Wearable X's Nadi X pants will revolutionize your practice. These smart pants can sense when your poses need refining and offer haptic feedback through small vibrations on the body part that requires adjustment. The accompanying app provides detailed instructions on how to optimize each pose and even offers personalized yoga flows to curate your very own yoga class.

No more sunburns while lying on the beach, as your swimsuit can now remind you to apply SPF. The Neviano UV Protect swimsuit collection comes equipped with a UV sensor, about half the size of an adult's thumb. Waterproof and seamlessly connected to your smartphone, this sensor sends alerts when UV levels are dangerously high, reminding you to apply more sunscreen and protect your skin.

Trend 5: VR & AR (the Advent of AR Glasses)

In the world of technology, the popularity of AR and VR glasses is on the rise, thanks to the success of Meta's Oculus. This has inspired other tech companies to delve into the idea of transforming phones and gaming consoles into AR devices.

At the Meta Connect 2023 event, Meta and EssilorLuxottica unveiled their highly anticipated Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses collection. These next-generation glasses feature a sleek, redesigned form factor, enhanced core features, and exciting new AI capabilities.

With Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, users can effortlessly stay present in the moment while staying connected to the digital world and creating lasting memories. These glasses come equipped with a built-in camera and microphone, allowing users to capture photos and videos, enjoy music, and conveniently make and receive calls.

The newest iteration of the Ray-Ban and Meta collaboration aims to take smart glasses to the next level with an improved fit, crystal-clear audio, and expanded storage capacity. The camera enhancements take center stage in this version, boasting a different aspect ratio and advanced stabilization technology for better image quality. Plus, now you have the ability to live stream your experiences, adding a whole new dimension to the glasses' capabilities.

AR glasses are revolutionizing the field of operations, particularly in maintenance. In maintenance operations, these glasses provide technicians with crucial data, such as equipment manuals, inspection checklists, or step-by-step repair instructions, directly in their field of view. This eliminates the need to consult physical documents or separate handheld devices, saving significant time and effort. Technicians can visualize components hidden inside machines or observe animations of complex assembly procedures, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the system. This augmented visualization significantly reduces the chances of errors or oversight during maintenance tasks.The advanced technology and intuitive features of Vuzix M4000 Smart Glasses provide a seamless and hands-free AR experience. With a high-resolution display and powerful processor, these glasses offer crystal-clear imagery and enhanced graphics. The standout feature is their compatibility with various industry applications, empowering users to work smarter and more efficiently by providing real-time data and contextual information.

In closing,

wearable technology has become increasingly prevalent in various industries, including healthcare, fashion, and safety. The trends in wearable technology that have emerged include the desire for more discreet and stylish devices, the development of health wearables focused on real-time health monitoring, the integration of GPS trackers for safety purposes, the advent of smart clothing, and the rise of AR glasses with diverse applications. These trends indicate the continuous expansion and potential impact of wearable technology in shaping our future. To turn your wearable concept into reality, visit our hardware development service page. Together, we'll enhance the world around us, making it a more comfortable place to live.

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Wearable Tech Trends 2024: Smart Clothing, NFC & Healthcare

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Explore the latest wearable tech trends in 2024: smart jewelry, medical patches, AR glasses, and payment rings. Discover real examples and market insights.

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Now That’s a Bright Idea! Cycling Jacket Prompts Riders to Turn, Shows Others When They Do | Ford of Europe | Ford Media Center

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Finding the way through busy streets on two wheels can be daunting and for cyclists who take their eyes off the road to glance at navigation apps, this can also increase risk – both for them and for other road-users and pedestrians.

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Coperni’s Spray-On Dress Was a Viral Smash. This Gravity-Defying Gel Bag Might Top It

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Wearable Technology Market Share & Trends Report, 2030

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The global wearable technology market was valued at USD 61.30 billion in 2022 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.6% from 2023 to 2030. The increasing adoption of smart wearable technology products among consumers is driving industry growth.

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Fashion and Style in Wearable Tech: Merging Fashion and Technology

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Discover how wearable tech is revolutionizing fashion and style, blending cutting-edge technology with trendy designs for a new era of smart apparel.

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Connected. Not distracted. That was our mission in designing the next iteration of our Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google - an advanced technology enabling you to seamlessly and wirelessly connect your clothes to your smartphone. Originally designed for cyclists as part of our Levi's ® Commuter ™ series, this next-gen version features more applications to enhance your everyday experience.

HOW IT WORKS

We start with our iconic Trucker Jacket. Then we build a Jacquard sensor into the left sleeve. With your jacket paired to your phone, you can perform simple actions on the interactive cuff, and receive alerts through the Tag so you're in control and connected without looking at your screen.

The jacket lets you play music, snap a picture and so much more. Using the Jacquard mobile app, you can assign abilities to four different gestures. You can also assign LED-colored lights to specific notifications - for instance, assigning blue to your boss so you never miss their call. The idea is to easily interact with your digital world without disrupting what's going on in real life. Here are some of the things you can currently do with Jacquard."

My Day - Ask Google Assistant to get real time updates about sports, news and weather. Or hear a summary of your day.

Always Together - Receive an alert if you leave your phone or jacket behind.

Camera - Trigger photos remotely or from a distance with a simple gesture.

Music - Play, pause, skip or hear the title of the current track.

Navigation - Hear your next direction or check your estimated time of arrival.

Phone & Messaging - Stay connected to important calls and texts.

Can I wash the jacket?

Yes - remove the Jacquard Tag before washing on gentle. Line dry.

Does it need to be charged?

Yes - the Jacquard Tag comes with a micro USB charging cable.

How does it connect to my phone?

First, download the Jacquard app to your mobile device, and sign in with your Google account. Then, select the product, pair the Tag, and insert the Tag into the jacket cuff.

Is my device compatible?

Compatible with iOS 10, Android 6.0.1, or newer. Go to jacquard.com/levi/specs to see specific details.

Which countries is Jacquard available in?

US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Italy and Germany.

Shop the new Levi's ® Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google on levi.com and at select Levi's ® stores around the world.

3rd Street Promenade

1409 3rd Street

Santa Monica, California

(310) 3934899
Nordstrom at The Grove
189 The Grove Drive

Los Angeles, California

(323) 930-2230
Levi's® Plaza
1155 Battery Street

San Francisco, California

(415) 677-9927
Market Street
815 Market Street

San Francisco, California

(415) 501-0100
Valley Fair
2855 Stevens Creek Boulevard

Santa Clara, California

(408) 956-9124
Portland
2307 Northwest Westover Road

Portland, Oregon

(503) 229-0501
Soho
495 Broadway

New York, New York

(646) 613-1847
Times Square
1535 Broadway

New York, New York

(347) 809- 5241
Nordstrom Men's Store
235 W 57th Street

New York, New York

(212) 843-5100
Berlin
Kurfürstendamm 237

Berlin, Germany

+49 30 8855 3898
Regent Street
176 Regent Street,

London, England

+44 20 7292 2500
Paris
76 Avenue des Champs-Élysées

Paris, France

+33 1 5353 0570

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LEVI'S® TRUCKER JACKET WITH JACQUARD™ BY GOOGLE | Off the Cuff

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LEVI'S® TRUCKER JACKET WITH JACQUARD™ BY GOOGLE | Off the Cuff

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How Wearable Tech is Weaving its Way into Clothing . - This Curious Life

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Ignitec - Product Design Consultancy, Creative Technology and R&D Lab - Ignitec Product Design, Bristol

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Navigating the challenges of smart wearables for health and fitness

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Solutions for smart wearables that add value to users through improved security, accuracy, and customisable functionality.

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Gen Z Leads the HealthTech Wearable Revolution | PYMNTS.com

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Gen Z are a difficult group to predict. They love picking up their restaurant meals, both inside and curbside. They are most open to new ways to pay, but

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Warehouse Operations Manager Skills in 2025 (Top + Most Underrated Skills)

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Learn which skills will be most essential for Warehouse Operations Managers throughout 2025, which skills are underrated, how to develop them, and what this means for Warehouse Operations Manager careers overall.

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The global wearables market is gearing up for a transformative year in 2025, fueled by cutting-edge advancements and evolving consumer needs. Innovations like generative AI, enhanced connectivity, and a growing interest in health and fitness tracking are reshaping the industry. With more first-time buyers exploring wearable technology, the market is poised for exciting developments that promise to redefine personal tech experiences.

In this blog, we explore the emerging trends driving the future of wearables. From the resurgence of smartwatches to advancements in sensors, the rise of smartglasses and smart rings, and new possibilities in virtual reality, the wearables landscape is undergoing a remarkable shift. Join us as we uncover how innovation is shaping a new era in wearable technology.

Five Key Trends for Wearables in 2025

Trend #1: Generative AI will revitalizes wearable devices

Generative AI is transforming wearables by enabling advanced features like health scoring, personalized recommendations, and conversational virtual assistants. This technology shifts wearables from data tracking tools to holistic health and wellness coaches, enhancing user experiences.

Trend #2: Smartwatches drive wrist-worn wearable growth in 2025

Smartwatches are driving the wearable market with innovations in AI, health monitoring, and connectivity. Leading brands like Apple, Samsung, and Garmin continue to push the boundaries of wrist-worn technology.

Trend #3: Health and Fitness-Based Sensors Drive Wearable Innovation

Advanced sensors for ECG, blood oxygen, and sleep monitoring are revolutionizing wearable health tracking. These features are becoming more accessible across price ranges, making wearables indispensable for health-conscious consumers.

Trend #4: Smartglasses and Smart Rings Poised for Growth

Smartglasses and smart rings are gaining traction with lightweight designs and innovative health-tracking capabilities. These emerging devices are reshaping consumer expectations for wearable technology.

Trend #5: Consumer VR Revenues Climb Despite Flat Sales

Rising average sales prices are boosting VR headset revenues even as volumes stabilize. Apple's Vision Pro and the next-gen devices are paving the way for growth in immersive experiences.

Shaping the Future of Wearables: Key Strategies for Growth

The wearables market is evolving rapidly, with growth varying by device type, features, and geography. Emerging categories like smartglasses and smart rings are gaining traction, while mature segments like fitness bands are in decline. To stay ahead, industry leaders must focus on innovative features, regional market dynamics, and strategic differentiation. TechInsights' comprehensive wearables analysis offers the insights needed to thrive in this competitive landscape.

TechInsights Analysts Attending CES® 2025

Get the Full Insights & Trends Shaping Wearables in 2025

Enter your email below to view the report for FREE on the TechInsights Platform.

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In this blog, we explore the emerging trends driving the future of wearables. From the resurgence of smartwatches to advancements in sensors, the rise of smartglasses and smart rings, and new possibilities in virtual reality, the wearables landscape is undergoing a remarkable shift.

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With Apple Vision Pro now a low-volume, niche device, Apple is likely to pivot to mass-market "ambient computing" wearables like smart glasses and smart ear buds, an Apple ( AAPL) analyst says.

↑ X NOW PLAYING AI Stocks Are Getting Tired. Is The Dot-Com Bubble A Blueprint Or A Cautionary Tale For Investors?

Google parent Alphabet ( GOOGL) and Facebook parent Meta Platforms ( META) already have shifted their development focus to smart glasses and away from bulky headsets for virtual reality and mixed reality, Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster said in a blog post Friday.

"I believe the annual market for smart glasses will reach hundreds of millions of units over the next decade, leading Apple to refocus its spatial computing initiatives to be more in line with Meta and Google wearables," Munster said. Deepwater portfolio research analyst Brian Baker cowrote the blog post.

The Apple Vision Pro headset is a pricey mixed-reality headset that combines elements of virtual and augmented reality. It's billed as a spatial computing device and is meant for stationary applications in homes and offices. Apple Vision Pro starts at $3,499.

By contrast, smart glasses and similar ambient computing devices are mobile gadgets that can provide relevant information to the wearer depending on their location or situation.

New Smart Glasses Coming From Snap, Meta

"The current goal is making glasses that look and feel like 'normal glasses,' but with generative AI access via voice activation, cameras, and sensors," Munster said. "This means your glasses will understand the physical world around you, ready to provide you any information about it, like 'What kind of plant am I looking at?' or 'Did you see where I left my keys?'"

Current consumer smart glasses include Amazon's ( AMZN) Echo Frames and Meta's Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Amazon's headset is audio-only and uses the company's Alexa virtual assistant to respond to spoken questions and commands. Meta's smart glasses have similar audio capabilities but also have a built-in camera for taking photos and videos and providing computer vision for Meta's AI.

Next month, Meta and social media rival Snap ( SNAP) are expected to announce new smart glasses at separate company events.

Snap will unveil its fifth-generation Snap Spectacles at the company's Partner Summit in Los Angeles on Sept. 17. Meta will introduce its first augmented reality glasses, code-named Orion, on Sept. 25 at its Connect conference in Menlo Park, Calif., according to media reports.

The focus of next-generation smart glasses is on combining fashion, functionality and AI, Munster said. Consumers are looking for easy-to-use tech in a compelling form factor, he said.

Glasses More Useful Than Mixed-Reality Headsets

Apple hasn't given up on Apple Vision Pro, but will likely diversify its lineup of wearable devices in the years ahead, Munster said. That includes coming out with smart glasses that compete with future offerings from Meta and Google, he said.

"My confidence is based on a belief that there is more utility to smart glasses vs. a mixed reality headset, and it would be a costly miss for Apple not to enter the market," Munster said.

He added, "One manifestation of an expanded spatial computing product lineup could include future versions of Air Pods with cameras."

Big Tech companies are looking to create personal devices that can access burgeoning artificial intelligence technology.

Meanwhile, AI gadgets from startups have not caught on. Those devices include Humane's AI Pin wearable, Rabbit's Rabbit 1 handheld, and the Limitless Pendant wearable.

On the stock market today, Apple stock rose a fraction to close at 227.18.
Follow Patrick Seitz on X, formerly Twitter, at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Nvidia Earnings Report Called 'Most Important Tech Earnings In Years' Apple Stock Seen Getting Lift From AI Opportunity Intuit Stock Drops As Investors Parse Guidance, Long-Term Growth Targets Stocks To Buy And Watch: Top IPOs, Big And Small Caps, Growth Stocks See Stocks On The List Of Leaders Near A Buy Point

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Apple Likely To Pivot To Smart Glasses From Vision Pro

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Apple is likely to pivot to mass-market AI wearables like smart glasses and smart ear buds, a longtime Apple analyst says.

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IoT connections market update-May 2023

The latest IoT Analytics " State of IoT-Spring 2023 " report shows that the number of global IoT connections grew by 18% in 2022 to 14.3 billion active IoT endpoints. In 2023, IoT Analytics expects the global number of connected IoT devices to grow another 16%, to 16.7 billion active endpoints. While 2023 growth is forecasted to be slightly lower than it was in 2022, IoT device connections are expected to continue to grow for many years to come.

The insights from this article are based on the recently published " State of IoT - Spring 2023 " report, a 137-page research report on the current state of the Internet of Things, including a market update and forecast, a discussion of the latest trends, and much more.

Download a sample to learn more about the report structure, select definitions, select market data, additional data points, and trends.

Already a subscriber? Browse your reports here →

IoT connections forecast

According to our analysis, by 2027, there will likely be more than 29 billion IoT connections. Compared to our last IoT device market update a year ago, we lowered our five-year IoT market outlook for two important reasons:

1. Chipset supply to remain constraint for years to come in the face of surging demand

Chipset supply chains have considerably improved in 2023 as demand has weakened in the face of a slowing economy. Despite the demand slump, current chip lead times remain elevated compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. We believe that once the economy recovers and a new demand wave kicks in, chipset supply will become much more constraint again. While it is true that a lot of chip manufacturing capacity is being planned as we speak,fueled by government initiatives such as the US Chip and Science Act (2022) and the EU Chips Act (2022), it may take many years until supply matches or surpasses demand for the majority of different types of chipsets.

Make no mistake, the investments into new chip manufacturing capacity are enormous. TSMC has increased its capital expenditure from approximately $15 billion in 2019 to $42-$44 billion in 2022. Similarly, in 2023, Samsung announced that it plans to invest $230 billion in South Korea over the next 20 years to build new chip production capacity. However, these investments take time to materialize. Semiconductor plant constructions typically take three to four years to complete, and it can take another three to four years for facilities to reach full capacity.

2. China uncertainties

In the last years, China was the leading country for new IoT device connections, with active cellular IoT connections in China alone surpassing two billion in 2022. However, the high growth years may be coming to an end with the country facing a number of issues, including technological supply shortages on the back of renewed US-China trade tensions, most notably in the semiconductor industry. In October 2022, the US placed an export ban on China, causing significant disruption to these industries. Consequently, chip companies are relocating their facilities outside of China. Some companies, such as Infineon, TSMC, AMAT, and ASML, have announced that they are moving parts of their production out of China.

The leading IoT connectivity technologies: three technologies making up nearly 80% of the market

Global IoT connectivity is dominated by three key technologies: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular IoT.

1. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi makes up 31% of all IoT connections. In 2022, more than half of Wi-Fi-enabled devices shipped worldwide were based on the latest Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E technologies, which promise faster and more reliable wireless connectivity. The adoption of these technologies has made communication between IoT devices more efficient, leading to improved user experiences and overall performance. Wi-Fi technology is leading IoT connectivity in sectors such as smart homes, buildings, and healthcare.

2. Bluetooth. 27% of global IoT connections rely on Bluetooth. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), also known as Bluetooth Smart, has been continuously developed to allow IoT devices to maintain reliable connectivity while consuming limited power. As a result, BLE is now the preferred option for battery-powered IoT devices such as smart home sensors and asset tracking devices. Even the industrial sector is starting to show increasing interest in IO-Link Wireless technology, which is based on IEEE 802.15.1 (the technical standard for Bluetooth) and allows for wireless communication between sensors/actuators and an I/O master.

3. Cellular IoT. Cellular IoT (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, LTE-M, and NB-IoT) now makes up nearly 20% of global IoT connections.According to the Global Cellular IoT Connectivity Tracker & Forecast (Q1/2023 Update) by IoT Analytics, global cellular IoT connections grew 27% YoY in 2022, strongly surpassing the growth rate for global IoT connections. This growth is due to the adoption of newer technologies such as LTE-M, NB-IoT, LTE-Cat 1, and LTE Cat 1 bis, as older technologies such as 2G and 3G are phased out. Although 5G module shipments also grew more than 100% YoY in 2022, the growth rate is still slower than many had expected. In 2023, the top five network operators-China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Vodafone, and AT&T-managed 84% of all global cellular IoT connections. In terms of IoT revenue, the top five network operators make up 64% of the IoT network operator market, with China Mobile, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom (including T-Mobile), China Unicom, and Verizon leading the market.

The analysis shows a few notable shifts over the years, for example:

1. China Mobile jumped from fifth place in 2012 to first place in 2021 and is expected to remain there in the foreseeable future.

2. AT&T, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom have consistently ranked in the top five from 2010 to 2022 and are expected to maintain their positions through 2027.

3. China Unicom joined the top five in 2022 and is projected to remain among the leading network operators through 2027.

IoT connectivity trends to look out for

While the general IoT connectivity landscape only changes slowly (e.g., some devices remain connected for a decade or even longer), new IoT connectivity technologies do have an impact on the landscape in the long run. Here are two interesting developments we are monitoring (for more also visit our Embedded World conference 2023 takeaways and our MWC 2023 takeaways):

1. LPWAN technology convergence

In 2022, the LPWAN industry saw two significant events that shifted the focus from competition among LPWAN connectivity technologies to co-existence and convergence of those technologies. UnaBiz's acquisition of Sigfox and Semtech's acquisition of Sierra Wireless paved the way for LPWAN companies to provide multi-connectivity of several LPWAN technologies at the same time. To make this convergence happen and be able to deploy any LPWAN technology, UnaBiz, for example, now collaborates with The Things Industries, Actility, Soracom, LORIOT, and others. This means that UnaBiz has become more than just a technology provider but rather a solution provider that also bundles all different technologies and orchestrates them on their own software platform. UnaBiz is just one example that shows how the industry is shifting from a single LPWAN technology view to a multi-connectivity solution view.

We anticipate that this LPWAN convergence may lead to the emergence of new multi-LPWAN connectivity modules in the future that would provide end-to-end connectivity in verticals such as logistics and mobility.

2. LEO-based satellite IoT connectivity

LEO satellite connectivity for IoT is gaining popularity because it provides extensive coverage, minimal delays, and strong reliability. The technology is especially useful in the agriculture, maritime, and logistics industries. LEO satellites are closer to Earth than traditional satellites, resulting in reduced latency and faster data transmission, which are essential for real-time data processing. This type of connectivity is more resilient and reliable, ensuring consistent communication, even in challenging environments or during natural disasters. Advancements in LEO-based IoT satellite connectivity continue to optimize performance and enhance the user experience.

According to IoT Analytics, satellite IoT connections are expected to grow from six million to 22 million between 2022 to 2027, at a CAGR of 25%. While this growth is expected to have a minor effect on the overall market, the integration of satellite connectivity options into LPWA chipsets by companies like Qualcomm could accelerate adoption. Sony Semiconductor already launched ALT1350, the first cellular IoT LPWA chipset to offer satellite connectivity, which opens up new possibilities for IoT devices to communicate beyond traditional network boundaries. This integration of satellite connectivity into LPWA chipsets is expected to drive further innovation and growth in the IoT market.

Other State of IoT (Spring 2023) research highlights

The 137-page report highlights a number of current developments in the IoT market. Here are three developments that are discussed in more depth in the report:

1. Predominantly positive IoT sentiment going into the second half of 2023

Despite a number of macro uncertainties and some (IoT-related) layoffs, the IoT market remains largely intact going into the second half of 2023. Most market participants have a predominantly positive outlook, with industrial IoT projects and Industry 4.0 initiatives driving the market. Below are some recent representative quotes from chip companies with a focus on IoT:

"We continue to secure major greenfield design wins, even amid macro uncertainty. The IoT market has incredible potential, with thousands of new applications on the horizon."
Matt Johnson - President & CEO, Silicon Laboratories (1 February 2023)

"The industrial IoT markets are performing better than our expectations." Kurt Sievers - President & CEO, NXP Semiconductors (31 January 2023)

2. IoT platforms market is consolidating

Several major companies that were selling IoT platforms recently announced discontinuations, including Google's IoT Core, Bosch's IoT Device Management, IBM's Watson IoT Platform, and SAP's IoT services. The reasons for the strategic shift away from IoT vary. The market dominance of Microsoft Azure IoT and AWS IoT in "generic" IoT platforms certainly played a role, in conjunction with the "the lack of profitability" in the offered IoT services. Several of these companies have announced a shift toward creating solutions specific to particular verticals or relying more on a few select partners to continue to support IoT initiatives (e.g., Google-Litmus Automation partnership).

"IoT services themselves don't make enough money. The services like AWS IoT Core and Azure IoT Hub are expensive to build and maintain and by themselves they are likely not profit-making."Former IoT Product Lead, Microsoft

3. IoT-focused start-ups are struggling to secure funding

The amount of money invested in global IoT start-ups decreased significantly in the last 12 months. In the first quarter of 2023, we tracked 52 IoT-related funding rounds totalling $840 million, a 45% reduction in the value of investment in IoT start-ups companies compared to Q1/2022. Some of the larger recent IoT-related funding rounds include a $150 million Series D for US-based chipset manufacturer Astera Labs in November 2022 and a $43 million Series C for China-based connectivity chipset company XINYI Information Technology in March 2023.

Note: This article was updated in May 2023 to include the latest market data and insights from IoT Analytics.

Click to read previous analyses

More information and further reading

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State of IoT 2023: Number of connected IoT devices growing 16% to 16.7 billion globally

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IoT connections market update-May 2023 The latest IoT Analytics "State of IoT-Spring 2023" report shows that the number of global IoT connections grew by 18% in 2022 to 14.3 billion

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Global E-Textiles Market Size & Opportunities, 2025-2032

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Global E-Textiles Market valuation is estimated to reach USD 4.05 Bn in 2025 and is anticipated to grow to USD 7.08 Bn by 2032 with steady CAGR of 8.3%.

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How It Works - Wearable Tech Company | Wearable X

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Get to know how Nadi X combines the comfort of yoga pants with the technology of wearables.

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Loom: Redefining Fashion, One Upcycled Design at a Time | Femme Tech

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Loom connects you with designers to create upcycled clothing – think Fiverr for fashion designers!

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Trust Gabriela Hearst to come up with a link between upcycling and Ridley Scott. The designer today (5 October) opens an installation in Selfridges as part of its Project Earth sustainability initiative, and is launching an exclusive capsule collection, titled "Retro Fit", alongside it. And as with every clever plan she comes up with, there's a backstory.

"I always loved Blade Runner as a movie and I suddenly had this realisation a few years ago that we live in a retrofit world," she says, speaking over FaceTime from Paris the day before her spring/summer 2021 show takes place in the city. "We have an air purifier in the house, we have ways to clean our water. We are always retrofitting and fixing everything that we are screwing up on this planet." It made her think of the way she works at Gabriela Hearst, the eponymous womenswear line she founded in 2015, which is worn by women as discerning as the Duchess of Cambridge, who recently debuted a repurposed denim Hearst dress to meet David Attenborough, and Jill Biden, who wore a three-year-old silk dress for the presidential debate on 29 September. "In the last show we took existing coats from current inventory, cut them up and pieced them back together, reshaped and remade them. And nobody noticed that they were older coats."

Retrofit, then, is a new label from Hearst made entirely from upcycled pieces of existing stock. "It's about looking at what you have and giving it a new life," she says. "We have been looking at our inventory and thinking about what we can dye, what we can embroider, can we change the belt, can we change the length - something we all used to do before we had access to cheaply made clothes." The accompanying Selfridges installation will contain pieces of ex-display furniture from De La Espada, the Portuguese furniture brand with whom she also worked on her Mayfair store. "The directive was: it has to look great, not like an airport lounge. No overuse of mid-century! But we wanted to work with things that already exist and that we have access to."

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Gabriela Hearst Is Launching A New Deadstock Capsule Collection That Redefines Sustainable Luxury

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Trust Gabriela Hearst to come up with a link between upcycling and Ridley Scott. The designer today (5 October) opens an installation in Selfridges as part of its Project Earth sustainability initiative, and is launching an exclusive capsule collection, titled "Retro Fit", alongside it.

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Miu Miu’s Upcycled Holiday 2024 Collection: A Celebration of Circular Fashion and Vintage Elegance

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Since 2020, Miu Miu has been a pioneer on the circular fashion front with the release of their upcycled collections. In its 5th year, this future-facing project returns for an exclusive upcycled holiday range. The Milanese fashion house takes its inspiration from the past, featuring garments and fabrics sourced from the 50’s and 70’s for this limited-edition range. Miu Miu released their last upcycled collection in January 2024, focusing on denim from the pre-2000s era and using material scrap

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Upcycling goes beyond recycling by not only reducing waste but also creating more valuable items from old materials. Learn what upcycling is, how it works, and the benefits it offers to both the environment and our economy, as we dive into this guide to adopting a more sustainable way of life.

Key Takeaways

Upcycling transforms waste into higher quality products without breaking down materials at the molecular level, contributing to environmental sustainability and the circular economy.

The upcycling market holds significant economic promise with a projected value of $56.8 billion by 2027, presenting cost-saving and revenue-generating opportunities for businesses.

Consumer education and policy support are essential for making upcycling a mainstream practice, alongside overcoming challenges such as sourcing quality waste materials and designing products for upcycling.

The Essence of Upcycling: Transforming Waste into Worth

Upcycling involves creatively elevating the value of waste materials to create new materials or products with improved quality. This process extends their lifespan and reduces waste. Whether it's plastic waste, pre-consumer waste, or even food waste, upcycling sees a potential treasure in each trash pile.

Upcycling, however, transcends recycling. Unlike recycling that mostly remakes materials into their original form, upcycling creatively reimagines by-products, waste materials, and unwanted items into higher-quality goods. In other words, upcycling doesn't just reduce waste; it creates more value out of it.

The Upcycling Process Explained

Often, the upcycling process comprises simple alterations like applying a fresh coat of paint or adding a few stitches to rejuvenate an item. The materials for upcycling are not hard to find. They can be personal items, second-hand finds, or even sourced from specialized retail outlets that support the creation of unique upcycled products.

Unlike traditional recycling, upcycling does not break down used materials at the molecular level. Instead, it uses creative reuse to transform these materials into an upcycled item, reducing waste, and contributing to the circular economy. Think of it as giving a second life to used materials.

Benefits for the Planet

Adopting upcycling yields numerous benefits for our planet. Primarily, it significantly diminishes the amount of discarded materials that fill up our landfills, thus reducing the need for landfill space and its consequential environmental impacts. So, the next time you upcycle something, remember that you're contributing to waste reduction in landfills.

Additionally, upcycling aids in conserving worldwide resources by minimizing the demand for new or raw materials. This, in turn, minimizes air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and overall pollution potential by cutting down the use of new materials in production processes. Businesses that adopt upcycling practices reap economic benefits through reduced carbon footprint, conservation of natural resources, lower waste disposal costs, and environmentally responsible models.

In essence, upcycling benefits everyone!

Who's Doing It?

Upcycling is a versatile practice embraced by individuals, communities, and companies worldwide to prevent waste from ending up in landfills by transforming it into higher-value products. For instance, zookeepers are making tote bags from woven plastic grain bags and designers are transforming old items destined for landfills into innovative products.

But upcycling is not limited to any specific group. Everyone can get creative and upcycle their waste into new, cherished items. To expand the reach and impact of upcycling, collaboration is crucial, involving:

No matter your role - a student, a homemaker, a business owner, or a community group member - you can play a part in the upcycling movement.

Unwrapping Upcycling: From Plastic Bottles to Tote Bags

Picture your plastic waste metamorphosing into useful products like flower pots, garden sprinklers, children's toys, arts and crafts, and more. That is the power of upcycling plastics, effectively minimizing waste and crafting valuable new products. For example, a single plastic bottle, along with two other plastic bottles and a bit of rope, can be repurposed to craft durable tote bags.

The upcycled plastics woven into new products contribute minimally to greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing the sustainability of the production process. This creative reuse of plastic waste not only helps reduce plastic pollution but also adds value to what would otherwise be waste polyethylene.

Design Innovation in Upcycling

Designers are instrumental in the upcycling movement, morphing plastic waste into stylish and useful items.

Innovative products, such as Pilot pens made from post-consumer recycled plastic bottles and upcycled robes for Buddhist monks, illustrate the creative potential in upcycling plastic waste.

In fact, up to 80% of the environmental impact of products can be determined at the design stage, emphasizing the critical role of design innovation in sustainable upcycling practices.

The Role of Consumers

As consumers, when we buy upcycled products like tote bags crafted from repurposed plastic bags, we contribute to expanding the upcycling market. Younger consumers and women often view upcycling positively due to its association with sustainability and environmental responsibility.

However, sustainable consumer behavior goes beyond just purchasing products made from upcycled materials. It also involves considering the necessity of the purchase itself. To foster trust and overcome skepticism, consumers need more information about the quality, safety, and production processes of upcycled products.

The Lifecycle of Upcycled Plastics

The journey of upcycled plastics starts with the pivotal steps of collecting and cleaning discarded materials. The collected and cleaned plastic waste then undergoes a creative transformation to be repurposed into high-value products. This transformation process enhances the value of plastic waste and minimizes the consumption of new polymers.

The lifecycle of upcycled plastics demonstrates a sustainable approach to waste management that can lead to more environmentally responsible living. It's a cycle that breathes new life into used materials, diminishes waste, and encourages reuse.

From Trash to Treasure

Initiatives like Théla perfectly illustrate the transformation of trash to treasure. Diti Kotecha, the founder of Théla, upcycles single-use plastic bags into colorful hand-crocheted items, promoting sustainability and reducing landfill waste. Before being upcycled, the plastic bags are gathered from various sources, meticulously cleaned by hand, and sorted into colors.

Théla's upcycling process utilizes hand-crafting techniques like sewing and crocheting to transform the prepared plastic bags into artistic products. Such initiatives not only reduce waste but also add value to discarded materials, creating a win-win situation for the environment and the economy.

Challenges and Innovations

The journey to upcycling is not without its share of challenges. One significant hurdle is dealing with products composed of multiple types of plastics, which complicates their recycling process and can lead to their incineration. Additionally, products not designed with recyclability in mind are hard to disassemble, making the separation of plastic components problematic.

However, innovations are rising to the challenge. New renewable plastics and bioplastics that are both recyclable by design and replicable on a large scale have been created to address the upcycling challenge. Additionally, chemists have pioneered a new chemical process that facilitates the upcycling of mixed-use plastics without breaking down the original polymer structure. Through collaboration across the product chain, involving suppliers, manufacturers, and the end-of-life handlers of these materials, the challenges of upcycling can be successfully addressed.

Beyond Plastic: Upcycling in Various Sectors

Upcycling extends beyond plastics. This versatile concept finds applicability in diverse sectors, including food waste and manufacturing processes. Companies like Patagonia are involved in upcycling damaged clothes and textiles, turning them into new clothing or creatively repurposed items. Similarly, inventor Gary Chan upcycles waste materials like leather skin, hardwood plates, and rubber tires to build 'upcycling' bikes.

The upcycling movement supports and enhances artisanal work, often overshadowed by large-scale manufacturing. It creates market opportunities for upcycled goods, promoting support for local businesses and industries. Whether you're a fashion brand, a food manufacturer, or a bicycle maker, there's room for upcycling in your business.

Food Waste Reimagined

In the food industry, ingredients are upcycled to develop products which resonate with sustainability and a circular economy ethos. Some examples of upcycled ingredients include:

These ingredients are repurposed into nutritionally enriched products, capitalizing on their high fiber, vitamins, and bioactive compounds.

However, mainstream adoption of upcycled food still faces hurdles such as:

the need to improve consumer understanding and positive associations with upcycled food concepts

lack of awareness about the benefits of upcycled food

limited availability of upcycled food products in stores and restaurants

With initiatives like The Upcycled Food Association's certification standards bolstering consumer recognition, upcycling food waste is slowly but surely gaining momentum.

Manufacturing Process Evolution

Manufacturing processes can adapt to include upcycling, with a focus on:

By implementing these strategies, companies can transition to a circular economy.

This evolution in manufacturing processes not only reduces the waste stream but also adds value to used materials, improving the overall supply chain efficiency.

Economic Analysis of Upcycling

Upcycling also brings economic benefits. It allows businesses to cut costs in procurement, waste management, and production processes, while simultaneously presenting opportunities for generating extra revenue.

Companies like TerraCycle and Patagonia's Worn Wear program have successfully scaled up their upcycling businesses, indicating a viable market for upcycled goods.

Their success shows that upcycling can be both a profitable venture and a driver of sustainability in the business world. So, whether you're a small business owner looking to cut costs or a large corporation striving for sustainability, upcycling can be a game-changer.

Cost-Benefit Perspective

When viewed from a cost-benefit perspective, upcycling emerges as an undeniable victor. Companies can significantly reduce production costs by repurposing materials rather than purchasing new ones.

Moreover, the reuse of materials in manufacturing not only reduces procurement costs but also diminishes waste disposal expenses, leading to a double-sided financial benefit.

Upcycling offers businesses the opportunity to derive value from waste, leading to substantial economic advantages and supporting the larger framework of a circular economy. In other words, when businesses upcycle, they're not just saving the environment, but also boosting their bottom line.

Market Growth and Potential

The potential of the upcycling market is immense. In fact, the global upcycling market is projected to reach $56.8 billion by 2027, with an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.6% from 2020 to 2025. This growth points to a promising future for upcycling and the businesses, large and small, that embrace it.

Moreover, upcycled products often command higher price points, indicating a consumer base that values sustainability and is prepared to pay a premium for environmentally responsible products.

With the development of unique, eco-friendly products and creative collaborations and partnerships, companies can tap into the growth opportunities in the upcycling market.

Breaking Down Barriers: Making Upcycling Mainstream

To make upcycling mainstream, several obstacles need to be overcome. Some of these obstacles include:

By addressing these obstacles, we can work towards making upcycling a more widely adopted practice. With the right strategies and support, upcycling can become a mainstream practice, contributing significantly to a sustainable future.

Consumer Education and Awareness

Promoting upcycling heavily depends on consumer education and awareness. A critical barrier to widespread upcycling is the gap in consumer knowledge regarding its environmental benefits and how individuals can partake in upcycling activities.

Encouraging a culture of reusing and repairing by reconnecting individuals with the inherent value of materials via creative upcycling leads to more informed consumers.

Strategic interventions to improve consumer participation in upcycling include:

With increased understanding and acceptance of upcycling, consumers can play a significant role in making upcycling mainstream.

Policy and Industry Support

Support from policies and industry can aid in the assimilation of upcycling practices. The U.S. government, for instance, has demonstrated support for upcycling through investments in initiatives that enhance the reuse of materials for valuable purposes.

Specifically, the U.S. Department of Defense is actively supporting upcycling by funding projects that convert waste into high-grade metals, which can be used for national security.

For companies, transitioning to a circular economy presents several challenges, such as adopting renewable materials and designing products for longer use. By addressing these challenges and assuming more responsibility for their products' end-of-life, companies can integrate upcycling into their business practices and contribute to a sustainable future.

Summary

In conclusion, upcycling is a creative, sustainable, and economically viable approach to waste management. It transforms waste materials into high-value products, reduces waste and pollution, and promotes a circular economy.

While challenges exist, with increased consumer education, policy support, and industry innovation, upcycling can become a mainstream practice, contributing significantly to a sustainable future.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is upcycling?

Upcycling is the process of transforming worn-out products into higher quality or new materials, extending their life and reducing waste. It helps in giving old items a new purpose and reducing environmental impact.

How does upcycling help the planet?

Upcycling helps the planet by reducing materials in landfills, conserving natural resources, and lowering manufacturing costs, making it a sustainable choice for all.

How does upcycling reduce pollution potential?

Upcycling reduces pollution potential by decreasing the amount of materials used in product manufacturing, thus lowering overall pollution.

What happens to plastic when it is upcycled?

When plastic is upcycled, it is seamlessly transformed into something else with minimal energy input and without adding to greenhouse gas emissions. This makes upcycling a sustainable solution for plastic waste.

Who can participate in upcycling?

Anyone can participate in upcycling by creatively repurposing materials like plastic waste into items they love.

What are some of the most popular upcycled plastic products?

Tote Bags: These can be made from recycled grocery bags or other plastic films. They are a stylish and sustainable alternative to traditional tote bags.

Plant Pots: Plastic bottles can be easily transformed into colorful and functional plant pots.

Jewelry: Upcycled plastic bottles and lids can be cut and shaped into beautiful earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

Furniture: Milk crates and other sturdy plastics can be used to create chairs, tables, and other pieces of furniture.

Coasters: Cut up plastic bottle caps or lids to create unique and colorful coasters.

Bird Feeders: Upcycle plastic bottles into bird feeders to attract feathered friends to your backyard.

Pencil Holders: Plastic bottles can be transformed into handy and decorative pencil holders for your desk or craft room.

Scoops: Cut out scoops from the bottom of plastic bottles for use in the garden, sandbox, or for scooping pet food.

Faux Stained Glass: Cut up colored plastic bottles to create beautiful faux stained glass effects for windows or doors.

Eco-Bricks: Fill plastic bottles with clean, dry, non-recyclable plastic waste to create eco-bricks that can be used for building furniture, walls, and other structures.

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Upcycling Defined: A Creative Approach to Sustainable Living

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Understanding upcycling starts with a good definition. Answer the question to What is upcycling while learning benefits of the sustainable practice.

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Upcycled Fashion Market Size to Hit USD 20.65 Bn by 2034

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The global upcycled fashion market size is estimated to hit around USD 20.65 billion by 2034 increasing from USD 8.54 billion in 2024, with a CAGR of 9.23%.

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Fashion and clothing waste facts

Fast fashion has had a big impact on how we create, buy, wear, and dispose of clothes as individuals and businesses. Clothes production and consumption levels have significantly increased over the past few decades, driven by demand, availability, low costs, and a throwaway culture. It's also led to unstylish levels of waste.

Every year across the world we produce 92 million tonnes of textile waste. Unless big changes happen and improve how we make, use, and dispose of clothes, it's estimated that by 2030 we'll create 134 million tonnes of textile waste globally. And the global fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

To put things in perspective and highlight the need to reduce, reuse, and recycle textiles and clothes we've stitched together some key fashion waste facts and statistics. Be at the cutting edge of the fashion and recycling industry with these trendy stats and facts about clothing waste.

What is fashion waste?

Fashion waste often refers to any items of clothing thrown away. However, the industry is responsible for waste in many other areas. This includes manufacturing waste such as offcuts and fabric from the production process, as well as water, dyes, and chemical waste. Then there's the packaging waste used to protect garments during transport and storage.

There are a few types of fashion waste:

Old clothes - items of clothing that are damaged, no longer fit, or are unwanted

Stock waste - unsold and out-of-season items from retailers

Uniforms and workwear - worn out or old uniforms from schools and workplaces

What causes clothing waste?

The main causes of fashion and clothing waste are overproduction, over-procurement and stocking, and overconsumption. A growing demand for fast fashion - items that are produced quickly and cheaply and then sold at a low cost - encourages a disposable and throwaway culture. Inadequate end-of-life options for textiles also lead to waste.

Cheap clothes mean some people are likelier to buy garments, wear them a few times, and then purchase more new items without a second thought. For damaged clothing, it's often cheaper and easier to replace rather than repair, which results in more waste. Retailers also create clothing waste by over-ordering and poor inventory.

Fashion waste statistics

There's nothing more unfashionable than waste but unfortunately, the fashion industry produces plenty of it. Some fashion waste is unavoidable while others could be better managed to reduce rubbish across the sector - or at least ensure it's reused or recycled.

For an insight into how much refuse the industry creates here are some hip fashion waste statistics:

100 billion new garments are produced annually around the world

The worldwide fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions

The UN Environment Programme estimates that today people buy 60% more clothes and wear them for half as long

Around 20% of worldwide industrial wastewater pollution is from the fashion industry

It takes around 2,700 litres of water to make one cotton shirt

Of all the clothing thrown away across the world 57% is sent to landfill

25% of global clothing waste is incinerated

Clothes made using synthetic fibres such as polyester and acrylic are responsible for more than 60% of global apparel purchases

Synthetic fibres take 80 to 800 times longer to decompose than natural fibres like cotton

Which countries produce
the most fashion waste?

China and the USA are the two countries that produce the most fashion waste in the world by far. Both nations manufacture and consume billions of clothing items every year. European countries also create lots of textile waste with research finding Italy and Germany lead the way across the continent.

These are the top countries in the world that produce the most fashion waste:

China - 20 million tonnes

USA - 17 million tonnes

India - 7.8 million tonnes

Italy - 465,925 tonnes

Germany - 391,752 tonnes

France - 210,001 tonnes

UK - 206,456 tonnes

Fashion waste statistics for the UK

The UK has produced many world-leading fashion designers from Vivienne Westwood to Stella McCartney, Paul Smith, and Alexander McQueen. Unfortunately, it's also generated mountains of textile waste - as the fourth-highest producer in Europe. The country's passion for fashion means we're constantly buying new items, filling charity shops with old outfits, and sadly binning lots of garments.

Check out some fascinating fashion waste statistics for the UK:

Each Briton throws away 1kg of textiles every year on average - the fourth highest in Europe

7kg of fashion waste per person goes to landfill yearly

About 30% of unwanted clothes end up in UK landfill sites

Every year Brits chuck out 300,000 tonnes of old clothes in their household rubbish bins

It's estimated £140 million worth of clothing goes to landfill in the UK every year

Less than a fifth of used clothing is recycled in the UK

Across the country, more than two tonnes of clothing are bought every minute

The average Brit spends £980.50 on new clothes each year

Fast fashion waste statistics

The fast fashion industry is all about the cheap and quick production of clothes that aren't worn many times. It drives a desire and demand among consumers to buy new and more clothes even if they don't need them. The manufacturing, transport, and disposal of fast fashion comes at a huge environmental cost.

These fast fashion waste statistics highlight the impact it has on our planet and behaviour:

How many times an item of clothing is worn before being discarded has fallen by 36% in the last 15 years

Fast fashion brands produce 50% more items today compared to the year 2000

An average American throws out 37kg of clothes every year

Buying a single white cotton shirt produces the same emissions as driving 35 miles in a car

Extending clothing life by nine months would reduce carbon, water, and waste footprints by 20 to 30%

Using clothes for an extra nine months would also save £5 billion in resources used to supply, launder, and dispose of clothes

Textile waste facts

Textile waste covers more than just clothes - think bedding, towels, and curtains. Global textile waste statistics show that the industry is the third-largest source of water pollution and land use in the world. Manufacturing, using, and disposing of many textiles generates high volumes of waste all over the planet.

Unravel the problems of disposing of old clothes and fabrics with these statistics and facts about textile waste:

About 5% of landfill space is taken up by textile waste

Textile production releases 2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually

Producing textiles creates 42 million tonnes of plastic waste each year

10% of microplastics that enter the ocean every year are from textiles

Around 15% of fabric used to manufacture garments is wasted

Less than 13% of textile waste is recycled in the European Union (EU)

72% of bedding ends up in landfill

Textiles are the third largest category of waste in landfill sites across India

Natural fibres break down fastest - cotton takes around three months to decompose, linen takes a few weeks, and silk takes one to two years

Synthetic textile waste takes much longer to decompose - polyester can take between 20 and 200 years to break down, nylon takes anywhere from 30 to 40 years, and rubber takes 50 to 80 years

Clothing waste facts

Every second a truckload of textile waste is incinerated or disposed of in landfill around the world. Fast fashion and the desire to buy more new clothes more often are leading to higher volumes of textile waste across the planet. To get an idea of the scale of things, here are some uncool clothing waste facts:

About 25% of clothing waste is incinerated around the world

Just 8% of old clothes are reused and only 10% are recycled across the globe

It can take more than 200 years for clothing to decompose in landfill sites

60% of new clothing materials are plastic

The average lifespan of clothing is just over three years

An average clothing item should last between 100 and 200 wears, though most are thrown out before then

In America, the average person throws away just over 30kg of clothing every year

Less than 1% of clothing waste is recycled into new clothes - mainly due to the challenges existing recycling systems face

How to reduce clothing waste

Clothing waste at home

The way we buy, wear, and throw away old clothes at home also has a big impact on waste from the fashion and textile industry. More considerate purchasing and disposal methods could help reduce the amount of clothing waste created and help better protect the environment. Here are a few facts about clothes waste at home:

From 2012 to 2017 clothing waste produced by UK households decreased by 50,000 tonnes

Charity shop sales increased four-fold from £133m to £732m in 20 years

Only 70% of the clothes in our wardrobes are worn by Brits

There's a total of around 7 billion items of unused clothing sat in wardrobes across the UK

4 million school uniforms are thrown away every year in the UK

Clothing waste charities

There are various charities across the UK working to reduce clothing waste in a few different ways. These include:

Salvation Army - the Salvation Army has around 8,000 clothing banks across the UK where you can donate old garments. These are resold, reused, or recycled.

Love Not Landfill - a non-profit campaign that runs events to encourage young fashion fans to buy second-hand, swap, recycle, and give old clothes to charity.

TRAID - this charity turns clothes into funds by increasing reuse and funding international development projects that improve working practices and conditions in the textile industry. TRAID provides 700 charity clothes banks in the UK.

How should I get rid
of my old clothes?

One of the easiest ways to get rid of a few old clothes at home is to donate them to a charity shop if they're in decent condition. You could also pass them on to friends and family or sell them online using sites such as Vinted, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace.

Try to upcycle any damaged old clothes by turning them into cleaning rags or repair them if possible. Businesses, schools, and other organisations with clothes and textile waste must arrange commercial waste collection to get rid of them safely and legally. At Business Waste we can collect clothing waste from any organisation in the UK.

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Looking for some facts about clothing waste in the UK and around the world? Read up on some fascinating fashion and textile waste facts and statistics.

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A review on upcycling as a strategic marketing tool for sustainability in the fashion industry | Emerald Insight

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To address environmental challenges, companies are increasingly interested in the circular economy. This model allows them to effectively couple their economic, social, and environmental objectives. Among the many practices that fall within this approach is upcycling, also known as creative reuse, which literally means "recycling upwards". This approach involves recovering materials or products that have already been used or are destined for disposal, then transforming them into new products with higher added value. Companies are gradually embracing it to take advantage of its many benefits.

What is upcycling?

In their reference ecology manifesto "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things", William McDonough and Michael Braungart define upcycling as " the action of recovering materials or products that are no longer in use to transform them into materials or products of superior quality or utility. We therefore recycle 'upwards'."

Through upcycling, we valorise waste, as well as old objects, manufacturing offcuts, production surpluses... In other words, anything that can still serve as a material. In this sense, this practice fully aligns with a "zero waste" approach and thus with a circular economy approach. This helps to reduce resource wastage, as well as waste production.

This approach goes further than recycling, or even second-hand use, which consist of giving materials or products a second life. Especially since recycling often tends to degrade the quality of materials over cycles. The idea with upcycling is to give a new "high-end" life to the original product, which is often very far from its first life. The result is innovative, functional, and aesthetic products.

The evolution of upcycling, up to today

Developing countries have always practised upcycling. It was a necessity for them, lacking resources, to extend the products' life cycle. Over time, this concept has become widespread across the world due to its creative, innovative, and ecological aspects.

However, the term "upcycling" really came into being in the 1990s. It was Reiner Pilz, a former engineer turned interior designer, who declared in a German magazine: " Recycling, I call it down-cycling. [...] It destroys everything. What we need is up-cycling, which involves giving old products a higher value, not a lower one."

Today, this concept is particularly widespread in the fashion, decoration, and design sectors. For example, pallets can be upcycled into furniture, fabric scraps into clothing, old tyres into leather goods accessories... We even see brands positioning upcycling at the heart of their business model.

Any organisation can now integrate upcycling into its operations. In their second book "The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability - Designing for Abundance", William McDonough and Michael Braungart share some examples: " A city can consider installing biogas plants in the local waste disposal site to provide free energy. A company can resell its used paper to a nutrient manager who will then use it for other key products and compensate the company in return."

How to integrate upcycling into your company?

It is now up to companies to integrate upcycling practices at the heart of their activities. To achieve this, three key steps should be followed: Conducting an inventory, focusing on collective intelligence, and building an action plan.

Evaluating your raw materials and waste

The first step is to conduct an inventory of the raw materials used during the production process as well as the waste generated by your company's activities (plastic, glass, cardboard, paper, water...). This provides a global view of your company's flows, thus identifying upcycling opportunities.

Conducting collective reflection

From these elements follows an analysis and ideation process during which it is essential to involve all stakeholders. This notably includes the procurement, finance, logistics, production teams of your company... It is also interesting to integrate some of your suppliers, as well as experts in upcycling into the reflection. The collaboration of all these actors is essential to build virtuous, effective, and adapted solutions.

Building an action plan

Lastly, the third step aims to develop an adapted strategy. Companies can incorporate upcycling into their procurement and/or production process. To ensure the success of the project, it should be managed based on clearly defined indicators: For example, the volume of upcycled materials integrated into the manufacturing process, or the amount of purchases that upcycled items represent.

Upcycling: What benefits for companies?

The adoption of upcycling practices in companies presents multiple advantages for organisations themselves, of course, but also for their entire ecosystem.

Reducing costs

First, upcycling is a formidable lever for savings. The reuse of materials, waste reduction, as well as the savings on energy and transport that this practice induces enables companies to reduce their costs.

Stimulating innovation

Upcycling is a creative process. This paves the way for innovation not only in terms of products, but also processes. Companies can therefore diversify their product and/or service offerings, create new collaborations, explore new markets...

Differentiating in the market

Upcycling, by its circular essence, carries solid commercial arguments. Products resulting from upcycling assuredly have a lower impact on the environment. It's a good way to stand out from the competition and thus attract and retain new customers, partners, and investors who wish to contribute to the planet preservation.

Strengthening brand image

Integrating upcycling at the heart of your organisation is a concrete commitment to sustainable consumption. This thus contributes to strengthening your image as a sustainable company among your stakeholders: Customers, employees, suppliers...

Upcycling is a fantastic opportunity for companies to respond to ecological challenges, while ensuring the competitiveness and sustainability of their activities. Especially as stakeholder expectations in terms of social and environmental responsibility are growing. Engaging in this approach is therefore contributing to a sustainable future for all.

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What is upcycling and what role can it play in your company?

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To address environmental challenges, companies are increasingly interested in the circular economy. This model allows them to effectively couple their economic, social, and environmental objectives. Among the many practices that fall within this approach is upcycling, also known as creative reuse, which literally means

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Fashion brands face growing EU pressure to cut textiles waste

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Proposed legislation is pushing retailers to test and scale up more sustainable business models