How is AI used in fast fashion?

“Look what I just got for only $6. It’s perfect to wear for my Get Ready With Me”, says influencer Jenny while showing the camera a pink pajama she got in her latest $500 Shein haul.

Jenny is among thousands of influencers posting “haul” videos on TikTok and Instagram. The shopping addiction is real and now even affordable.

Fast fashion in the early 2000s meant new collections dropped every month. While in the 2020s show, it means we can have new collections released daily.

For instance, Shein releases up to 10,000 new items daily, with 74.7 million active shoppers.

How is that even possible?

Artificial intelligence plays a major role in this process. It helps brands design products, predict demand, and customize the shopping experience.

SHEIN is the most downloaded fashion app. Their unparalleled business model has transformed fast fashion into real-time fashion.

Shein uses a variety of methods to predict fashion trends, including:

• Searching the internet and its own app data for trends.

• Tracking clothing-related search terms in real-time with Google Trend Finder.

• Collecting First-Party Data from the app.

• Software-human teams that search competitors' sites.

The moment Shein identifies a trend, in less than three days, it is already on the website. All possible through AI.

When it comes to fast fashion, the Spanish empire Inditex, famous for its flagship brand Zara, is the leader. In the 90s, fast fashion was a big deal.

The idea of having an affordable and stylish wardrobe sold fast. Everyone wanted to have new clothes every month.

In 2023, Zara is using artificial intelligence to improve its in-store processes. "Click&Try" lets customers access intelligent fitting rooms without queueing through the app.

Other Inditex stores like Stradivarius used AI for fashion to create this Spring's Ad campaign.

H&M, the fashion giant from Sweden, has enlisted a team of over 200 data scientists to help it predict the future of fashion. These scientists use AI to sift through vast amounts of data from search engines, blogs, and social media to identify emerging trends.

This information is then used to decide everything from what to produce to where to place it in stores.

Thanks to AI, H&M is always one step ahead of the fashion curve. It knows what customers want before they even know it themselves. This gives H&M a significant advantage over its competitors and helps it maintain its position as one of the world's leading fashion retailers.

You don’t have to be a fast fashion brand to use AI. Major retailers invest millions of dollars in AI, but this technology is now accessible to all businesses for a fraction of the cost. And it comes in all shapes and forms.

You can use AI to personalize recommendations, as it understands natural language search queries and generates relevant search results.

Often, fashion items can be hard to describe. This is where Visual AI tools like Wordless Search come into play - a combination of an AI-based photo search and discovery platform. By recognizing the browsing patterns of every shopper, the tool curates a customized product feed.

In less than a minute, the AI surfaces exactly the type and style of items the person is looking for. It reads and understands the intent behind a person’s activity on a website.

This is an example of how Wordless Search works. We’ll use ASOS as an example:

momox fashion is another great example. After implementing Miros AI, they saw a significant increase in customer engagement and loyalty.

Their Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), Average Order Value (AOV), and Average Revenue per User (ARPU) increased in ranges from 10% to 19%. To emphasize - these uplifts pertain to users who engage with the tool.

Miros wants your website to become almost an addictive experience for your shoppers. By using Wordless Search, in less than 60 seconds AI connects people with the products they love the most.

If you are a big or small retailer and want to improve the shopping experience on your website, schedule a discovery call and explore how to boost your ecommerce success using AI.