Hello and welcome again. In this lesson, let's discuss the key players in digital transformation. The disruption to business, logistics, and our personal lives caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has made us take a 360-degree view of what we do, how we do it, and how we can adapt. Whether you are an independent fashion designer or a brand or an apparel corporation such as a PVH Group and whether you are a New York, London, Milan, Lagos, or Beijing, the impact on operations and your bottom line no doubt struggled to stay consistent. The goal of many of the key digital players in the fashion industry is to evolve the fashion industry to engage digitally from concept to point of sale. Starting with 3D design and digital asset creation, the process can swiftly move to the review and presentation stage of virtual collections presented in virtual showrooms. Assets can be interrogated, manipulated, even recreated in the blink of an eye, that is an eye that has been focusing on the minutest of details where pieces are examined for drape, fit, texture, volume, and are evaluated against price and potential profitability. While this is from the point of view of the corporation, it is the same for the consumer. Collections can now be explored and tried on in virtual showrooms, on a computer, or tablet screen or a phone using augmented reality or while wearing a virtual reality headset, such as the Oculus Quest for an immersive experience, or a pair of smart glasses such as Microsoft HoloLens which delivers a mixed reality experience. Real-world examples of key digital players in the fashion business who are tackling this are combining innovative concepts, processes, hardware, and software, and include Ordre, Voor, HATCH, M-XR, and TH3rd. The luxury wholesale ecosystem, Ordre, has created a 360-degree online showroom built on their ORB scanning technology, which is an image capturing mobile technology with software. This showcases collections of the best luxury designers in the industry. It also feeds them into their Ordre's network for review and selection by international boutique and department store buyers who will ultimately sell physical products to their customers. Their aim is for this digital showroom to sit alongside existing sales channels and to complement the traditional approach. Competing with Ordre is Voor, which provides dedicated preset digital showrooms, or the opportunity to create a unique designer space tailored to a brand's vision. Voor's focus is on changing the system using their SaaS-based virtual showrooms to impact efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability. The virtual showroom is perhaps one of the biggest opportunities for major change in the fashion business, as only digital assets are required to fill them. HATCH was born at the PVH headquarters in Amsterdam in 2014 as part of the digitalization strategy for the PVH fashion brand, Tommy Hilfiger and later Calvin Klein. Pioneers in entering the digital virtual showroom space and the strategic digitalization of fashion business processes, HATCH has successfully transitioned to offering their services outside the PVH group to other businesses to assist with the wider digital transformation of the industry. Digital capture of physical objects has been the basis of digitization in fashion, driven by players such as London-based M-XR and Amsterdam's based TH3rd. M-XR is working on digital mixed reality projects with Farfetch, HYPEBEAST across Samsung, Mulberry, and Burberry to name a few. It is an example of a company looking to push the boundaries of digital capture, particularly for texture acquisition and render. TH3rd is developing a 3D SaaS model and works to digitize entire physical collections in volume, something they've been having great success with for Adidas and Nike and with augmented reality or AR development for Cosmopolitan. While digitization of physical products helps transition to a fully digital-only product offering at the wholesale level, this is still based on the traditional approach of designing, prototyping, selecting, refining, and then producing a final sale sample. Developing the emotive side of a designer's work, the touch, the feel, the physical interaction with the materials used for fashion design is an area that is not yet in the mainstream of digital fashion. Responsive touchscreens are making headway in this area and fill this gap to some extent while haptic gloves and other digital sensory solutions are fully employed to complete the digital virtual showroom experience. As fashion brands and designers experience the need to show virtually and remotely instead of via the traditional extravaganza life physical fashion shows held during New York, London, Paris, Milan, and Sydney's fashion weeks, new digital storytelling and showing solutions have emerged. This included the use of digital assets in AR, VR, and MR, developed by companies such as The Diigitals with their groundbreaking fashion avatar models such as Shudu, Boyce, and J-Yung, or big things using AI and body scans to bring inclusivity and diversity to the avatar, to bring about a more engaging and immersive experience with the actual garment, something removed in a physical fashion show to some extent. This is enabling a far greater audience reach and even appeal. While there is still much distance to be covered to achieve the best immersive experience with MR, the connection with the consumer is the place that may drive this further as the AR experience improves and connects more with reality. Beem, formerly HoloMe is an infrastructure service and app that seeks to push accessible AR experiences to provide greater intimacy in digital communication and personal engagement with the consumer by combining AR with subconscious psychological triggers using only a smartphone. The result is as close as we can get to a 2D holographic experience today and is a good example of developing potential. The key players involved in this digitalization of the industry are all focused on one goal, to push the boundaries of fashion development, storytelling, and engagement with the consumer by building a fully digital ecosystem from A to Z. Thank you, and see you again soon.
