How The Luxury Retail Sector Is Using Technology To Remain Relevant

Amazon recently posted a LinkedIn profile that revealed it was quietly building a team to help people to find clothes that fit people perfectly. The giant online seller wants to recruit engineers and its project will span hardware and robotics, 3-D models, applied research and software engineering. The goal: to reinvent retail using machine learning. Well that’s all fine for high street fashion, you might say, but when it comes to luxury brands, no one will want a microchip to choose an outfit for them. Luxury fashion takes time, time to create and time to understand. It is about scarcity and unsated desires, the individual touch and beautiful details. In fact, quite the opposite of all the things that digitisation can offer: speed, ready availability, huge choice. Yet if iconic labels and designers are going to appeal to buyers in the future, they are going to have realise that their craft-led artisanal product cannot remain untouched by digital technology. In fact technology represents a huge opportunity for designers and luxury brands. Done well, it will certainly be the saviour of some of them. Read more at The Independent.