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Today, an increasing number of businesses are taking a technology-first approach to run their businesses and are looking to transform digitally — back end to front end, but the fashion industry’s back end is still run the same way it has been for decades.

The global retail fashion market is worth trillion dollars, with just under half of that being spent in China and the USA. The world produced 150 billion garments in 2018 alone, of which 50 billion garments or one-third remained unsold! A greater cause for concern is that the $3 trillion Global Fashion & Apparel industry is the second most polluting industry after oil, contributing to water pollution, air pollution and solid waste pollution.

With technologies helping in demand sensing, retail challenges across the industry can be reduced and ample potential and value in the fashion industry can be unleashed. It’s time for fashion businesses to adopt technology and redefine quickly.

Supply Chain Labs with Stylumia is trying to tackle some challenges that lie in the fashion industry — fashion trend forecasting, demand forecasting and prediction systems. Stylumia is an AI-led fashion intelligence start-up founded by former Myntra COO, Ganesh Subramanian in December 2015 with the goal of reducing waste in the fashion and lifestyle industries. Through its suite of proprietary solutions powered by ML-based prediction algorithms and demand science, the startup serves over 100 customers in India, the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, and Japan, ranging from Fortune 100 to small and medium fashion and lifestyle brands/retailers, as opposed to the intuitive fashion prediction and forecasting systems available in the market globally.

Stylumia uses machine learning to improve product assortments, optimize inventory management, and provide consumer-driven fashion forecasts, resulting in revenue growth, inventory reduction, and increased profitability of 30–50 per cent in under a year for its customers, with a 10x return on investment.

“This is the time to expand and strengthen your online business.”

Stylumia sees an opportunity to help fashion firms, manufacturers, and exporters scale their digital businesses through the start-up’s top three products: Stylumia MIT (market intelligence tool) Stylumia FIT (fashion intelligence tool) and Stylumia Apollo (fashion predictor bot), which assist in forecasting fashion trends and predict demand in the constantly changing fashion business from the design and creation stage to the pre-season commit level to in-season demand and store distribution inventory with 80 per cent accuracy — helping clients scale their e-commerce businesses on a 360-degree basis.