recognized among The Tech List Start-ups and Disruptors, Evelyn Mora is one of the leading new voices shaping the metaverse. Parisian entrepreneur Mora founded Helsinki Fashion Week in 2018 and in 2020 he organized the world’s first 3D virtual fashion week, which was broadcast by more than 500,000 people.
Building on this commitment, Mora has sought to harness the potential of Web3 tools (third generation web technologies such as blockchain and AI) to find alternative and sustainable business models for retailers.
In 2021, Mora founded the Digital Village, a platform that exists to help solve the issues and challenges traditional fashion brands face as they transition to the Web3 space.
It uses tools and technologies in social media, gaming, and e-commerce to introduce brands to Web3, the Internet of Things, and virtual environments.
It encourages brands and creators to build their own metaverses, with the future goal of being a network of metaverses that users can enter and travel through using an avatar.
Users of the Digital Village services can buy their own metaverses and NFTs (non-fungible tokens), export assets from the market, and build their own environments and communities. They will then be interoperable with other metaverses that have been created in the Digital Village ecosystem.
The platform only launched in September, so the jury is out, but Mora’s work in the field makes her someone to watch.
virtual fitting rooms
Return rates continue to plague retailers’ bottom line. At Texel, Sergey Klimentyev – prominent among The collaborators of the technical list – has created a solution to help mitigate the problem for both retailers and consumers.
Founded in Kazakhstan in 2014, Texel offers a virtual size fitting and advice widget. Klimentyev and his team develop and manufacture solutions that enable accurate 3D measurement of a human body, while the Texel Portal is an award-winning full color 3D body scanner.
Consumers can create digital avatars using scanning technology, while the company also operates a free product that allows users to try on a digital garment by providing a photo of themselves.
Although still in the early stages of adoption, Marks & Spencer tested the technology and found that customers using the tool were five times more likely to purchase and 30% less likely to return items.
The business potential is huge: reports from last year show that 87% of global retail returns are due to the wrong size, so global body scanning technology can remove fit ambiguity and lead to further reductions in costs. refunds to customers.
This potential was recognized in May at the Retail Week Live conference, when Texel was crowned the winner of the Discovery Stage, a pitching competition in which 30 startups compete to appear at the event and gain access to retail leads as a result. key code. Display technology is a tough nut to crack, but if Texel can succeed, it could change the online craze.
Live streams that can be purchased
Promoted to Wayfair’s CTO role in March, Fiona Tan is at the forefront of several innovations, notably live shopping and social commerce.
held between The Tech List Retailers and BrandsTan is no stranger to leading world-class innovation: She served as Walmart’s senior vice president of US technology from 2014 to 2020.
Tan now focuses on developing Wayfair’s “strengths as a technology organization”; this involves driving hyper-personalization by doubling down on social commerce and augmented stores to get closer to consumers.
In November, Wayfair entered the world of video shopping, launching its in-app video shopping solution, Wayfair on Air. Aimed at making its home products more recognizable, the daily show features hosts showcasing items consumers can buy directly.
This was followed by the expansion of its social selling partnership with TalkShopLive, which uses augmented reality and virtual reality to engage customers, cementing its position at the front of the pack for retailers using this technology to enhance CX.
TalkShopLive works by giving consumers a digital visualization of what furniture will look like in their own home, supporting the buying process. This activity also gives way to Tan’s work offline. In December 2021, Wayfair said it would open three new brick-and-mortar stores, all with a focus on digital; details on what will be included were scant, but the retailer said it would be an “innovative format that combines the best of in-store and online shopping.” .
Technology-driven cotton clothing replacements
All fashion retailers want to improve their green credentials while finding a way to continue producing high volumes of clothing in a way that is less damaging to the environment, all while protecting margins. Petri Alava’s business has the potential to help solve this puzzle.
Infinited Fiber Company, based in Finland, co-founded by Álava – a list of emerging and disruptive technologies – in 2016, it has developed an innovative recycling technique that creates a cotton replacement made from cellulose. The technology uses old cotton clothing, as well as other forms of cellulose, such as cardboard, to create an innovative clothing yarn called Infinna. This results in a reduction in the use of virgin cotton and the significant resources, including water and land, that are needed to grow this cotton.
Álava faces a favorable problem of how to scale operations quickly enough to meet considerable demand. In a July 2021 funding round, the company raised $30m (£27.5m) from investors including Adidas, Bestseller and lead investor H&M.
Patagonia signed a multi-year deal in June 2021, Zalando joined its investors in September 2021, and Ganni and Tommy Hilfiger launched Infinna items in August this year.
In May, Inditex signed a three-year deal worth €100m (£89m) to buy 30% of Infinna’s future annual production volume from IFC in a move Álava described as “significant” for its plans to build its first large-capacity factory. .
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