The following is an excerpt from the Cyberphysical Brand Concepts article I wrote for a contest with IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency to test our assumptions at Crowdmuse on whether utilising 3D assets, AI or any other digital tools to showcase physical products could accelerate distribution through preorders and community engagement through platforms like JokeRace to mitigate or reduce stock waste and over production for brands.
Sept 13 2024
Fashion in particular has become a commodity-driven industry where customers are yearning for originality, beyond the typical brand aesthetics and advertising that is fed to them and thousands of others.
Brands are struggling to balance maintaining their authenticity with following trends as they pursue curation, taste, and a sense of cultural belonging. Many are tempted to ignore fads to focus on creating something that speaks to a particular identity or subculture, but avoiding trends or traditional collection-based production cycles can be a risky endeavor in the high-cost online retail environment. In such a competitive and demanding industry, how can designers and brands create products that speak to their audience, while not simply surviving, but thriving?
We have seen experiments emerge that could, if successful, in theory, mitigate or drastically reduce upfront costs and dead stock waste including demand-driven production, new forms of e-commerce visual merchandising, and connected products. Creating these more direct commerce links could not just reduce waste, but build stronger connections between the brand, designer, and customer. This can happen through -
Oftentimes brands design and produce pieces without a guarantee of sales - this current “push model” often requires between $2,000 and $20,000 or more to cover upfront production costs. This comes without any guarantee that the stock will be sold. A “pull model” aligns production with customer demand. Producers only order material and begin production after an order is made and minimums hit i.e. pre-order, presale, or made-to-order methods. These methods subvert inventory challenges, reduce dead stock, and better serve the limited demand for a specific product.
Visual merchandising is one of the most important factors in setting up an online shop. Showcasing products is essential when we consider that 30% of online purchases result in returns, a persistent and expensive challenge (source). Often, though, showcasing relies on having samples ready for a dedicated photoshoot that can cost anywhere from $500 to $1000 up to $20k, or more. With these challenges, using 3D digital renders or virtual try-on models of a product for presale could soon become far more common, like how 3D renders are used for showcasing on these drop examples here and here. Cutting-edge generative AI models and studios that generate digital product showcasing like Flux, Daisy and CALA provide more flexibility, could reduce upfront costs and coordination, and allow designers and brands to sell a product concept to their customers immediately.
With co-creation, customers actively contribute to a product’s outcome. We have seen this from traditional brands like Nike and Lego that have co-created designs with customers. Some platforms such as Offscript are experimenting with community-led voting (through “likes”) to determine final product designs and concepts. Designers can upload designs or use Offscript’s in-app generative AI studio to draft a submission. Once a submitted design passes a threshold of community likes or preorders, production into a physical piece can commence. According to their website, their community contests are seeing between 5k to 10k submissions per month on average.
Chips using NFC and RFID technology are commonly used to verify product authentication for counterfeit prevention, provenance, and tracking for retail, supply chain management, marketing, and access campaigns. “Connected products” are consumer goods with chips used to house product metadata useful for things like Digital Product Passports, and helping track production sustainability. More and more, though, these chips in consumer products are being used as a marketing tool to connect customers to a brand through interactive advertising, loyalty programs, event marketing, and data transfer.
TOOLS USED FOR EXPERIMENT