Founder Series: What Makes a Good Fashion Tech Idea with Beyond Form's CEO Peter Jeun Ho Tsang

Fashion Tech's Coming of Age

It's here, to close the Founder Series, Beyond Form's CEO, Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, finally shares his entrepreneurial journey. From growing up in fashion with his family's garment factories in China, to studying fashion and then eventually setting up his own companies,  Peter has seen it all. In the search for life meaning lead Peter to uncover why and how the fashion industry was and is broken, and the potential of how technology can transform a $3 trillion industry. We find out in this episode the growth of fashion tech, signaling a transformative shift in designing, producing, and experiencing fashion.

The inception of Beyond Form and  what it takes to build a fashion tech startup

The conversation highlights the void of tech and innovation in fashion compared to other industries and the challenges faced in persuading major fashion brands to embrace change. This fear has ripened the abundance for fashion tech around the world to come onto the market, everything from AI design, to re-commerce, digital fashion, and more. This is why Beyond Form exists. What does Peter believe which fashion tech will survive and what does he look for when deciding which startups to work with at Beyond Form? Find out in this episode.

Connect with Peter on Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/peterjeunhotsang

Transcript

Beatrice: 0:04

Every startup begins with an ambitious founder and an idea, but what inspires them to take the leap into the entrepreneurial world? Hi, I'm Beatrice Newman. You have heard me on previous episodes as the founder of mode. However, we're doing things a little bit differently today, as I'll be your host to bring this season of the founder series to a close. We have a very special guest the one and only Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, your usual host and the founder of Beyond Form. We're finally putting him in the hot seat. You've heard stories from the Beyond Form startups, but what inspired Peter to start the venture studio? In today's episode, we'll be chatting about how the fashion industry was sorely lacking tech and innovation, the challenges Peter has faced trying to convince fashion's big brands to play ball, and how Peter's observation of the innovation fear factor spurred him on to go against the status quo by bringing amazing entrepreneurs together to build fashion tech.

Peter: 1:13

And I really wanted to prove to myself that a) there were enough fashion tech innovations and startup ideas out there for me to really support, which we've proven now, because we've now worked with over 50 fashion tech companies from all around the world, and that was just amazing to see that there's just so much fashion tech ideas out there to support. This is really much where Beyond Form came into play helping all of these amazing entrepreneurs get their ideas, get them to the market.

Beatrice: 1:43

Let's get stuck into Peter's founder journey on this episode of venturing into fashion tech. My observations on the growth of fashion tech indicate a significant shift towards innovative tech driven solutions within the fashion industry, transforming the way we design, produce and experience fashion. Peter and I go way back. We started our journey as MA students on the digital fashion course at the London College of Fashion and been navigating our career journeys, and it's been so exciting seeing Peter take technology to a whole new level. I can't wait to delve deeper into his journey and tell the story on today's episode, but before that, a very, very quick summary of what we're really going to get into today, which is the fashion tech ecosystem. According to TracksXN, the fashion tech category has attracted $46.5 billion across 36,000 companies that the platform has been tracking, as capital is flowing into technologies that make the fashion industry more sustainable and engaging. Technology advancements offer new opportunities for the fashion industry. Peter Jeun Ho Tsang.

Peter: 3:01

Peter how are you Well? Thank you, I'm so excited that you get to be the host today. A little bit different.

Beatrice: 3:11

So be nice to me, don't worry, I will be so. For all of you who may or may not know, beyond Form is a platform that nurtures entrepreneurs globally to build and scale technology solutions for the fashion industry. But the BF journey started somewhere too, Peter. How did your fashion tech journey begin and how did it end with creating Beyond Form?

Peter: 3:35

So my family actually owned factories out in China, so they were creating fast fashion mass production products for big clients such as Urban Outfitters, laura Ashley and then, back in the day, catherine Hamlet when it was still alive. So I had all of this insight and also being able to just experience production and fashion and the real flesh and guts parts that you don't necessarily see, and that was very much my first parade into the whole industry. I then studied it at the college and their university at the London College of Fashion. Beatrice alluded to the fact that we studied the MA together On that program. It was very much that first parade of okay. Fashion is so much more than just designing products and clothing and drawing. It actually needs systems and processes and technologies and innovations to make it work as well and advance as any industry. Specifically, but on the digital fashion course, we were really exposed to things like digital fashion before it was even a thing. I'm sure you can remember this, Beatrice, when we were very much the geeks in the corner hinkering around with digital fashion. We indeed we very much were geek. That was with an amazing professor called Sue Jenkins Jones. It just really opened up my eyes.

Peter: 4:55

However, I did go to fashion school with the usual fashion dreamers, everybody else. I wanted to go training fashion so that I could launch then my own fashion brand, which I did do, don't get me wrong. That gave me a really good understanding of how to bring a brand, a collection, to life and how do all of the different stakeholders come together to make fashion a reality. I got stockists. I had people buying my products all around the UK Great learning curve for me in terms of how do customers operate, what is the consumer behavior and so forth. But I came to a point where A it's incredibly difficult to get a fashion brand off the ground, and I see this obviously day in, day out when I'm speaking to founders at Be Unformed. B you need a lot of money to get it off the ground as well. You need working capital, you need to be able to pay your suppliers for fabrics or production, and at that moment in time I didn't necessarily have the capital to get a fully fledged brand off the ground as I wanted it to be, and I had the vision for and at the same time, and see, I just came to a reflection point where there was that epiphany moment where I was just like does the world need another fashion brand and I came to the conclusion was no, actually. So I started to work in the industry, but I wanted to understand how can I still make an impact and shift it along from, as I said earlier, that traditional fashion brand type of thinking?

Peter: 6:25

That's when I started to bring in the technology elements and I started a new business with a co-founder called Julia. We called it the Dandy Lab and it was part fashion retail at the front end, so you and I, the normal customer, could come in by fashion brands, and we worked with some amazing brands. We worked with around 60 brands over the course of three years. Then, at the back end, we loaded it with lots of technologies, so plug and play systems for retail, foot tracking systems, ai, search engines in the store, interactive screens, nfc. So this was around 2014, 15 time frame.

Peter: 7:05

But retail tech was very, very busy at the moment in time. Everybody was talking about, okay, how is the physical retail format going to change? How is the retail going to survive against online sale? So we made this test bed. I had some amazing partners there, my big ones being the University College of London and also Cisco, and with my co-founder, we did lots of insights from that and, again, it was my next growth in terms of my entrepreneurial journey, learning how to do things from a different perspective and working with technologies as well. As you can imagine, it's very different from fashion Much faster lead times, much faster turn around times. Technology goes so much quicker. We think fast fashion and although yes, it is fast, I would say technology is even faster in some ways If we're thinking about big corporation levels and a startup levels and the processes need to make it run as an ecosystem.

Peter: 8:00

From that I moved on from the Dandy Lab because A my co-founder and I decided that we wanted to go do different things, which is natural in the way of a startup life.

Peter: 8:12

That was when Beyond Form came to life, taking all of my learnings from the Dandy Lab and essentially making the Dandy Lab 2.0.

Peter: 8:21

And that's when I met the International Fashion Academy a Fashion School in Paris. And that's when we were like let's just do something together, something super, really cool in fashion tech. And that's when I launched Beyond Form, as it is first and foremost a fashion tech lab pre-loaded with a startup program in the space that we then branded the Foundry, powered by IFA Paris. From there, my aim was really to understand and learn how can I support the fashion tech ecosystems even further? And I really wanted to prove to myself that A there was enough fashion tech innovations and subtle ideas out there for me to really support, which we've proven now, because we've now worked with over 50 fashion tech companies from all around the world, and that was just amazing to see that there's just so much fashion tech ideas out there to support, to nurture. And this is really much where Beyondform came into play helping all of these amazing entrepreneurs get their ideas into reality and into the market.

Beatrice: 9:25

Amazing. It's really insightful hearing that you started in fashion design and that fluid journey from design into tech. There's quite a lot to digest there, though, because that's like your whole journey in, like you know, a couple of minutes. I'd like us to take some time and reflecting on your life so far. What were the main events that shaped your vision of the future of the fashion industry?

Peter: 9:53

You alluded to, beatrice, in the introduction, something called the innovation fear factor, and this is something that my business partner at the time coined that term because we were like, okay, there's a lot of people out there that just seem to have that innovation fear factor, basically too scared to put innovation into practice or even to think about technology. So I would say that was definitely an event that helped me to realise, okay, technology can really make an impact in terms of my personal journey sitting in factories. When we think of China, we think of cheap fashion, we think of mass produce fashion, but actually that is no longer the case, and my family's factory was this big, massive unit in China, in, specifically, was this big, massive unit in China, in, specifically, juhai, in the countryside. This big unit with five or six floors worth of workers, rews for machines and machines and people just working fast forward to the late 2010s. It goes from six lively dating companies were not helping them to advance either local. They were still expecting these Kra, all of those different things, the people, the skill sets you have to give them the bulk orders to make things happen, to keep their livelihoods alive. Unfortunately for my family's factory, they were not able to keep it alive and therefore, of course, it closed down. Everybody lost their job and I was just like okay.

Peter: 11:49

Having seen that as well meant that the fashion industry is very, very fickle and I think we ought to forget, as consumers, that somebody, somewhere, made your product. There's a cost somewhere, and again, that was something that really scared me on. To help fashion do better, better business, be good in terms of ethical ways, be better in terms of being a little bit more transparent and this is why things like transparency tech being able to understand who made your product, where your product comes from I think is amazing. And giving accurate information, being able to connect the supply chain together in ways that were not necessarily possible 20, 30 years ago I think is really interesting as well.

Peter: 12:30

From the Dandy lab, of course, this is the more the glossier side, but even if you look at the more recent things, when I first came to Paris, I was very shocked, actually, just how traditional it is here in this city and in this country. They didn't even know what fashion tech was or is 2018. I was speaking to some luxury brands I won't name who specifically, but their understanding of fashion tech was social media it was Twitter, obviously now X, it was Facebook and Instagram. Technology is much more than just social media and again, that was just an eye-opener for me that culturally, just going literally two and a half hours on a train ride from London to Paris, there was such a stark contrast between the endless amount of tech and innovation and again, just something like that just wanted me to make Beyond Form come to life even more.

Beatrice: 13:36

Thanks for sharing that, peter. I think that's really insightful and sort of goes back to conversations I remember having, before coming onto the MA, digital fashion course, because at that time we're talking like 2012, and I know technology and digital fashion was sort of you know it goes beyond that. You know, 2012 was, I think, at the cusp of more exciting things. Coming through and having conversations with people, it was always like what is digital fashion? And I think everyone kept thinking it was 3D printing, it was robots. So it's really interesting to hear, when you are talking to luxury brands, their viewpoint of technology is social media, and you're right, you know it's so much more. We know all too well the challenges of starting a fashion brand, which you yourself experienced. What I'm interested, though, is you know, one would think segueing into tech wouldn't be that much easier, based on what I've just said. So tell us, peter, what does it take to build a fashion tech start.

Peter: 14:37

First of all, Beatrice, do you used to believe in robots in fashion?

Beatrice: 14:43

We are so much more than that. Come on.

Peter: 14:46

I agree completely. But you're completely right. There's just some funny, you know, preconceptions, shall we say, when people think of fashion tech and I think the term fashion tech as well is often misunderstood. But for me, specifically, how we interpret it beyond form, it is those innovations and cutting edge solutions that are then applied to the fashion industry, and that is very much how we look at it.

Peter: 15:11

Meeting any founder that wants to create a fashion tech startup when I meet a founder, I always think first, does the technology that they're proposing have an opportunity in the fashion vertical and the fashion value chain? Is it solving a burning challenge in the creation, in the system, in the business of producing and selling fashion? Second point I would think about is does this founder actually have enough capability to be able to get this technology into the industry and make it have value for all the necessary stakeholders? Because, beyond form, more than three quarters of our founders actually come from outside of the fashion industry. Therefore, there is a huge learning curve for them as to how to speak to a fashion corporation, who to speak to and actually how to address somebody that may, for example, be a little bit more creative If you're trying to sell data driven designs to a creative person. Quite often they're just speaking two separate languages and I think you very well know this bit trust, data and design Is not necessarily quite there yet.

Beatrice: 16:24

No, absolutely. I agree with that 100%. And I think this goes back to when you're speaking to a lot of creatives around technology and how that could work not just on a social media level or that sort of idea of it just being 3D printing a robot. I think, yeah, creatives just don't necessarily realize how more opportunity it is in developing and supporting operations, for instance. I know for me I've found that very helpful in that side of the business and how we can move forward with it. But I think with creatives you're always going to get technology being used on a creative slot as opposed to really understanding how it could support the business side. But we digress. I have a question for you. In talking about what is digital, when we were starting at LCF, how the digital fashion course shape your understanding of fashion tech.

Peter: 17:17

Oh, that's a very good question, Beatrice. I'm going to be very honest here. I think I was a little bit naive. I don't know about you.

Beatrice: 17:24

I was very naive, Peter. I think it took me almost a year to really figure out what I wanted to do.

Peter: 17:30

Yeah, me too. As I said right at the start, I was still on the whole journey of creating a traditional fashion brand. I think for me it really opened up my eyes as to actually there's life beyond just fashion products and I'm not discrediting, obviously, creativity or fashion design or drawing for the thing that's so really important and is something that I don't practice far enough these days but it just really opened up my eyes to doing business in different ways or even creating in different ways.

Beatrice: 18:02

Absolutely, and thank you for that insight Segueing into your startup and where it is today. If you were to launch your first startup today, what advice would you give yourself? Don't do it.

Peter: 18:17

No, I'm only joking. I think I have learned a lot along the way. Beyond Form is now my third business, I think again going back to the whole naivety perspective all the time when I'm speaking to my founders now it's about making sure that you learn quickly, you pivot fast and that you know how to get from A to B and then B to C and then C to D in a way that is systematic but also meaningful to you so that you can grow. I think entrepreneurship is also about personal growth as well, especially if you're a first time founder.

Peter: 18:54

If I think back to my first time as creating my fashion brand as an entrepreneur there, I just didn't really know how to do things. To be honest, it could be simple as doing taxes or learning how to do a sales deck, or learning how to negotiate a purchase order with a client. All of those things take time and certainly within fashion school you don't learn any of those skills. So I think for me it would be be kind to yourself, but take time to learn all of the important foundations of how to do business as well.

Beatrice: 19:26

Very sound advice, Peter. Thank you. Looking through the lens of Beyond Form and the insights that you have gathered in the years that you've built up such a phenomenal platform, tell us what technologies are shaping the trajectory of the industry today.

Peter: 19:43

I want to go back to my portfolio here. I think over the founder series that we've done now over the last couple of months, we have learned some really interesting insights. At the start of the value chain we have companies like T-Fashion and AI Trend Forecasting and Geno-Shift Design. Here we are only scraping the surface, especially with Gen AI. Now designers can use Gen AI to help inspire them. I think that's really important to say is to inspire. It's not to replace the notion of design or the process of the fashion designer. It's to aid them. But it's about how can we design in a savvier way, how can we use design and data to come together to create a meaningful collection that we know is going to sell? Big challenges in the industry is overproduction. If we just made things that people actually wanted, that we know is going to sell, we can really drastically cut down the number of goods that are unsolved, which takes me on to my next startup that we learned from the Fines episode with Andrea and Jules. The stats that there are over 30% are around a third of goods sold every year, which accounts to billions of worth of dollars of inventory, which is insane if we think about it. What's really exciting to me about the Fines solution is the fact that now all of this can be managed in an automated way. So, for example, we heard in that episode how AI can help Call prints with too much stock to understand what they can actually then do with that stock either it's off-price selling, donation, upcycling and so forth. I think that's very exciting, not because it's sexy, but because it allows the system to be disrupted. It is going to disrupt the system and it's going to allow the system to shift in some way. Of course, huge sustainability issue that we have moving towards the end of the value chain. We have companies like Bisbee out in Pakistan solving the sustainability issue, that whole resale platform in an untapped market where there's more than 200 million people as a nation in Pakistan, a huge market compared to where we're sat in London or Paris. There, resale is still scraping the surface. I think it's interesting to see how technologies and platforms like Bisbee have the potential opportunity to reshape all of those emerging markets. So we're thinking about India, we're thinking about Pakistan, we're thinking about the South American countries, we're thinking about the Middle Eastern countries as well.

Peter: 22:17

There's just so much there to be had With their digital fashion. We are none other geeks in the corner, beatrice, I think. And we've moved on there with digital fashion. I think that's very interesting, but the use cases are still not yet necessarily proven. I think it's only a matter of time before we really see how it's going to be consumed by the customer. No-transcript maybe. Perhaps we don't necessarily know yet. With the crypto markets being so influx at the moment, it's sort of nice to have, it's fun, it's sexy, but a real use case we're not quite sure yet.

Peter: 22:52

Production purposes yes, it's there, but there's a lot of chain that still needs to happen within the industry from a cultural perspective, within processes, in between the designer and the factories. For example, a lot of designers still want to be designing by hand. They don't necessarily want to be designing on the computer, and I think that whole culture of barrisaw needs to be lowered in order to make a good use of that technology. However, we're seeing all of these things shaping the way the industry is moving and we're seeing what you're doing, bitch is, as the head of fashion at UEL and also at MOOD. It is impacting the way curriculum is designed. It's impacting the way that potential future generation designers and fashion professionals are thinking about how they approach tech innovation and how can they implement it into their everyday thinking, which I think is very, very exciting.

Beatrice: 23:46

Absolutely, peter, and yes, I agree. Even if I was to be called a fashion geek, I wouldn't be as hurt about it now as I might have been before. It has served its purpose and you know. Just going back to what you were, mentioning Wrong with that bitch.

Peter: 24:01

let's embrace that.

Beatrice: 24:04

I embrace it and I think it's interesting that digital always gets relegated to the West. However, as you've mentioned, there is so much more potential in other global markets whose ideas and innovations can help fuel the development of technology and fashion really, really exciting. On that note, what are the next steps for beyond forms business roadmap, which I am super excited to hear?

Peter: 24:29

So now we have around 20 companies in the portfolio. Some of them are obviously working better than others. I won't say which ones, and that's natural in the start. We see that nine out of 10 startups do fail, so there's going to be a high failure rate. It's about embracing that failure and then learning from that. Going back to your earlier question, beatrice, about what advice would I give myself, I think it's about also learning how to fail as well, which is really really important for any entrepreneur to be able to understand how to process all of that failure and to then take that as a learning. However, going back to the actual question, the business roadmap, it's about now making sure that these startups have a life and grown. How do I move my seed companies to the Series A, which a few of them are about to move into, that fundraising, growth and startup life cycle, which I think is very exciting. Myself and the team are going to be looking at boosting them with everything they need to succeed from a fundraising perspective.

Peter: 25:32

As a venture studio, our objective is to actually exit our companies at some point, so I do hope that does happen within the next 24 months, also with some of the more mature startups From a technical perspective and technology perspective.

Peter: 25:47

We're going to carry on innovating. I'm continuously on the hunt for new innovations to work with, new founders to work with, and I want the portfolio to grow. The more startups that I can bring on board and the more ideas that we can come to fruition, the better it is going to be for the ecosystem. So I would like, by the end of 2024, to be able to increase my portfolio by another 50%, and then the year after, another 50% or even more to 100%, and keep those traditional numbers, keep on growing and growing, and to make sure that the industry takes fashion tech and innovation seriously. At the moment, corporations are only spending around 1.6, 1.8% of their annual revenues on innovation. That needs to change and that has to change for innovation and fashion technology to survive. So I want to be able to help those companies and those startups, be suspicious of the way to do so and have conversations that make sense for them.

Beatrice: 26:47

Really super exciting stuff, peter, so thanks for sharing Quick fire round. So I'm going to ask you a series of questions and we're going to try and be really quick about it. Okay, so number one what should a founder do today in the face of uncertainty?

Peter: 27:02

It's about taking a step back, reflecting and making a decision based on data.

Beatrice: 27:08

Okay, great. Question two what's the most challenging part of being an entrepreneur?

Peter: 27:14

Every day is a roller coaster, so it's about trying to find your groove on how to make sure that the roller coaster does not go off the rails.

Beatrice: 27:22

I like that Three. Which startup do you think is making the most waves today?

Peter: 27:28

Oh, this is a really difficult one. There's a lot of startups out there that I do love what's happening. It's hard, it's very difficult to choose one. I want to see all of my portfolio founders.

Beatrice: 27:40

Smart choice. Very good. Four. If you were to launch a fashion brand, what would its brand ID look like?

Peter: 27:49

I think what's really exciting is the whole notion of the Gen Z, the very strong voice. It's about creating a strong voice that aligns with the Gen Z.

Beatrice: 27:58

Cool. And my last question five what is your favourite emerging technology impact in the fashion world today?

Peter: 28:06

For me, I think it's AI, I think it's the journey to design. Those two things together, I think, are going to be very, very powerful when we know how to harness it.

Beatrice: 28:16

Thank you, peter. It's been really a really insightful and amazing conversation.

Peter: 28:23

Thank you so much, Beatrice, for being my incredible host for today's episode.

Beatrice: 28:27

My pleasure.