Applied Series Recap: My Top 5 Fashion Tech Takeaways with Peter Jeun Ho Tsang

Wrap Up with 5 Key Fashion Tech Takeaways
We wrap up our 'Applied' podcast series with a reflective finale. Host Peter Jeun Ho Tsang tell us his top 5 key takeaways from navigating business growth, how to get through challenging times as a fashion tech startup, through to tech and humans coming together. This episode highlights the passionate voices featured throughout the series and how the call for a strategic collaboration between brands, investors, and innovators to not only sustain emerging technologies but to also foster their growth. This episode isn't just a summary; it's a map charting the path forward in the fashion tech realm.

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Transcript

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 0:03

Fashion Tech Applied is published, my co-authored book taking you through six chapters and covering the technologies and innovations powering the fashion industry.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 0:12

I'm Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, founder and CEO of Beyond Form, and welcome to the special podcast series Applied. Each episode, I'll be sitting down with incredible fashion tech professionals that are featured inside the book. Episode I'll be sitting down with incredible fashion tech professionals that are featured inside the book. What a journey it has been over the last five months launching my book Fashion Tech Applied, accompanied by this podcast series Applied, where I've spoken to the people that are featured inside the book startups, professionals and the individuals pioneering the fashion tech space. We've had an event in Paris launching the book in collaboration with International Fashion Academy, and then we had an amazing event in London much more than just the book launch, but also our fashion tech exhibition as well, showcasing some of our startups featured inside the book, and that was in partnership with the University of East London. We've gone everywhere with our conversations. We've dug deep into lots of different topics and we talked about a variety of technologies across the entire fashion value chains. I just wanted to recap this series off with my top five key takeaways. Takeaway number one technologies like digital fashion, generative design, AI are still being explored by fashion brands. It's still in its infancy and in the early stages. This means that things will go wrong and they can go wrong and most likely fashion brands, startups and everyone else will get it wrong. So, therefore, it's about piloting and trialing and also pivoting. As we heard from Nicolas from Futures Factory and als o Yigit from T-F ashion, it could be about completely pivoting the technology into another, completely different space, or it could be about actually disseminating the technology in a different go-to market strategy, whichever makes sense from the feedback that is being gained. However, those small tests and those pilots can pay off in a big way. As we saw and heard with Mustafa from MishiPay, they managed now to raise their Series B fundraising round all the way back from my previous project called The Dandy Lab in London. From a very small pilot test with Flying Tiger of around 30 stores, they've now rolled out their entire UK storefront. That's a huge win from them.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 2:49

Key takeaway number two material innovations are struggling. There's no doubt about it. They're doing amazing things out there and we have a variety now coming out onto the market. We had very passionate rally cries from pauline of refact, sedgwick from resort techs and shika from altmat all pioneering innovators in the sacred and material innovation space and I call them rally cries, because it was very much that.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 3:15

What does the industry need to do? What do people outside of the industry need to do for example, investors, to make sure that innovations like theirs can continue through investments, through orders, through partnerships, to make sure they don't die before commercialization is really fully underway? We heard, actually, how long it can take for innovations like theirs to come onto the market and see the full impact of it. However, what is clear is that fashion brands need to be doing more to make the industry more sustainable. This could be giving through orders at the right quantities, at the right time and at the right scale, for whether innovation is that, as we heard from shika, it's not necessarily about going all in with massive orders that these smart innovations cannot actually fulfill, but having a balance of the two. It could be about investing capital into the innovations, in which pauline from refact shared a very honest story with us as to how hard she's found it raising capital for her innovation. We need more to be done there and, as Cedric from Resort Tech says, it's not just about lip service. That is not enough, and the impending EU regulations on all fashion brands with operating within the region is going to be upon them very soon. Within the coming years. More needs to be done.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 4:53

Key takeaway number three is AI going to take over the world and cause job losses? Big question that gets asked not just within the fashion space, but also outside of the fashion tech space as well. I am going to use this quote from Yeet Now Moving Forward Yeet from Tee Fashion. Ai won't be replacing jobs, but it'll be the people that know how to use AI that will. I think that's a very strong quote there and I completely agree with that. It's about upskilling to keep advantage within the market and it's about understanding how you can move forward on a personal level, as we heard from John Lauer of the London College of Fashion. Start by doing a skills audit. From that skills audit, see where your gaps are. Then upskill, retrain, so that you are ahead in the industry, especially when it comes to technology.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 5:58

Key takeaway number four building and launching our fashion tech innovation needs the right timing, the right place and the right people, as kitty told us as she recounted her story of her incubation time within the massive corporation like microsoft. The right people were there ie the team members but it wasn't necessarily the right time or place, and that's very interesting considering. Of course, we all know how big microsoft is. We know the resources that they have and what they can do for a little fledgling solution like hers. However, it didn't work and she was very honest about that. I think what she said is very true in many ways, beyond what she was building. For example, when I was studying digital fashion more than a decade ago now, none of those elements were right for the space to take off. Now that digital fashion is a very integrated part of fashion internally, within fashion brands, for example, they're setting up digital fashion departments, doing prototyping and so forth but also externally as well for the general consumer, as we have seen with people like nike and artifact taking that space to the next level.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 7:09

And finally, we have key takeaway number five. Ultimately, it's about the technology that is still layering on top of everyday life, and no episode highlighted this better than in my conversation with Jonathan from Hellishion, whether it's about making processes better with an organization, engaging customers better with an experience or a retail journey of some sort, or about provoking emotions from a viewer and, as he told us, with his Dunhill fashion show, the lady sat next to him was gently weeping when she was viewing the show itself, just because she was feeling all of these emotions from the show that was created with the use of holograms. Ultimately, it all comes back to being a human and how tech slots into the way that we live. So there you have it my top five key takeaways from the Applied series. It's been an amazing journey.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 8:04

I want to thank everyone that took part in the podcast series all the amazing interviews and, of course, the ones that we didn't have on the podcast show as well, that were featured in the book Amazing insights, and they can't be possible without you.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 8:18

I want to thank people from the beyond form team, so christine, for the entire production of the applied series and the event as well. There's a lot of work done there. Beatrice from the team for planning an amazing event in london that went beyond the book. Thank you to you, our listeners, as, if you've liked the series, please do give us a review and follow, so don't forget to click that button. A free little action, but it means so much to us and it will mean that the algorithms will also pick us up in the shows as well. As always, the book Fashion Tech Applied is available for purchase online at the Springer link or on our website. At beyondformio, there's a 20% discount for our listeners, and I'll put that link into the episode description along with the code itself. So until next time. This is Peter Junho-Sang signing out.