Digital technology has transformed the Australian fashion industry in recent years, enhancing collaboration between designers and manufacturers, streamlining sampling and prototyping and providing valuable insights into sourcing, pricing, ordering and other key steps in the production process. 

And while it’s still early days, leading players are already beginning to explore how the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will drive further innovation and benefits. 

That was the topic of an exclusive seminar for fashion brands and manufacturers hosted by Centric Software and Browzwear in Melbourne on July 23. 

Headlined “Transforming Australian Fashion Through Digital Product Creation”, the event featured keynote presentations from Centric’s sales director of ANZ Graham Jones, Browzwear’s chief commercial officer Lena Lim and the Australian Fashion Council’s industry relations partner Samantha Delgos. 

Jones, Lim and Delgos also participated in a panel discussion alongside Anupama Fernando, the former head of customer success at global manufacturer MAS Holdings, about the opportunities, challenges and practical advice surrounding the use of AI in fashion production. 

How AI is already reducing manual tasks and improving UX

Like many industries, one of the biggest opportunities for fashion brands and manufacturers to use AI is to reduce time-consuming and repetitive manual tasks. 

Jones shared the example of importing documents related to material certifications and standards into a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution like Centric. 

“The idea is to make the users of Centric solutions more efficient, and that’s the bottom line. It’s not to replace a job or eliminate a task so much as to speed up the task and make it happen,” he said. 

Similarly, Browzwear uses AI in its search function to enable fashion brands and manufacturers to find existing designs in their digital archives more quickly and easily. 

“The difficulty in searching the data today is that you’ve got to be able to remember a T-shirt was called T5235-L28. Nobody remembers it, so now what?” Lim said. “AI presented us with an opportunity to use image search and natural-language processing, and that’s what we’ve done.” 

Other potential use cases for AI include adding more colourways to successful designs or creating licensed sportswear with different graphics for various customers. “Simple things, great impact, and that’s what we want to continue to look for,” Lim said. 

To capture these opportunities, however, businesses must structure their data in a way that AI tools can access and understand. As Jones noted, many Australian fashion brands still rely on spreadsheets and checklists to manage their workflows, so the first step to AI adoption may actually lie in data management.

“The simple answer is that AI is as good as the data it has access to,” he said.

The AFC’s Delgos agreed: “I think digitising a lot of the processes [is what] the fashion industry needs to focus on first, so we can then [take] the next step and work out how we can automate and get further efficiencies through AI.” 

Why navigating the legal risks and change management is key 

While the benefits of AI are significant, brands and manufacturers must also be aware of the potential pitfalls. 

For example, there are legal risks associated with using AI tools to generate designs, including accidentally copying another brand’s design, or allowing proprietary sketches and images to “leak out”. 

This could be a significant challenge as Jones and Lim expect brands to develop their own AI clouds in the future, rather than rely on third-party platforms. Currently, Lim said, there’s a lack of knowledge and understanding about how AI works.

“We need to upskill people in the industry to be able to accept AI,” she said. “You need to understand how it will work for you.”  

Jones added that many big businesses currently have policies in place that prevent team members from uploading content into AI due to the potential legal risks. However, this could result in businesses falling behind in a field that is rapidly evolving. 

“If you’re not doing it, your competitors are doing it,” he said. “[AI adoption] is happening, it will happen, you must do it.”

Change management is another potential challenge that fashion brands and manufacturers may face once they get to the implementation stage. 

As MAS Holdings’ Fernando noted, any new technology, whether it’s a PLM solution, 3D design tool, or AI, comes with a new way of working. “That means you need to rethink how you’re doing business today,” she said.  

Fernando was involved in a major digital transformation at MAS Holdings and offered some practical advice to other organisations embarking on a similar journey. 

• Get the C-suite on board by speaking their language: “We started off getting C-level on board first. It took us a while because the C-level doesn’t speak in day-to-day value, they’re [looking at] value in the long term and [if] there’s some kind of profitability impact. That’s when you get their attention.”
• Give everyday users a voice in the process: “Once you have [buy-in from leadership], make sure your users are aware of what’s coming and make sure they have a voice in the process. And celebrate your wins early because this is going to be a long journey.”
• Know the end goals and make sure they’re measurable: “What can’t get measured can’t be done. We were saying [we wanted to be] 65 per cent faster to market, but we didn’t have proper processes to measure time-savings, so that was a painful task.”
• Lean on tech partners and industry peers: “If you have suppliers who are maturing in this space, try and lean on them, because they work with a lot of other customers, so they have a collective best practice that could work as a starting point.”

Still early days, but optimistic about the future 

While the Australian fashion industry is still in the early stages of AI adoption, Jones and Lim are optimistic about the potential impact of this technology on operational efficiency, customer experience and even creativity in the years ahead. 

“I think AI has the ability to bring better product to market, and to the right market,” Lim shared. “Also, because it is digital by nature, it opens up transparency automatically, and that brings a different level of sustainability acceleration for us. So for me, this is not just the era of AI, I think this is also the era where fashion becomes sustainable and growth becomes sustainable.”

Jones concluded the seminar by reiterating that “the scope for doing your job quicker is huge”. 

“What if AI could eliminate a lot of that mundane work, and release you to be creative, and release you to bring styles to market that really excite people? I think AI is going to really accelerate that and make things better for everybody,” he said.

• Click here to learn more about how Centric Software is supporting the fashion industry’s digital transformation with its cutting-edge solutions.