Malique Morris, Senior e-commerce correspondent at BOF, dives into the current fashion tech landscape, highlighting a refreshed investor appetite fueled by real innovation. He discusses the shift from hype-driven e-commerce to groundbreaking AI solutions that address industry challenges. Key topics include the impact of generative AI on funding, the role of experienced founders, and the exciting potential of apps like Clueless Closet. Morris emphasizes how competition can drive better consumer solutions and underscores the importance of early market entry for startups.
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insights INSIGHT
Fashion Tech Then vs Now
Early fashion tech boom mostly included e-commerce DTC brands posing as tech companies without real innovation.
Today, fashion tech means advanced technology seriously impacting how products are made and sold.
insights INSIGHT
AI Revives Fashion Tech Interest
The resurgence of fashion tech investment is fueled by generative AI enabling real personalization.
AI startups like Daydream aim to be disruptive as ChatGPT was for internet use.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Founder Tech Expertise Matters
Alta founder Jenny Wang, a former software engineer, personally helped build her app's AI recommendation engine.
Her technical expertise enabled rapid, cost-efficient improvements to Alta's styling recommendations.
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After years of disillusionment with fashion tech, investors are once again excited about its potential, but with a very different mindset to the hype-fuelled boom of the last decade.
From AI-powered personal styling apps to virtual try-on tools and personalised search engines, a wave of start-ups is gaining traction – and big backing – by offering real technological solutions to long-standing fashion industry problems.
In this episode, senior e-commerce correspondent Malique Morris joins The Debrief to explore how fashion tech is finally growing up, and which companies are leading this more grounded, results-driven wave of innovation.
Key Insights:
In the previous fashion tech boom, investors were heavily investing in e-commerce startups with little true innovation. “DTC brands … positioned themselves as tech companies because they sold goods online, but there was nothing really revolutionary about them listing products on a website. And I don't know how investors didn't cop to that,” says Morris. Today’s backers are more discerning, favouring startups with clear technical roadmaps and founders who can evolve their product in meaningful ways.
Investor interest in fashion tech reignited thanks to the rise of generative AI. As Morris explains, venture capital had been sitting on the sidelines during a broader funding freeze, but AI’s real-world applications reignited excitement. “Startups like Daydream are building a platform for personalised search using AI tools from companies like OpenAI and Google, and they want to be the ChatGPT for fashion and be disruptive in the way that ChatGPT has changed how we use the internet,” says Morris. “What was once a dream is now closer to being tangible and investors want to be the first ones in on that.”
Today’s investors are looking beyond flashy pitches and prioritising founders with real technical know-how. “Something that is really separating the people who are just trying to raise money and not breaking through from those who are, are having some sort of technical experience, technical expertise,” says Morris. With the complexity of AI and other advanced tools, investors want to back teams that can build efficiently and with minimal lift. “They want to back founders who know what they're doing,” he adds.
While new fashion tech apps offer highly personalised experiences, their complexity may limit mainstream appeal. The question of scale is still unanswered: “There may be a billion people out there who want to do that… There may only be a million. We don't know that just yet.”
The Debrief 