Talking about fashion innovation, the e-P Summit is the most relevant Italian event for Fashion Technology. Think of the biggest gathering for leaders in fashion, technology, and retail, in the very heart of Milan.
For several years now, we are partners to this event from Pitti Immagine. This year we had the opportunity to deepen our role as a driver of innovation within the fashion industry. Our role is to scout the most innovative solutions in fashion technology. Our aim is to discover promising startups ready to collaborate with major brands. Therefore, we put both parties in touch to create valuable partnerships.
For this year’s event, we’ve interviewed over 30 industry experts and fashion professionals. They’ve highlighted specific needs for the growth of their respective companies. We understood innovation opportunities. We’ve presented 12 fantastic startups that we vetted, selected and invited to the event.
Subsequently, startups have been selected by managers. They were matched in 30 minutes’ meetings throughout the whole day of the event. Startups and brands were sharing the same vision, discussing potential collaborations with precise goals in mind.
Last year’s edition has seen interesting developments for startups we’ve scouted and involved with major brands. For example, Retviews presented their competitive intelligence solution and was then acquired by Lectra. ZigZag explained to brands a better way to handle e-commerce returns and received a multi-million investment in early 2019. Replika and Smartzer impressed participants. With social selling and video tagging platforms, they entered in the Maison des Startups shortly before the event. Tooso showed an AI solution for optimizing web searches inside e-commerce and was acquired by Coveo. Last but not least, Mercaux raised 4.5M $ convincing investors of their value proposition based on empowering existing retail stores.
Before digging into this year’s Power Meetings you may ask – what happened while startups and brands were discussing potential collaborations? Have a peek for yourself!
Fashion Technology Accelerator was with international speakers from main brands (Levi’s, Adidas & Miroglio). Paired with up-and-coming realities (Allbirds), media giants (Highsnobiety) and technological players (True Fit & Re-Analytics). A truly immersive dive into the future of fashion innovation.
The day started with the CEO of Pitti Immagine Raffaello Napoleone’s welcome speech, which highlighted the importance of innovation in fashion. Finally, an intense day of meeting and speeches, round tables and talks left us with plenty of insights from industry leaders. We could highlight the key takeaways for the fashion industry for innovation per selected areas, starting with…
Purpose, Omnichannel, Value perception in digital, Direct to consumer brands
Keeping physical retail when online is growing faster than ever, how to manage your distribution in a global world and how to communicate your value online. These were some of the challenges highlighted by industry experts coming from Allbirds, Levi Strauss & Co, Monocle and Re-Analytics.
Retail intelligence, Creative identity, Platform to Product, Mobile thinking, International startup markets
How to develop an international news platform? What’s new in online communities and how to embrace marketing in a digital world? Renowned speakers from Highsnobiety, Vogue, Miroglio, Facebook and our own CEO tried to shed light on these topics. FTA shared a refreshing report about what’s boiling in lesser-known markets. Because the industry as a whole should discuss topics such as rental, second-hand and marketplaces.
Unified commerce, Optimizing fashion data, Growth challenges
How digital payments shape online? How to gather the right data and for which purposes, which are the main challenges when you scale a brand? Adyen, True Fit and Carlings were enlighting the audience taking inspiration from their own experience.
Repositioning, Rental & e-commerce, Retail experiences
How you keep your brand relevant while repositioning it? How to rent and re-sale without losing your brand identity? How to merge technology and retail to shape a profound customer experience? Timberland, The Restory, and Adidas shared their views on these topics. They gave an idea of what’s at stake when facing change.
12 international startups were involved in the program to discuss with brands and investors. The aim was researching new concepts and actionable solutions. Startups showed their solutions to other brands and the selected audience of the event.
Now, let’s see what they had to offer and their take on the e-P Summit experience.
ACUITYAI – AcuityAI’s shoppable video platform helps brands drive revenue from their video content by making products directly shoppable from their existing videos.
DRESSIPI – Dressipi is the world’s only Fashion Prediction Platform, accelerating leading fashion retailers to be predictive and give their customers the best possible experience.
EUROPASS – Europass provides digital marketing and mobile payment solutions to European Retailers: travelers at the destination are converted into active shoppers.
It was a great occasion for us to come and meet a panel of investors and high level fashion brands interested in our product, that otherwise we couldn’t meet by ourselves. Everything was very well organized and the conferences were very interesting.
Paola Pacchiana – Europass China
GREENDECK – Greendeck uses AI and competitor intelligence to help fashion retailers and brands make better pricing and buying decisions, leading to an increase in revenues.
HEURITECH – It empowers fashion brands to fuel creativity, produces more sustainably, and improve profitability with cutting-edge AI and comprehensive data.
HOLOME – HoloMe is an accessible augmented reality platform helping brands tell their story in the environment of the consumer using augmented reality humans.
INTELISTYLE – Intelistyle provides personalized Artificial Intelligence styling to the world’s top retailers, outperforming human stylists and driving revenue uplift.
The team went out of the way to help us get the most value out of the event and the 1 to 1 meetings with retailers created a personal space, that allowed us to focus on their particular needs and demonstrate how we can tailor our services to address them.
Kostas Koukoravas – Intelistyle
INVRSION – inVRsion is specialized in hyper-realistic solutions of virtual showrooming and product digitalization for the Retail, Luxury, Fashion, and Real Estate sectors.
PENGUINPASS – Penguinpass is an event-management tool to maximize the investment, with a personalized, productive, and engaging experience for both organizers and final users.
PERSONIFY XP – Personify XP uses anonymous visitor data to automate 40+ digital experiences in real-time using AI. The tool helps retailers and brands growing revenues by 30%
E-P Summit gave us the unique opportunity with engaging with some of the leading stakeholders in digital in Italy, with whom we would have never had a chance to speak with otherwise. The 20 minute discussion slots gave us chance to chat with retailers about their challenges and get important feedback on our product in the Italian market. A big thanks to Fashion Technology Accelerator and Pitti Imagine for this unique chance.
Ben Mercer, Personify XP
STAMP – Stamp is revolutionizing the Tax-Free Shopping industry and creating the first marketplace for shopping tourism – a $100 billion industry essential for luxury retail
STREAMOID – Streamoid is a tech company building a super intelligent brain for fashion. It combines world-class stylist expertise with ML to create outfits following the latest trends
The partnership between E-P Summit and the Fashion Technology Accelerator allowed us to meet the senior teams of large retailers which would be difficult to book otherwise. These meetings gave us an insight into where retailers need to improve and we were able to suggest solutions to each of them that could aid their end consumer
Callum Bramley, Streamoid
We are already excited for the next edition! But in the meantime:
Startups – you can apply to FTA’s acceleration program to grow your company through our help, from this link. We are looking forward to hearing about your solution!
Brands – if you would like to know more about what we can create together, for example corporate innovation programs or training modules, here’s our email!
Marco Filocamo is Head of Operations of Fashion Technology Accelerator.
He manages the Acceleration Program, offers guidance in our Masterclasses, and is the first point of contact for promising startups through our Mentoring sessions.
