AI is revolutionizing product development: to a finished product in record time

The fashion industry is experiencing a paradigm shift due to the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI). Current developments show how AI is changing the entire product lifecycle – from trend identification to design and production.

A report by Aras entitled “The Future of Product Lifecycle Management and Digital Engineering” underlines this development. The study predicts that 91% of companies will increase their investment in AI in product development and manufacturing over the next two years. The main drivers cited for this development are increasing pressure from production costs, product complexity, regulatory requirements and the need to drastically reduce time to market. In the USA in particular, the commitment to investing in AI in this area is the strongest, with 98% of companies doing so.

Retail giant Walmart is going one step further and integrating AI and generative AI (GenAI) into a new “trend-to-product” technology. This approach aims to significantly speed up the fashion design and production process. While the development of a clothing collection traditionally takes around six months, as designers spend a lot of time researching various trend sources, “Trend-to-Product” streamlines this process. With the help of AI-supported analysis of global data and trends, the research and design phase is shortened from weeks to just a few minutes. The tool also generates mood boards including collection names, colors and textures and creates detailed fashion tech packs for suppliers. This enables Walmart to offer trendy, high-quality items much faster and at lower prices.

Hamburg-based fashion retailer bonprix is also relying on AI and has announced the launch of its self-developed “Fashion Creation App”. The web-based AI tool serves as a source of inspiration and speeds up the fashion design process. Based on text input, uploaded images or sketches, the generative AI delivers design suggestions in photorealistic quality. Designers and product developers can thus quickly and easily generate new styles that serve as briefing templates or discussion bases.

The “Fashion Creation App” is a central component of bonprix's vision of fully digitalized end-to-end product development. The aim is to make processes more efficient, flexible and sustainable and to react more quickly to current trends and customer wishes. Following a successful test phase and the sale of the first AI-supported products, bonprix plans to expand the app to the entire fashion range.

Carolin Klar, Managing Director Product, Sourcing & Corporate Responsibility at bonprix, emphasizes the great added value of the new app for increasing the efficiency of product development processes and strengthening the company's competitiveness.

Current developments clearly show that artificial intelligence is about to fundamentally change the fashion industry. Companies that adapt this technology at an early stage and use it intelligently can optimize their processes, react more quickly to market requirements and secure a decisive competitive advantage.