
A round-up of everything you might have missed in relevant fashion business, digital comms and tech industry news over the past fortnight.
TOP STORIES
- Amazon has developed an AI fashion designer [MIT]
- A new t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers [Quartz]
- These robots are using static electricity to make Nikes (as pictured) [Bloomberg]
- A preview of the first wave of AR apps coming to iPhones [Techcrunch]
- In a Zara world, who orders custom clothing? [Racked]
- What happened to wearables? [BoF]
BUSINESS
- Matchesfashion.com sells majority stake to Apax after fierce bidding war [NY Times]
- Making sense of Chanel’s secret filings [BoF]
- Is Nordstrom the next acquisition target for Walmart or Amazon? [RetailDive]
- North Korea factories humming with ‘Made in China’ clothes, traders say [Reuters]
- Is counterfeiting actually good for fashion? [HighSnobiety]
- C&A Foundation highlights ‘gaps to overcome for clean and circular fashion’ [Fashion United]
SOCIAL MEDIA
- ‘Game of Thrones’ actor Maisie Williams will kick off new Twitter series for Converse [Creativity]
- How Instagram and Snapchat are benefiting from Facebook’s declining teen and tween numbers [AdWeek]
- Facebook furthers WhatsApp monetisation efforts with verified business pilot [The Drum]
- Condé Nast and Facebook are debuting a virtual reality dating show [AdWeek]
MARKETING
- Zalando turns festival into three-day live marketing campaign [BoF]
- Donatella Versace works with eight creatives for new versus ads [WWD]
- 40% of consumers want emails from brands to be less promotional and more informative [AdWeek]
- In first-ever TV ad, Patagonia targets Trump administration [MediaPost]
RETAIL & E-COMMERCE
- What is Amazon, really? [Quartz]
- How Westfield is combating the Amazon threat with digital upgrades at its malls [Digiday]
- Betting on brick-and-mortar: Alibaba’s billion-dollar retail experiment [Forbes]
- H&M’s Arket encourages transparent shopping on its new e-commerce site [WGSN]
- Uniqlo’s retail empire embarks on a digital revolution [Nikkei]
- Farfetch Black & White partners with Certona to offer personalised e-commerce to luxury brands [The Industry]
- Shopify’s e-commerce empire is growing in Amazon’s shadow [Bloomberg]
- Voice search, 3D modelling and chatbots named as 2017’s most significant e-commerce trends [The Drum]
TECHNOLOGY
- 11 tech leaders share the real truth about artificial intelligence (and what really matters) [Forbes]
- How Bitcoin is making waves in the luxury market [CNN]
- How blockchain could boost the fashion industry [BoF]
- Walmart and Google partner to challenge Amazon’s Alexa [Retail Dive]
- Google and Vogue are bringing voice-activated content from the magazine to home devices [AdWeek]
- Latest Magic Leap patent shows off prototype AR glasses design [Techcrunch]
- ‘Self-driving’ lorries to be tested on UK roads [BBC]
PRODUCT
- Everlane’s quest to make the world’s most sustainable denim [Fast Company]
- The zipper: the innovation that changed fashion forever [Bloomberg]
- A new high-tech fabric could mean the end of bulky layers in the winter [Quartz]
- Watch how Vans can now put any custom design on your shoes in under 15 minutes [Fast Company]
- How RFID tags became trendy [Engadget]
- Leather grown using biotechnology is about to hit the catwalk [The Economist]
- These brands are teaming up on smart hang tags [Apparel Mag]