Alibaba and Guess’ FashionAI Concept Store unveiled in HK

GUESS is global strategic partner of Alibaba’s FashionAI project, an initiative to give shoppers a glimpse of what the future of fashion retail will look like.

Alibaba rolled out a pilot FashionAI concept store on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) campus pairing GUESS’ retail knowledge and latest collections with advanced Alibaba AI and other technology.

“By partnering with Alibaba, a dominant technology leader, we are changing the retail experience as our customers also evolve,” said José Blanco, CEO of Greater China for GUESS. “It is important that we continuously invest in new technology and platforms. This entire project came together in just five months thanks to a strong partnership between our two companies. At GUESS, we believe in the need to innovate in real time. We plan to extend this project in the region as the future of retail.”

Besides the FashionAI concept store’s futuristic appeal, the project is aimed at providing a better retail experience for shoppers and to use analytics to help brands be smarter in ordering and maintaining inventory.

“GUESS and Alibaba share the same vision to understand customer behaviors through technologies, ” said Zhuoran Zhuang, Vice President, Alibaba Group. “With GUESS’ retail expertise, we are able to train and refine our FashionAI system, and marry technology with fashion in a way that’s never been done before. We are looking forward to deepening our partnership to innovate personalized services offered in retail shops.”

The FashionAI concept store features smart racks, smart mirrors and next-generation fitting rooms.

Alibaba’s FashionAI system underpins the stores, offering up mix-and-match clothing and accessory suggestionsfor customers from the GUESS line, as well as items sold by others on Tmall and Taobao, China’s biggest B2C and C2C platforms, respectively.

GUESS launched its store on Tmall at the end of 2013 and the brand has been one of the most popular brands in the fashion apparel category. GUESS’ store has achieved more than 100% growth over the last 3 consecutive years.

GUESS collaborates with Alibaba closely in the New Retail concept since 2016 with the
implementation of the O2O project in both online and offline stores.

The FashionAI concept store, located at the Logo Square of PolyU campus, will be open to the public from July 5-7. It is being set up on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence on Fashion and Textile Conference 2018, co-hosted by Alibaba and PolyU.