Trend forecasting: Fashion’s way forward
Trend forecasting is the act of predicting fashion trends including colors, fabrics, silhouettes, patterns, styles, and more for clothing collections in upcoming seasons.
Table of Contents
1. The evolution of trend forecasting
Trend forecasting is the act of predicting fashion trends for future collections. At the start of trend forecasting, the available sources were often fashion shows, social and political trends, and sales data.但是，如今，新的创新技术的广泛可用性正在改变趋势预测者获取见解的方式。
Today's market moves much more quickly than in the past due to social media and higher consumption rates.趋势似乎可以在一夜之间发生变化，预测方法可以帮助品牌迅速适应这些变化。Trend forecasting also helps align teams within fashion brands, providing a common language between creative and analytical roles.
3. When forecasting is applied to the market
Heuritech can help brands analyze particular market and product trends within their target geography and audience.Additionally, fashion weeks and social media are rich sources to form a quantitative overview of the market in real-time, to predict upcoming trends.
4. Forecasting trends with Heuritech
Heuritech is a trend forecasting platform which uses image recognition technology to scan social media images and predict future fashion trends.What sets Heuritech apart from other trend forecasters is its AI-driven approach, as well as its tangible benefits including increased sell-through, better demand planning, and more precise analyses of markets around the world.
5. How does Heuritech's trend forecasting technology work?
Heuritech在几个阶段的方法论功能s. First, Heuritech defines consumer panels depending on their position in the trend adoption cycle, from edgy, to trendy, to mainstream. Then, the image recognition technology scans social media images to pinpoint over 2000 attributes and determine trends in this way.这种技术可以建立一种趋势的产品tegories, peak seasons, consumer segmentation, evolution in visibility, growth in visibility, and more.Designers, merchandisers, and marketers can explore these insights on Heuritech's platform.
The evolution of trend forecasting
Wonderland Magazine
当时装秀从1960年代开始为时装业内部人士和摄影师演变成真正的眼镜时，市场规则已经设定。买家和forecasters attended shows他们会注意到设计师为即将到来的时装年份选择的趋势，这些专家将为大众市场创建趋势报告。较大的零售商，尤其是百货商店，将其收藏基于巴黎，伦敦，米兰和纽约最独特的跑道节目，然后杂志将必备的趋势扩散到公众。
Today,trend forecastingmoves much more quickly. The omnipresence of technology, from social media to live-streamed collections, has democratized the fashion industry, effectively changing the way fashion moves throughout society. Trendsetters are no longer only designers,but also young influencers on Instagram, fashion bloggers with a loyal audience, and celebrities on the street. Trend forecasting is a much bigger job than it once was:forecasters must be creative in their approach and quick in their reactivity.
DEFINITION of TREND FORECASTING:
Depending on one’s methods, it is the act of predicting fashion trends including colors, fabrics, silhouettes, patterns, styles, and more for clothing collections in upcoming seasons.
Why trend forecasting?
ANTICIPATING TIME-TO-MARKET SPEED IS IMPORTANT
Fashion’s past of uniquely drawing trends fromFashion Weeks, past sales analysis, and trade showsis just that: the past. So many brands churn out new pieces and collections at a rate the fashion industry has never before seen, and consumers switch preferences just as quickly. While runway collections and store feedback remain an important creative source for the fashion industry,
Consumption rates and information distribution have accelerated beyond the pace of Fashion Weeks.
New products, new styles, and new trends crop up every week on social media, and designers draw inspiration from all sorts of outlets. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are merciless in their turnover time, especially with快时尚的到来, with some trends lasting 2 weeks before going out of style — remember those tiny sunglasses during the summer of 2017?
Zara
IDENTIFYING KEY TRENDS IN TIMES OF CHANGE
Usually, collection schedules are thought out up to one or two years in advance, and trend forecasting is the only reliable way to avoid missing the mark on stock, assortment, and consumer desires.然而，到目前为止，计划收集的缺点是有时会有一些影响时尚的事件。
例如，Heuritech placed thepredicted and current market trends in fashionwithin the context of Covid, in order to anticipate the trends for summer and fall 2020. It proved useful to Heuritech’s methodology that consumers spent more time on social channels during confinement, because this supplied the Heuritech platform with more images to better predict coming trends. Many brands in turn received more data than they previously expected thanks to this social media analysis: it goes to show that there is always a solution.
帮助设计和分析部门一起工作
Vogue x Charlee Fraser, shot by Anna Katsanis
Oftentimes, creative teams and business teams butt heads when it comes to collection planning, from assortment to timing.
Trend forecasting provides a means for creatives to back their intuitions with tangible data.
如果设计师有愿景，可以根据他或她的内容生产包装斑马印刷品的收藏anticipates in fashion, for example, the merchandisers and marketers may not be so enthusiastic to push an “unpopular” trend.
But say trend forecasting technology predicts that zebra print will take off in the next 6 months. Suddenly, the business teams are reassured, and there has been a common language established between the two.
This approachaligns creatives and business peopleand gives brands the opportunity to understand what their consumers want, and the next step is in their hands: to accommodate market trends, or to dare originality.
当预测应用于市场时
FORECASTING A DISTINCT STYLE WITHIN A MARKET
The chunky sneaker was a hit trend on the high street, and since then, it has trickled down to the mainstream market, as well. At the time, a luxury fashion brand with an edgy and trendy audience, according to Heuritech’s criteria, needed a运动鞋市场的投影to plan their next collection. Certain styles, colors, and shapes were, of course, the main points of interest in terms of consumer desirability. The designers and merchandisers in particular required data from the market to back their previsions for particular sneaker trends,using Heuritech’s data, the brand received the following information:
- 运动鞋市场的概述，包括竞争对手的产品
- The different sneaker styles and their quantified popularity
- Which consumer audiences prefer which sneaker styles
Heuritech is providing a platform allowing brands of all levels to havetrend forecasting technology, giving them a vision of their present and future market and customers.
WWD Japan
Jacquemus FW18
FASHION WEEKS AND THEIR ROLE IN TREND PREDICTION
In normal times,Fashion Weeks是又一次有预见趋势的金矿，从跑道和街道上流动的消息来源。然而，奢侈品牌很难知道在时装周之后的产品或外观将在多大程度上取得成功，尤其是现在这些事件变得越来越民主化。
Social media is the first place that attendees, industry insiders, and brand followers post their thoughts on the given collection.
Never before have brands been given direct, real-time access to their customers’ thoughts and feelings on particular products and collections. Image recognition technology and hashtag detection provides information about thepredictability and desirability of productsto fashion brands and buyers equally, which down the line improves marketing, merchandising, and communication projection.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FASHION TRENDS AND SOCIAL MEDIA
The difference today is as simple as social media. It makes sense for the consumer to have more say in what trends live or die nowadays.
Consumer consumption rates are higher than ever, and as perhaps both a cause and an effect, trends phase in and out rapidly.
Who is wearing what on social media, and which celebrity wore this or that on the street, are just as powerful among consumers as fashion shows themselves.
品牌在社交媒体上交流的方式也可以在消费者中获得成功。Aerie的#AerieRealcampaign encourages women everywhere to be more body positive, while Glossier’s presence on Instagram is nothing short of being a virtual best friend. Social media presence directly impacts trends because it’s such a direct line to the consumer. As such,part of what trend forecasting takes into account are these interactions between brands and their customers to better predict the direction of market trends.
Missoni FW18
此外，每天仅在Instagram上共享超过1亿张图像和4亿个故事。
- 影响者和非影响者：Provide free and sponsored visibility to brands when they post their newest bag or shoe, for example, and social media users pay attention to this behavior.
- Brands:在Instagram上做广告并创建关注点。例如，Chanelwas once named as the most influential luxury brand on social media, with more followers on Instagram than any other luxury brand.
- Digitally native brands:Rising in number, creating universes exclusively on social channels and leaving behind traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
Alexander Saladrigas
然而，Instagram并不是唯一激发时装行业变化的社交媒体平台：Weibo, Pinterest,TikTok, and YouTube are playing bigger and bigger roles, too, as millennials and Gen Z-ers have become both influencers and influencees. The industry as a whole has shifted from an exclusive to an inclusive form of fashion:consumers now express their opinions daily by combiningfashion with social media.
With so many inputs of information thanks to social channels, it can be complicated for brands to always know what’s relevant, what is not, and what will last and what will not.Social media has had a long list of effects on the market and consumer behavior, including:
- Amplifying and accelerating the spread of a viral buzz
- Increasing the time-to-market pressure
- Making it harder for brands to predict the lifecycle of a product
Brands need to be able to anticipate trends – but only if they have the right tools to make sense of so much data. This is the reason Heuritech harnesses the scale of data, the predictive power of artificial intelligence, and the expertise of PhDs in machine learning to deliver the best technology to the fashion industry to anticipate and produce better. So now the question is: how exactly does this technology work?
启发式技术的预测趋势
Heuritech was founded in 2013 by PhDs in Machine Learning who believed that images could tell powerful stories if one knew how to read them. They developed a专有图像识别技术to analyze fashion images on social media. And in today’s world, where millions of pictures are shared each day on Instagram, Weibo, and other platforms, this technology turned out to be a powerful tool to analyze and anticipate in real-time what trends are happening out there.
WHAT SETS HEURITECH APART?
其他公司了,但是他们的lutions fall short. Current solutions often analyze only text and hashtags in social media posts, leaving out a vital aspect of social media: shared images in which users showcase their newest looks, often with no textual mention describing what they are wearing. Otherwise, they often analyze images from catalogs published online, typically on the brands’ website or major fashion news sources. These images do not reflect customer reception, perception, or prediction of the products, and this is the first step of forecasting trends on social media.
应当指出的是Heuritechis not the only company to use Machine Learning,图像识别, andforecast algorithmsin the fashion industry in particular. It is, however, the only company thatapplies artificial intelligenceto do so comprehensively.
WHO CAN HEURITECH IMPACT?
Heuritech helps fashion designers, planners, merchandisers, buyers, communication and digital teams improve every step of theproduct life cycle, from predicting trend behaviors, to improving demand planning accuracy, to maximizing visual merchandising.
Heuritech为品牌提供了一个机会：
- Always be ahead of the next big trends
- Find inspiration in influencer and consumer images on Heuritech’s trend mood boards
- Improve demand planning with predictive analytics on trend lifecycles
- 针对每个趋势和市场的合适的买方角色
Jil Sander SS19
Frankie & Clo
ARE FOREIGN MARKETS IMPORTANT?
The globalization of the fashion industry, from supply chains to trends themselves, has transformed the way traditional brands approach everything ranging from collection planning to marketing. Zara, for example, operates over 2,000 stores worldwide, with about 1,300 in Europe and 600 in Asia.客户的愿望与市场细分和产品差异化有关depending on which trends are predicted to be most desirable for the given geography.
Trend forecasting can be a major advantage for all fashion brands, not only for global giants like Zara, because some approaches go so far as to analyze different geographies whenanalyzing trends.Brands who are or aim to be international must take into account cultural and geographical differences.
发现Heuritech的FW21trendpredictions in Europe and China
Heuritech的趋势预测技术如何工作？
Heuritech combines a great volume of data with historical analysis, geographical breakdown, and client segmentation topredict and quantify each trend behaviorup to 12 months ahead. Here are the steps.
1. Defining audience panels on social media
Successful brands know their audience. While this is obvious, it isn’t always easy to find accurate data on the matter, which is why Heuritech’strend forecasting方法论始于消费者。为此，Heuritech使用以下标准定义了三个不同的观众面板：
- Accounts that show aninterest in fashion
- Accounts thatpost regularly
- 帐户是代表不同风格的细分市场of the fashion market
First, Heuritech automatically collects a random sample from social media to analyze. Random sampling prevents selection bias and allows for accurate representation of social media users and what is happening in the market.This process, combined with the above criteria, provides the following audience panels:
- Edgy:People with bold and distinctive style. They represent the smallest segment, their content is very niche, and they tend to post often. They cover all the main fields of the fashion industry, whether they are professionals (stylists, journalists, influencers) or industry authorities (luxury, sports, fast fashion, high street, beauty).
- Trendy:Fashionable people looking for the latest styles and who tend to help spread trends across the market in part by posting often. They are more substantial in number than edgy accounts but remain much more qualified and rare than mainstream accounts.
- Mainstream:People looking for safe clothing choices and who will follow a trend rather than shape it. They represent the largest panel, and their content is more casual.
这些面板在创建收藏品和制定其营销策略时对品牌非常有帮助。此外，启发式技术将这些面板分为特定的晶格，包括欧洲，美国，中国和巴西。通过将消费者的类型与与地区相关的细微差别相结合，trend forecastingflows much more smoothly.
2.将启示章的图像识别技术应用于社交媒体上共享图像
Once the audience panels have been determined, the process then moves forward to analyzing the images themselves. In any given photo, Heuritech’s proprietary image recognition technology can detect and categorize more than 2,000 components, including:
Shapes,属性，面料，
Textures,Prints, &颜色
然后将这些组件组合在一起，以使Heuritech精确地识别每个面板的趋势。This technology understands that it is seeing a photo of a striped t-shirt, for instance, because it recognizes the product has a crew neck, short sleeves, stripes of different colors, and even the type of fabric. And because this technology analyzes millions of images every day, the volume of striped t-shirts can be assessed, as well.
By looking at the volume, or the popularity once translated, of any given trend,Heuritech can quantify the趋势的过去增长和进化in order to predict its future behavior, too.对于商品和设计师来说，这是重要的信息，以了解如何实时通过哪种消费者以及在世界各地的市场获得特定产品。
3. Engaging Heuritech’s machine learning algorithms
为了能够预测趋势的发展，Heuritech开发了一种内部深入学习的方法，该方法可以在被称为早期信号的内容上进行。Early signals are slight changes in activity among edgy influencers who are often those who breathe life into trends.Using these early signals, these algorithms detect the onset of new emerging trends before they reach the mainstream and realize their full market potential.
Heuritech’s master algorithm is regularly trained to combine the different forecasts obtained for each fashion item:
Product category,Geography, &Past dynamic
With this information, the algorithm is able to select the best combination of forecast methods.
Thesetrend forecast methods, paired with this master algorithm, tracks past and current data about a fashion trend, which allows Heuritech to predict how a trend will behave up to one year in advance. To ensure the most accurate predictions, these forecasts are constantly adjusted in real-time. Brands can thus know the precise growth, differences in trend behaviors between seasons, and advice on assortment for collection planning and buying.
4. Entering the data into Heuritech’s market intelligence platform
该过程的最后一步为时尚品牌提供了全面的360°市场趋势和产品性能范围，以促进趋势预期。通过图像识别技术，主算法和预测方法收集的数据已输入启发式技术的平台：The Suite.The Suite is a dashboard which displays all of the data needed to back fashion-related intuitions and make decisions on product choice, marketing strategies, merchandising, stock, and more. Heuritech’s exclusive data is integrated every day into The Suite, a dashboard used by brands to back their intuitions and make data-driven decisions on products, marketing, merchandising, stock, and more.
Usingadvanced artificial intelligence（AI）将在社交媒体上共享的现实世界图像转化为有意义的见解，启发式技术使品牌能够更准确地预测需求和趋势，更可持续地产生并实现前所未有的竞争优势。
