Top Tech Companies Disrupting the Fashion Industry

Fashion has become a key industry for digital disruption, innovative tech redefining the way style operates, and often helping the planet along the way.

But how exactly is tech evolving within the fashion industry? What are the major areas where disruption is taking place, and why? Here, TechRound explores the top tech companies shaking up fashion for the future…

Tech Companies Disrupting the Fashion Industry:

• By Rotation
• Thriftify
• Dressarte
• Farly.co
• Euveka
• FLORE QUO

By Rotation

By Rotation is the world’s first social fashion rental app, founded as a radical alternative to shopping on the basis of valuing what we have and making it last longer.

By Rotation strives to make sustainability inclusive and invites people to be part of the solution. They are not asking people to sacrifice on style or spend, but rather share what is already in circulation. As the only purely peer-to-peer rental platform, the app creates extra income and the chance to share and monetise clothes for its lenders, and for renters, it makes otherwise inaccessible pieces accessible, without breaking the bank or impacting negatively on the environment.

One of By Rotation’s top users has made £700 this past month from 14 rentals and over £3000 in total since joining the app. They, along with many others, have covered the cost of many of their items with just a few rentals, and finds it’s a great way to make and save money from items that would otherwise just be sitting in the wardrobe.

Since the roadmap announcement By Rotation has seen a huge surge in interest with a 600% increase in bookings highlighting a dramatic shift in attitudes towards fashion, with many wanting to plan their outfits in advance to rent, as opposed to mindless impulse buying.

Since February, there have been over 1,270,000 item views with some dubbing the app the Instagram of fashion rental as you can now follow others, save and like items and create moodboards for future rentals.

Now, with over 50,000 users after a 700% increase in users since lockdown began, the app has become the go-to destination for affordable high quality fashion that doesn’t cost the planet or your wallet. Famous fans include Laura Whitmore, Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan, Camille Charriere, Monikh and many many more.

Thriftify

Thriftify is a dedicated online marketplace connecting charity shops with consumers and creating a movement of positive purchasing.

For consumers, Thriftify enables them to buy quality, second hand gems from charity shops across the UK, safe in the knowledge that their purchase is having a positive effect on people and the planet. For charity retailers, Thriftify provides an online platform from which they can sell donated products at the best prices, helping them reach a wider audience and increase revenues.

Some of the biggest problems facing charity and second-hand shops today is knowing how much their products are really worth and reaching the right consumers for these items. Thriftify provides a powerful solution which helps charity shops to value, showcase and sell goods online.

In 2020, consumers using Thriftify saved an estimated 36,700kg of C02 from the atmosphere and 11.9 million litres of water, by buying used clothes and books instead of new. This is equivalent to:

• 7million mobile phones being charged at once.
• Enough water to last somebody 218 years; including all cooking, drinking, washing etc.
• Enough energy to boil the kettle 2.5 million times and make 50 million cups of tea.

In 2021, shoppers on Thriftify have already saved 40,000kg of CO2. By the end of the year, this will be on track to save close to one million KG’s of CO2. That’s the same amount of CO2 as 961,500 people in the UK would emit in one day.

Thriftify is aiming to source all of the amazing gems, in all of the charity shops, making them easily searchable online. In doing so, this empowers us to make the sustainable choice. We can choose to buy clothes that already exist, instead of buying new and we can lower our impact almost completely by buying used.

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Dressarte

Dressarte is an online couture service, empowered by 3D design, enabling virtual measurements and digital consultations.

Dressarte helps people to design and tailor one-of-a-kind items such as bridal wear and capsule wardrobes, using dead stock, surplus, and recycled fabrics. Customers can create garments by using Dressarte’s innovative 3-D design service. By combining traditional craftsmanship and these technologies, customers can create clothing that’s more sustainable, encouraging responsible consumption and transparent production.

By using 3-D design technology, and a made-to-order production structure, fabric waste is kept to a minimum in comparison to high street clothing that usually ends up in landfill due to overproduction.
Dressarte’s newly launched Digital Wedding Collection features computer generated wedding gowns on computer generated models. Customers can then tweak their wedding dress to fit their preferences, adding embellishments, changing the fabric, or changing the cut of the dress.

By launching a digital wedding collection, it cuts out fabric wastage that is usually associated with product samples, and the reproduction of clothing when a small amend is made in the process. For customers that need peace of mind when ordering a garment for a special occasion, Dressarte offers a toile service that can be sent for fitting before the final garment goes into production in one of Dressarte’s ateliers around the globe. Currently Dressarte works with ateliers in the UK, Dubai, France, Italy, and Russia, with shipping available worldwide.

Founder Nathalie Neuilly commented, “I grew up having clothes tailored to my body shape, due to my mother being a seamstress, and wanted others to have the same experience at a more attainable price point. At Dressarte we strive to create tailored, sustainable, and high-quality garments that will last for years. To reduce fabric wastage all our items are made-to-order, and made-to-measure, although we do have an option for standard sizing for convenience.”

Farly.co

A new online marketplace is rethinking how we shop and offering consumers a fun way to buy, sell and curate products.

Farly.co is a UK tech startup aiming to solve the rise in fast fashion, which is currently poisoning the environment – and instead offers users a slow, more conscious, and exciting place to shop online. In short, Farly.co.io is akin to an online flea market that builds on the current conversations around circularity and sustainability in fashion.

Farly.co is the antidote to the old world of fashion and consumerism. This new fashion tech startup offers users, from generation Z through to baby boomers, an opportunity to get involved in the future of sustainable fashion consumption.

It’s no small feat, but Farly’s mission is to revolutionise the way people shop online, making it fun, creative, social, and better curated.

Farly has come at a time where growing trends in Gen-Z’s social shopping habits see a rise in second-hand resale, a focus on customer journey and experiences, and a move away from fast fashion products to more responsibly sourced sustainable products. Farly offers online users a new, playful, visually stimulating shopping experience through designing their very own virtual shop window. The site revolutionises the way users shop with unique product discovery, a news feed of shop windows, an in-built messaging service, direct access to a community of other stylesetters, and an in-built checkout.

Farly.co was founded by sustainable female entrepreneur Farleigh Hungerford, who previously co-founded an eco-ready meal kit company and a sustainable fashion label in 2018.

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Euveka

Euveka is a FashionTech that proposes a phygital solution composed of a scalable and connected robot-mannequin powered by data management software. This package reproduces different morphologies and sizes, as closely as possible to consumer’s diversity. 

Audrey-Laure Bergenthal, Founder and CEO of Euveka, understood that classical wooden mannequins did not represent the real morphology of the human body and that under these circumstances it was completely clear that people would have problems in finding suitable clothes, especially in small and large sizes.

Euveka makes it possible to create garments remotely while considering the precise measurements of a person or morphotype. The company wants to actively combat the billions of unsold and returns garments with high-performance technological solutions that go from conception to production to retail. “Inclusion is the key to making industrial processes better and greener. A well-fitting garment is not returned and kept longer,” explains Audrey-Laure Berghental.

Although more brands are implementing actions to combat this waste of resources and make the industry more inclusive and eco-friendlier —recycled materials, responsible use of water, or more transparency in their factories—, for the company there is an additional problem, the missing link between what customers want, what manufacturers do and what retails know. This is where Euveka’s proposal comes in, as it connects all parts of the industry in pursuit of the same goals without neglecting the economic performance of fashion players.

Euveka began by equipping major manufacturing leaders and enabled them to reduce the production of defective pieces by 40%. Today, brands and e-commerce players turn to Euveka to improve their online sales and have managed to reduce returns due to bad sizing by 30%.   

Euveka produces reliable and safe equipment in Europe and aims to become the benchmark for fit certification and assures customers a ‘no return’.

FLORE QUO

The new luxury lifestyle brand, FLORE QUO, has launched its first clutch bag collection. The Viva Clutch is Made in Italy and available in black and purple leather.

The clutch features jewel-like, crystal encrusted, interchangeable clasps to suit the occasion, mood or cause supported by the customer, representing a fusion of fashion and jewellery, uniquely as one. Like jewellery, FLORE QUO bags can be treasured as heirlooms and remain relevant over time.

FLORE QUO was born out of the desire to encourage sustainable fashion choices while still giving the customer the ability to vary their look over time. Good design is a sustainable design. By designing and engineering bags with interchangeable ornaments using the latest technologies (from 3D printing the prototypes of the hardware to avoid wastage, to using the latest CAD technologies to design the hardware and the intricate, jewelled clasps), FLORE QUO is enabling customers to use their bags for longer and more sustainably, unlike the conventional business model of selling as many new items as possible each season.

FLORE QUO is the creation of Florence Tsang, a lawyer whose passion for fashion, jewellery and sustainability inspired her to reinvent the classic clutch and launch other styles of sustainable bags that will be available shortly. The interchangeable, jewel-like clasps create multiple opportunities for elegant, fashion loving and stylish women to be playful with their accessories. Women will be able to buy fewer bags and have more opportunities to wear a perennial favourite.

The leather clutches (each including 2 clasps and detachable chain) retail from £791 in black nappa leather and from £1,550 in a specially cut, purple, feathered leather to present a sleek or fluffed up look. The clutches are available to purchase now at www.florequo.com.

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