Bally And The Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center Celebrate The Winners Of The Fashion Innovation Award

Swiss luxury brand Bally is proud to sponsor the Fashion Innovation Awards and yesterday, as a founding member of the Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center, the Swiss association that drives innovation in the Lifestyle sector, the company announced the winners of the 2021, virtual fashion edition: OppenFuture from China and Obsess from United States.

The announcement was the result of an intensive process with calls for mature scale-ups and innovative B2B/B2B2C service providers, performed by Loomish SA, a Swiss investment advisory firm specialized in Lifestyle Technologies and scale-up scouting. The calls focused on two areas: virtual fashion and augmented customer experience.

In the virtual fashion category, the scouting focused on seeking solutions in the areas of 3D fashion design, virtual apparel, NFT’s for virtual fashion, fashion avatars, virtual models, fashion metaverse, gaming and more. In the augmented customer experience category, the search was directed towards technologies in the fields of virtual try-on, virtual stores, in-store customer journey virtualization, improved eCommerce experience, phygital and/or interactive store windows, and more. The large-scale international competition was conducted in partnership with Accenture, Microsoft, UBS, and with Loomish, as the scouting partner. The initiative was endorsed by the Switzerland Innovation Park Ticino.

Out of over 100 applicants coming from Europe, Asia, and North America, the highlevel jury panel, including the entire top management of BALLY as well as executives from Accenture, Microsoft, Switzerland Innovation Park, and UBS, chose 12 finalists during the month of November 2021.

The finalists were invited to the final Pitch Day on November 23 at Bally’s headquarters in Caslano, Switzerland. Jurors and scale-ups participated in the event, invited to join either physically or remotely, due to covid restrictions. Besides taking home the title of the Fashion Innovation Award winner, the two winners will get the opportunity to kick-off a proof-of-concept project with Bally next year.

Nicolas Girotto, Bally CEO, shared: “It is always a pleasure to be inspired by the next generation of talent, committed to safeguarding sustainable, long-term business solutions. Innovation and sustainability are driving forces behind the future of Bally, and through the Fashion Innovation Awards, we are able to mobilize creativity, exploratory research and material advancements that not only give Ticino a competitive advantage in fashion innovation, but truly enable a more viable business model for the future.”

Jelena Tasic Pizzolato, Managing Director at the Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center stated: “This year's Fashion Innovation Award has been a true success, both when it comes to the quality level of the Award applicants and to the seniority of the decision makers on the jury panel. Throughout the project, there was a great collaborative effort of the Award sponsors, partners and jurors, as we had the opportunity to get a closer look at over a hundred exciting solutions from the booming virtual fashion arena. Our special thanks goes to Bally's top management for dedicating their time and resources to this effort, as well as to Loomish, for successfully mapping out the global virtual fashion landscape and giving us the opportunity to get in contact with its top players.”

The jury chose the following two winners:

• Virtual Fashion Category:
  

- OppenFuture Technologies, China

OppenFuture Technologies is a leading company in 3D and AR technology, which provides total solutions of online 3D interaction and AR try-on experience for eCommerce to enable the personalized online experience and make online shopping more efficient and more engaging.

• Augmented Customer Experience Category:
  

- Obsess, United States

Obsess is an e-commerce platform, enabling luxury brands globally to serve highly interactive, visual, and creative digital shopping experiences. Utilizing proprietary VR technology, Obsess creates HD-quality photorealistic virtual stores and virtual showrooms, that are available on a web link and don't require a headset or an app to view.

• Other finalists per Category were:
  

Virtual Fashion Category:

- Anam XR, United States:

Leveraging proprietary technology and Unreal Engine, AnamXR Web 3.0 platform connects brands into the Metaverse through building virtual worlds, showrooms and social shopping experiences at scale. The AnamXR platform enables a more efficient way to design, display, storytell and sell physical and NFT fashion, art and music products while reaching new demographics and revenue streams.

- Browzwear, United States:

Browzwear’s pioneering 3D solutions for the fashion industry replace traditional, inefficient workflows with streamlined processes and data-driven production. The company’s true-to-life 3D visualizations drive efficiencies and reduce waste from concept through commerce, enabling more sustainable operations from both economic and ecological perspectives by eliminating the need for samples and speeding time to market.

- Cappasity, United States:

Cappasity allows companies to create and deliver 3D/AR experiences to blur the line between online and in-store shopping. It is the first scalable and easy-to-adopt solution for complex e-commerce projects that only takes 3 minutes/SKU to create a 3D and embed it into a store.

- DDIGITT, Portugal: DDIGIT:

Driving Digital Transformation, is a digital unit specialized in 3D Digital Product Creation (DPC) and 3D Strategy Consultancy. DDIGITT is on a mission to support the fashion industry with the necessary 3D fundamentals to successfully accelerate the supply chain digitization process, reducing waste and overproduction, while stretching the infinite possibilities of imagination and creativity.

- The Fabricant, Netherlands:

The Fabricant is the world's first digital fashion house, making innovative and compelling 3D garments and fashion narratives that are entirely non-physical. Among their founding principles is the belief that fashion should waste nothing but data and exploit nothing but imagination.Through their work, they harness the power of the digital realm to build an inspiring and collaborative fashion future that operates beyond physical boundaries.

Augmented Customer Experience Category:

- Hevolus, Italy:

Augmented Store is a B2B and B2B2C platform of innovative digital services able to help the fashion industry enable Virtual Fashion and customized Augmented Customer Experience by exploiting the power of Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence technologies. Through MR and AR technologies customers and buyers (at home or in-store) can live immersive experiences within the virtual store, visualizing and manipulating stunning High Definition 3d fashion assets, exploring them as if they were real.

- Klarna, United Kingdom:

Klarna provides shopping that is inspired by humans. Their solution connects shoppers to experts through video and chat which elevate the online experience. Klarna is the number 1 virtual shopping platform built to make eCommerce more human, with product experts sharing inspiration and advice via call, message and video, tracking what shoppers are viewing online. They give
brands the competitive advantage of putting human interaction at the center of their eCommerce site.

- Pairzon AI, Israel:

Pairzon enables physical retailers to improve the customer journey, putting the customer in the center, and giving brands the ability to track and collect accurate in-store/e-commerce data. The solution also allows brands to gain demographic and behavioral insights on the people who visit and buy from their stores in real-time, which helps them to run online data-driven ad and retargeting campaigns, plus value-added loyalty programs to keep store customers hooked.

- PlatformE, Portugal:

PlatformE is on a mission to eliminate overproduction working as an end-to-end platform accelerating Fashion towards on-demand manufacturing. Their services and technology streamline e-fashion across the value chain enabling Fashion Brands to create their items, sell them and only produce them after the point of purchase with integrated access to their entire production chains.

- SmartPixels, France:

SmartPixels supports brands in their digital transition helping them to take their visual customer experience to the next level. Expert in 3D visualization, they have developed an all-in-one platform intended to create interactive 3D image and video experiences both online and in-store. Their 3D rendering platform allows the creation of an infinite number of product visuals in just a few clicks.

About Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center

The Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center is a Swiss-based association that wants to promote innovation and synergies between relevant partners in the lifestyle arena. It aims at promoting collaboration between companies and academic institutions, encouraging the transfer of technology and knowledge in fashion, food, media, health, design, travel, smart cities, eGovernance and tech. The founding members of the LTCC include Accenture, Bally, Dagorà, Guess, Hyphen, Loomish, Microsoft and Swiss Universities SUPSI and USI.

More info: www.lifestyletechcompetencecenter.com

About Bally

Bally is a Swiss luxury brand established in 1851, with a rich heritage in shoemaking, and a longstanding relationship to architecture, arts and the environment. Today, the brand offers unique designs across shoes, accessories and ready-to-wear, driven by a dedication to craftsmanship and a contemporary aesthetic. Bally has over 320 retail stores and 500 multi-brand points of sale spanning across 60 countries worldwide, including a global e-commerce platform serving 61 countries. For more information, please visit Bally.com