FashionBrain Project: A Vision for Understanding Europe's Fashion Data Universe

A core business in the fashion industry is the understanding and prediction of customer needs and trends. Search engines and social networks are at the same time a fundamental bridge and a costly middleman between the customer’s purchase intention and the retailer. To better exploit Europe’s distinctive characteristics e.g., multiple languages, fashion and cultural differences, it is pivotal to reduce retailers’ dependence to search engines. This goal can be achieved by harnessing various data channels (manufacturers and distribution networks, online shops, large retailers, social media, market observers, call centers, press/magazines etc.) that retailers can leverage in order to gain more insight about potential buyers, and on the industry trends as a whole. This can enable the creation of novel on-line shopping experiences, the detection of influencers, and the prediction of upcoming fashion trends. In this paper, we provide an overview of the main research challenges and an analysis of the most promising technological solutions that we are investigating in the FashionBrain project.