The fashion industry is one of the most active and competitive markets in the world, manufacturing millions of products and reaching large audiences every year. A plethora of business processes are involved in this large-scale industry, but due to the generally short life-cycle of clothing items, supply-chain management and retailing strategies are crucial for good market performance. Correctly understanding the wants and needs of clients, managing logistic issues and marketing the correct products are high-level problems with a lot of uncertainty associated to them given the number of influencing factors, but most importantly due to the unpredictability often associated with the future. It is therefore straightforward that forecasting methods, which generate predictions of the future, are indispensable in order to ameliorate all the various business processes that deal with the true purpose and meaning of fashion: having a lot of people wear a particular product or style, rendering these items, people and consequently brands fashionable. In this paper, we provide an overview of three concrete forecasting tasks that any fashion company can apply in order to improve their industrial and market impact. We underline advances and issues in all three tasks and argue about their importance and the impact they can have at an industrial level. Finally, we highlight issues and directions of future work, reflecting on how learning-based forecasting methods can further aid the fashion industry.
翻译:时装工业是世界上最活跃和最有竞争力的市场之一,每年制造数百万产品并接触到广大观众。在这一大规模工业中涉及大量业务流程,但是由于服装制品、供应链管理和零售战略的寿命周期一般很短,对于良好的市场业绩至关重要。正确理解客户的需求和需求,管理后勤问题和销售正确的产品,是具有许多不确定性的高层问题,因为影响因素很多,但最重要的是由于与未来经常相关的不可预测性。因此,直接的事实是,预测方法对于改善涉及时装的真正目的和含义的所有各种业务流程必不可少:让许多人穿戴某种特定产品或风格,使这些产品、人和品牌成为时尚。在本文件中,我们概述了任何时装公司都可以应用的三项具体的预测任务,以改善其工业和市场影响。我们强调所有三项任务中的进展和问题,并就它们的重要性及其在工业层面可能产生的影响提出论据。最后,我们强调未来工作的问题和方向。我们学习未来工作的方法,以进一步反映工业的发展方式。