Generative AI is vogue’s largest alternative — and its most divisive.
Startups, tech giants and all the pieces in between are rolling out AI-enabled options meant to assist vogue manufacturers enhance their companies. Meta and TikTok, as an example, each supply AI-powered ad-targeting and content material era, whereas Shopify’s AI options can swap out homepage shows and generate product descriptions. Using it in advertising and marketing is a extra contentious alternative, however manufacturers like Coach, Zalando and Revolve have been ready to achieve this with out attracting a lot ire.
Most of the headlines round vogue’s adoption of AI have targeted on main model names, like H&M and Aerie. For manufacturers that generate lower than $100 million in annual gross sales, the choice to put money into AI — and the way to achieve this — has totally different stakes.
Smaller manufacturers can extra simply combine new instruments with out the crimson tape that stifles massive firms’ choice making. At the identical time, essentially the most superior instruments, akin to AI brokers that may routinely replenish stock, are out of attain for firms with much less sturdy budgets. And a smaller model normally depends on extra of a human contact as they construct their model — there’s a concern that relying too closely on AI will cut back their management and drive their artistic muscular tissues to atrophy.
“If everyone’s using the same things, everything’s just going to start to look more and more alike,” mentioned Ethan Glenn, founding father of four-year-old menswear model Every Other Thursday. “We’re already in a world of way too many brands and companies that all do the same thing.”
But founders additionally concern they’ll fall behind in the event that they don’t combine AI into their companies on some degree. Alexandra Fine, founder and chief government of sexual wellness label Dame, in contrast it to not wanting “to get your company on Instagram” ten years in the past.
Small manufacturers are writing their very own AI playbook. While some are enjoying with AI-powered software program to refine design concepts or creating advertising and marketing prompts, many extra are utilizing mainstream instruments like ChatGPT to enhance operations, like producing product descriptions. If these show helpful, solely then will they contemplate investing in superior software program capabilities like stock and merchandise planning — steadily.
The hope for many startups is to let AI do the heavy lifting on the again finish in order that they’ll have extra time to give attention to the artistic facet of the enterprise — from designing merchandise to crafting model campaigns.
“We want to get as efficient on the operational processes and the non-customer facing assets of the business so that we can invest more in emotionally engaging with our audience both digitally and in real life,” mentioned Nick West, co-founder and chief government of activewear upstart Bandit Running.
Introducing AI to Your Brand
Brands investing in AI are beginning with massive language fashions like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, which may price as little as $20 per staff member a month, to streamline processes or exchange in any other case pricey companies.
Before hiring an actual property dealer to scout retail places for a brand new retailer, for instance, Bandit Running’s West makes use of ChatGPT to analyse the place its opponents are positioned and calculate how a lot he must be paying for the house, he mentioned. The search outcomes aren’t the final word deciding issue within the model’s retail technique, West added, but it surely’s the kind of use case that’s refining the corporate’s manner of working.
“There are limitations to what that output is,” West mentioned. “But we definitely think each person, by using AI strategically, becomes a much more productive and efficient person.”
Brands are additionally utilizing LLMs for consumer-facing duties that may assist them make more cash. Last yr, magnificence machine vendor Pure Daily Care began utilizing ChatGPT to rewrite descriptions for product listings on Amazon to goal particular buyer demographics — suppose girls of their 30s — which resulted in a ten % raise in conversion from a few of these listings, mentioned Jonathan Cohen, the corporate’s chief advertising and marketing officer. Dame is utilizing AI to assist establish newsletters it may possibly companion with as social media platforms have strict insurance policies in opposition to promoting sexual wellness merchandise, Fine mentioned.
Some upstarts are adopting AI for extra artistic endeavours. Since 2024, purse maker Marina Raphael, for one, has been utilizing video and image-generator Midjourney to create fantastical advertising and marketing content material: one marketing campaign for the model’s Spring/Summer 2025 assortment depicts a “factory of the future,” together with a picture of a mannequin standing in entrance of a conveyor belt carrying a variety of Marina Raphael’s signature plexiglass-handled luggage.
“You have to be able to take some time out and really make it a part of your culture so that it doesn’t look scary, so it doesn’t look corrosive, so it is ingested as a tool,” mentioned Brent Vartan, managing companion at funding agency and inventive company Bullish, which backs early-stage manufacturers like Bandit Running.
Graduating to Advanced Tools
Once an organization’s experimented with entry-level AI applications, it may be prepared to resolve more durable issues like merchandise planning or stock administration. Since these typically require extra of a monetary funding, manufacturers ought to perceive precisely what they’re trying to accomplish earlier than investing.
Samee Ahmed, for instance, knew he wished to replace the merchandising technique for his attire label Glass Cypress’s web site when he began utilizing a service that scans thousands and thousands of pictures on social media and identifies vogue developments. The model makes use of these insights to decide which merchandise to highlight on its homepage, a technique that’s led to a rise in on-line gross sales within the final month, Ahmed mentioned.
In sure situations, the correct AI software program may also help manufacturers increase their enterprise. In January, Istanbul-based designer Doğa Keskintepe began utilizing a platform known as Refabric to rapidly refine designs and create lookbooks for her womenswear line Dor Raw Luxury, which got here in useful when she was below a time crunch attempting to safe new retail companions throughout Europe this August. The area is now slated to account for 8 % of Dor Raw Luxury’s gross sales in 2025.
“You want to be sure that you’re putting the cost in the right spot and you’re getting a return on it,” mentioned Sonia Lapinsky, vogue lead at consultancy AlixPartners.
Startups are additionally scoping out AI to repair heftier challenges like managing brick-and-mortar stock. As swimwear model Same opens shops in St. Tropez, New York and Miami within the subsequent yr, it’s looking for an answer that may observe in-store purchases and routinely reorder fashionable types earlier than they promote out, mentioned co-owner and chief working officer Ryan Horne.
But software program that handles superior duties come at a premium. Horne mentioned that Same may find yourself spending properly over $100,000 per yr on an AI-powered stock planning device, accounting for no less than 10 % of the model’s working funds.
With that, some are weighing if it’s cheaper to outsource or construct capabilities in-house earlier than making a last choice. In September, Bandit Running employed a head of information who’s answerable for discovering the entire AI-powered companies in the marketplace, and serving to West and the model’s finance chief assess whether or not they need to spend on present software program companies for operational hurdles like stock administration or create their very own AI-powered options, West mentioned.
“The investment in creating the solution is going to be bigger,” Lapinsky mentioned. “Start to think through the different use cases … build a real roadmap.”
Whatever the time and monetary prices of integrating AI, it’s probably a higher danger for an rising model to not put money into it in any respect because the expertise disrupts the business at breakneck pace.
“If you’re a small brand and there is an 800-pound gorilla that you need to run through in order for you to grow, this is your opportunity right now, and it is urgent,” Vartan mentioned. “These disruptions don’t come around a lot in business.”