LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GUESS?, Inc. (“GUESS”) (NYSE: GES) has reached another major milestone in its partnership with Alibaba Group (“Alibaba”) (NYSE: BABA) to bring artificial intelligence to the fashion world to provide customers with a more enriching shopping experience that combines online and offline shopping behaviors.
Rounding out a comprehensive partnership that began in 2013 with the launch of GUESS in Tmall, this year, GUESS also became a global strategic partner of Alibaba’s FashionAI project, an initiative to give shoppers a glimpse of what the future of fashion retail will look like powered by artificial intelligence. With the launch of the interactive concept shop driven by Alibaba AI, GUESS and Alibaba saw the implementation of the O2O (online-to-offline) project come to life, marking the maturity of the unified customer experience concept.
On July 4, 2018, Alibaba launched the pilot FashionAI concept shop on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) campus, pairing GUESS’ extensive retail knowledge and latest collections with advanced Alibaba AI and other technologies on the sidelines of the 2018 Fashion and Textile Conference. Besides the FashionAI concept store’s futuristic appeal, the project was aimed at providing a better retail experience for shoppers and to help brands better use analytics in ordering and maintaining inventory.
“As technology changes how we interact, it also affects how we shop. As our customers evolve, it is critical that we evolve with them,” said Victor Herrero, CEO of GUESS. “Our strong and long-lasting partnership with global technology leader Alibaba puts us ahead of the market in our industry. Together, we are able to innovate in real time. This is the future of retail and we plan to continuously invest and adapt to our customers’ needs in this changing retail landscape.”
“GUESS and Alibaba share the same vision to understand customer behaviors through technologies,” said Zhuoran Zhuang, Vice President, Alibaba Group. “With GUESS’ retail expertise, we are able to train and refine our FashionAI system, and marry technology with fashion in a way that’s never been done before. We are looking forward to deepening our partnership to innovate personalized services offered in retail shops.”
The FashionAI concept store featured smart racks, smart mirrors and next-generation fitting rooms. Alibaba’s FashionAI system underpins the stores, offering up mix-and-match clothing and accessory suggestions for customers from the GUESS line, as well as items sold by others on Tmall and Taobao, China’s biggest B2C and C2C platforms, respectively.
Through over 5 years of strong partnership, GUESS and Alibaba have seen highly successful results, including GUESS’ status as one of the most popular brands in the fashion apparel category on Tmall. GUESS’ store on Tmall has achieved more than 100% compounded growth over the last 3 years. Incorporating O2O New Retail concepts have also resulted in overall strong performance and growth for GUESS in the Asia Pacific region. With the advancements in artificial intelligence and the continuing partnership with Alibaba Group, GUESS anticipates extending the experience globally as the future of retail to better serve their customers and plan for growth.
About GUESS?, Inc.
Established in 1981, GUESS began as a jeans company and has since successfully grown into a global lifestyle brand. Guess?, Inc. designs, markets, distributes and licenses a lifestyle collection of contemporary apparel, denim, handbags, watches, footwear and other related consumer products. Guess? products are distributed through branded Guess? stores as well as better department and specialty stores around the world. As of May 5, 2018, the Company directly operated 1,020 retail stores in the Americas, Europe and Asia. The Company’s licensees and distributors operated 624 additional retail stores worldwide. As of February 3, 2018, the Company and its licensees and distributors operated in approximately 100 countries worldwide. For more information about the Company, please visit www.guess.com.
About Alibaba
Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company aims to build the future infrastructure of commerce. It envisions that its customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba, and that it will be a company that lasts at least 102 years.