Outside View: Software and Platforms are Eating the Fashion Industry
Written By: Barry Libert & Megan Beck
Teaming Up to Take On the Tech Giants
Barry Libert, cofounder of strategy firm AIMatters, offered both a splash of cold water and a new way forward for fashion executives gathered at the summit.
Libert said five companies — Amazon, Apple, Google-parent Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft — own every customer in the world.
“The physical world lost a long time ago in your industry and in every industry,” he said. “They have won. Game over. And we in this room made that happen, we turned over all of ourselves, our complete selves to them.”
Tech has become so dominate because, where physical players making something like less than a dollar for each dollar of sales, tech platforms make $6 dollars for each dollar of sales. He described platforms, like Amazon, as a “multi-sided model where there are many people paying the toll keeper to keep track of the dollars of sales.”
To counter this, he suggested fashion as an industry band together with the help of artificial intelligence to create a counterpoint.
“AI is empathy at scale, it allows me to know you better than you know yourself,” he said. “It allows me to make available to you when you want, when you want it.
“Change the silos among yourselves, come together as an organizing body to take on the other platforms, create your own Uber, Airbnb,” Libert said.
The industry needs to appreciate the power of working together and data and create its own network effect and then to measure engagement, which he said was the “core of humanity.” — EVAN CLARK
