Struggling retailers have found a new passion when their sales don’t match their expectations: decrying the irascible fickleness of consumers they once knew how to serve. If human product designers can’t supply the demand, then perhaps computer ones can.
That’s the idea behind Ivyrevel, a high-tech fashion startup that received a not-insignificant bit of good news when PayPal announced on Thursday (April 7) that it would be providing payments support to the online-only brand. Fast-fashion retailer H&M will also be providing production and strategic support to the burgeoning brand, which aims to leverage machine-learning algorithms to create irresistible clothes as fast as modern consumers have come to want them.
Dejan Subosic, cofounder of Ivyrevel, explained that the partnerships should spur a level of technological creativity the apparel industry has been striving toward for quite some time.
“We are proud to be digital-only, breaking boundaries to create a new fashion heritage by merging fashion creativity with technological innovation. Working with PayPal fits in the equation perfectly. Technology as a source of creative expression within fashion is something that excites us. We will learn a great deal about the evolution of creativity by fusing these two worlds together.”
While Ivyrevel promises to produce apparel that appeals to a generation of consumers that is ostensibly not being served by traditional fashion houses, what prices algorithm-sourced dresses and handbags will go at appears to run a very large gamut. Observer noted that, among items in Ivyrevel’s first design season, customers could buy everything from a $70 quilted sweatshirt to a $900 leather jacket with inlaid gold embroidery.
It seems as if Ivyrevel has chosen its partners well. At those prices, it’ll need the payments support of a company like PayPal, and if it needs to move further down the apparel pricing ladder, what better mentor than fast-fashion poster brand H&M?
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