The Next Era of Fashion Personalization and Customization | Dhana Inc | PI Apparel

Thank you for being here. My name is Shamini Dhana. I'm the founder and CEO of Dhana Inc. First of all, I'm going to go a few questions. How many of you are in the business of customization? Hmm, okay. But how many of you in the business of personalization of fashion? Okay, so that sort of set up topic, uh, context here. Um, but before I start, um, this case study is one that it's full of positivity. And if there's 3 things you take out, it's, um, the students that we've been working with in this case study is all about thinking creative, feeling inspired and empowered, and then taking delight in the power of delight, the delight itself in terms of customers. So thinking, feeling, and doing. Yeah? And so this case study literally is about the next fashion designers who are embarking on a journey whereby they're offering unique pieces or customization of apparel. I'm going to keep it to apparel and fashion now, but this is actually taking it to a whole different level, because the technology that we are about to talk about is multifaceted and multi-industry. The custom clothing industry is market value now at $160 billion by 2032. This is a new data point that has come out. Interestingly enough, when you look at this case study, it's also the ability for— fashion designers to co-create with customers to come up with a particular apparel. This is a real paradigm shift, because if you really think about it, the end customer— and we're talking about the citizens of the world today— are still bound by fashion brands in terms of what they choose. And this shift is happening because there is a monumental need in the industry, the $3 trillion industry, that really is 70% of it is waste. And so if you pause for a moment, and if you look at all the solutions out there, upcycling, or repurposing, or reimagining fashion using existing second life material is a void that actually hasn't been touched in terms of technology. And we hope to change that, transform people's way of thinking. Yeah? Next question. So why am I here? I'm here for 5 different reasons. One is to communicate with you in terms of this new innovative technology. Darna Inc. is a fashion company, a fashion tech company that's been around for 15 years. However, in the last 3 years, we pivoted towards fashion technology. And we are one of those companies that do believe that we are uniting humanity through fashion. And our technology is a product, a platform, that is dSphere, that is currently patented. We're celebrating those who are progressive, those who are open-minded, and those who are thinking outside of the box in terms of a new way of doing business. It's a huge effort to really change elephant in the room, but we're seeing that the next generation is very, very keen to do so because they want to be instruments and catalysts of change. I'm also here to demonstrate my commitment. I used to be an investment banker 15 years ago, and then I decided to pivot because I saw firsthand in India what was going on and the true cost of fashion. I also happen to be the associate producer of The True Cost movie, if you haven't seen it. Do watch it. It's 10 years in the making, and nothing actually has changed, unfortunately. So my demonstration here is that I'm putting where my money and mouth is and walking the talk. I'm also appealing to the masses that in order for us to change, it's a collective action, that we need all the different stakeholders in the world, in the fashion industry, to come together to really empower these next generation leaders, and that collaboration is a key. And I invite each and every one of you to spread the word, join me on this movement, because really it is going to be a game changer when you introduce AI, GenAI, and then see the possibilities like there's no tomorrow. So welcome. So If you look at this photograph, what do these photos have in common? This is a college up in Canada called Fanshawe College, and they are a group of students in the Fashion Design Center. The program has been working with us in partnership for the last 6 months. This is our pioneer member. Our platform is 3 years in the making, and it's still in beta. However, we're working with universities and interested brands to build a consortium so that they can be pioneers before we release it and deploy it globally. So for a university like this, um, you'll see down the curve in terms of my next slides why they decided to do this was very few Is there an opportunity for university students in fashion designs to actually be part of the solution from the get-go on a beta? Right? And this is an opportunity for them because they are game changers. This will be a part of their resume. This is part of their whole entire effort to break through. And they will graduate being fashion designers and brands themselves on this platform. So what these photographs show is one style. Which is one pattern. It has 5 panels, and it's all using Second Life materials. There's a word called upcycle that you very much know. Upcycling is no news to anyone. It's been done through cultures around the world for hundreds of years. However, no digital technology has been introduced. That's where the game-changing is happening. So these particular digital— T-shirts, and it's called a Circular Fashion Tee, right? It's digital, but for every one of them, there is a real one that has been made in the last 6 months, believe it or not. And they use the platform to do so. There are several different themes in these T-shirts, and they're the ones who had to— the students had to come up with their own business plans to do so. But just one style, and then yet they have all these unique products. And it's all upcycled. So the platform is called D-Sphere, one of Donna's products. D stands for digital fashion in the digital industry, and sphere is symbolism of inclusiveness and equality for all humanity. So if you put yourself in the middle of a sphere, it's equal touchpoints across the globe. That's the symbolism. It's an AI-powered, human-centric platform. And it is one that is accelerating personalization and customization. The platform itself has 7 modules. And I'm not going to go into it in this particular presentation. 3 of it is actually on the website. It is live. There's a store. It's an e-commerce platform. It is a studio in itself. And there is a story, which is social media, all attached. 4 behind modules, which actually integrates the connection to the garment workers, the materials that is uploaded from material library, a closed-loop feedback system, and an e-commerce platform with the social media. And so these circular fashion tees, which are one design, a million possibilities, came to bear By these students, there were about 40 of them, they discovered that they could build 9 different brands out of this. And they did. And then they sold it on Marketplace, which is their own network. So what did they do, and what did we do? They provided the pattern. They also provided the Second Life materials. And that could have been in their wardrobe, donated. The brand donated it, pre- and post-consumer waste. And they actually cut and sewed and stitched it. So no chemicals involved. It's a process that actually is totally chemical-free, right? And because of that, they delighted in the fact that they were part of a solution. And so the— This whole ethos of leveraging technology to reimagine, repurpose, and recreate fashion comes to play when you try and contrast what is currently being done by fashion brands, right? Upcycling is here to stay. We have several brands in the world today that are all part of the Renew program. They're taking their own inventory and they're making it new. But they're doing it manually. And so the ability to visualize what a digital new apparel is, is unheard of. In comes D-Sphere, which is where they will leverage the technology. And so with this technology, visualization of the materials happens, where you can see tremendous amount of permutations and combinations. There is also the opportunity to answer the question which everyone is asking, especially the next generation: who made my clothes? In the context of the students in the, in the universities, they made their clothes. They could tag each of the, of the, um, the end product within the system so that the customer actually understands, and then we connect them online on the black stocks. Now that's seriously powerful, right? The impact on the environment. When you have an upcycled piece of material, and you cut and sew and stitch a piece of it, yes, you're reducing the waste in the world, but it has to account for a lot more. Yes, you are the solution, but you want to also realize what's left over as waste, is— can be again transformed into something else. Now, AI Gen AI will come in and look at that and basically say, we understand what you have as waste, and here are all the other templates that can be used for it, right? This is where we're going to, folks, because it can actually generate what you want in terms of preferences. Um, it's also giving you a lot of leeway to look at a digital piece that you've created, multiple kinds, but able to also have a feedback loop with your network. Why? Because we have a social media site attached to it. And you can collaborate at the same time. So, you can ask, you can download the digital file, share it on your network, ask what you want. Maybe it's, you know, grandma's pieces of material, and you want your family to figure out which design and off piece is going to be the one before you create it. This technology can be used for direct-to-consumer, which is what the students did. But it also can be used for B2B and B2B2C. So retailers can come in, visualize, and actually take a look and say, OK, we want this and this. And then we will sell it. But you can also give the customer the full control. So with Fanshawe College and Dana Inc., there were 3 goals here. And this is really important, because most universities that we're embarking with have vocational learning outcomes. And this is one of it, which is— So that they'll be job ready. They are, for sure. Each of these quotes are coming from the professor themselves, right, of the college that have been working with us for the last 6 months. The second goal is for the fashion designers and product developers to actually impact, understand, and be aware of the impact of fashion, both environmentally and socially. And so they've been trained now to possibly look at all the different ways of using waste. And they've been really creative. The third one is that this whole entire scenario of fast fashion, right? How can you increase value, decrease waste, but delight in the process. And so this has been a huge impediment going forward for a lot of other students that we've heard. And they really want to see this as something— as a solution. Our partnership with Feng Shui takes into account three things— entrepreneurship, technology, and fashion design. Of the 6 goals, we do all of them. We didn't do the other 4. But here is the actual program itself. So what did the students actually do? They introduced themselves to the d.Sphere platform. They created their own pattern and their samples. They sourced their own materials. They created their own business. Model and their brand, and then they designed their CFT with various variations, and they shared it. They also used the end product and ensured that that got sold. On the right-hand side is what we did. Now bear in mind, this fall they will take over the right-hand side, right? Because they're just getting introduced to all these different elements. And so what we're doing is also AGI. We're automating a lot of the processes so that the average customer can now do it themselves. And it'll accelerate faster and faster because the platform learns as well. And so the team will be hands-off this time next year because these are the next generation fashion designers who can do bespoke on their own. So we took the pattern and turned it into a template. And each template had panels. And then we took the images and uploaded it into a material library so they could actually drag and drop. And then we produced the manufacturer's copy for them so that they can actually cut, sew, and stitch. And all this is in the backend, and they will be able to do this. And that's just what's happening. Going forward in the fall, they're actually introducing their own capsule collection, not just the CFT. So then they graduate with their own brand as well, which is huge. So what's the difference between personalization, customizations in our eyes? The students did direct-to-consumer. They didn't give the power to the consumer. But for us, personalization means tailoring the experience to the customer. So, for instance, in these t-shirts, you could have had 4 or 5 different variations. It hasn't been cut, sewn, stitched yet, but because we have the digital technology, they could actually say, "OK, we wanted one, we wanted A and not B," or they can go in and move it themselves. But it's a very— limited amount of things. The customization is that we give the customer total control, and they can choose all the materials they want. So this is the whole entire paradigm shift, is the power to delight. When you introduce, like nothing before, the ability for a customer, be it a brand, retailer, or the citizen of the world, ability to co-create with a brand. We are talking about building branding, earning trust, the ability to now storytell, the ability to take this to a whole different level and to be part of the solution. I want to go into detail, but I can just imagine one day this being the norm. I did what I needed to do with my apparel. I have control over it. Where is this all going? It's going to be a dashboard eventually. Because for whatever material you have, or whatever apparel, you as a customer want the control of either reselling it, repurposing, reimagining it, donating it, you know, selling it, whatever. There's no dashboard yet. We're going to get there. And so we believe that the next era of fashion personalization and customization will leverage technology. And we're all about circularity because we don't want to increase that 70% of the waste that goes into the landfill. Let's tap into that, right? It's $3 trillion of clothing and 70% That's not right. The professor has said that these are the next generation designers that will end up being brands for the future, because it is a turnkey on dSphere. But what you saw is just 2D. 3D is going to come in. There is hypervisualization. There's animation to be brought in. There's all sorts of different kinds of storytelling. So imagine one piece of apparel that used 5 pieces of material in your wardrobe, and each one of them had memories attached to them, which had photographs, which had video attached to it, which had audio, and had immense amount of memories attached to it. Now, if that customer can showcase storytelling through that piece of clothing, and then go forth and hand it down generation after generation, that's worth talking about. And so, I beg you to pause and look at your wardrobe, look at the denim in the world today, and imagine what all that denim out there, wasted, or in wardrobes, or in the warehouses, could possibly do with this technology. I always used to joke, if we could take the 10 technology companies in Silicon Valley, the Googles, the LinkedIns, and they all wear denim jeans, and said, "We challenge you to do this. Donate one pair of jeans, and let's do your next piece of swag for you." Wouldn't that be fun? Right? Technology companies, don't have a clue on what's going on in the fashion world. The intersection has to change. The convergence has happened, we just need to make the movement powerful. And what about their shirts? Look at that. What can we do with all the shirts in the world? Oh my, if only we could give that power to the tools, to the customers, right? And we can talk about the stories. So I leave you with that. Um, there's a lot more, and I'm super excited, um, that this is just the beginning. So thank you very much, uh, for being here. I look forward to conversing and having you on board. Take care. Go ahead. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Yep.

Are there any thoughts, or as you develop this platform, in your partnerships that you create, have there been any thoughts around digital artifacts of those same designs existing in other places?

Yes. So like taking those designs and putting into movies, or is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. And gamifying it. Yeah, absolutely. Right? I think there is so much potential there. We're just at a tipping point here. And so we're looking for those partnerships. We're looking for the ability to just scale this. And that's what technology is about, because it's offering that scalability in terms of multiple industries. So I'm so glad you asked that question. So recently, believe it or not, uh, Buckingham Palace, King Charles— I don't know whether you saw that in the news last year— he claimed, and it's his idea, which is great, he said, I'm going to take all the curtains that are left over from Buckingham Palace in the warehouses and turn it into kimonos. And he did. He did. Go check it out on the news. Now, that's already done. What if you took all the curtains in Buckingham Palace and gave it to the citizens of the world and say, okay, now you get to turn it to kimonos or whatever you want, but to your liking, right? And then you have seat covers on airplanes. So Emirates Airlines, Southwest Airlines, literally said, we're going to take the first-class seat covers and turn into luggage. So these are all upcycling things that are happening, whether we like it or not, but it's all being done manually. This comes in and the power to engage the customers, because it's going to be sold to the customers anyway. Or, you know, retailers can say to that luggage, like, before you do the luggage, let me choose Coach is another one. Coach decided to say, I'm going in, taking all the leather scraps, and making it into Coachtopia, which is their next new brand of handbags. We know the folks in India who are doing it for them. Yet the customer can't see visually and be part of that solution. And we're saying, why not? Right? So there's these multiple, multiple industries in play. Sunbeam, you know, they do this homeware, umbrellas and all that. They took all their inventory and made it into home goods. Again, there's no lack of opportunity using this technology. It's the will and the need. And what we want to say is, We don't stop there. We want to tell the stories, like, visually in 3D, in AR, VR as well. Because that's the power in storytelling then. And absolutely, it's about the power of delight. You want to be delighted. You want to take that satisfaction and the ability to say, I was part of that solution. Or I made that for Grandma because I took 20 pieces of her wardrobe that she can't wear anymore, made all these clothes, and now her grandchildren can make it. Right? Anyways.