Giorgio Guidetti on augmented reality in fashion with Habits

0:01i'm ashlyn Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have giorgo Guidetti the CTO and founder of habits Georgia welcome to the show it's a pleasure to have you here today hi Hairston thank you so much for having me here today and I want to talk you on behalf of all Abby's team for this

0:20amazing opportunity great well thank you so much let's start by understanding habits you've looking you're looking to revel edge they revolutionize the e-commerce industry through augmented reality as well as blockchain technology can you explain the current problems in e-commerce right now and how that led to the idea of creating habits okay so um habits is the

0:44word first augmented reality fashion commerce over the blockchain and the idea underlying habits it was born in late 2017 when Tim Cook announced on the WWDC stage that the next years would have been focused on AR and the meantime blockchain technology was disrupting industries so we understood that with the combination of the two we could craft the solution to solve the fed the

1:06fashion industry main problems that are low conversion rates and high returns and inefficient customer acquisition process and everything aim to become an ecosystem made of both affirmed brands and independent designers so our partner can reduce remotely set up their stores uploading kiddie models of the creation and immediately for saving and we just

1:26keep a few on your order mm-hmm great and there's definitely a huge problem with returns especially with the increasing growth of online sales not being able to try things on not having the right sizes many other problems so by integrating blockchain technology how are you able to solve problems on both the buyers side and on the seller side so on today bran perform online

1:52marketing activities by publishing content on third party platform and they channel a percentage of users to the website and then convert a small fraction of those users into customers and habits we figured out that advertising a fashion product through traditional channel was idly inefficient and in each step we were losing more than 90 percent of our potential

2:13customers at the same time overproduction has made the fashioning to see the second most polluting industry in a study conducted by eco watch and that is why we are created our blockchain system based on our HDX token that allows fashion brand to launch targeted advertising campaigns and obtain guarantee tryouts and more moreover 3d model upload on habits will

2:37also require HDX which in turn means that each product upload and evolution will be certified on the blockchain and this creates a huge value for our sellers that are always short that each token spent in advertising translates into a real person trying on the products and the HDX token will be also used by independent designers in order to start freestyle campaigns where

2:57aspiring designers can resell the fashion accessories with just 3d model and by turning the supply chain into the man chain we aim to reduce their production in the fashion English and the values therefore bias too as they are only it by extremely well target for the typing and can they can safely pre-order the favorite fashion products that had not been produced yet and for

3:19us this is an amazing step forward mostly for the green aspect that means it will have a new voltage means mm-hmm that is great and there's definitely a lot of confusion around who owns which data and when your advertising especially having to go through third parties to control your advertising so with this bringing more control back to the sellers to have control of you know

3:43how they're marketing to buyers of accessories and fashion and the data behind those users so that they can sell them more you know efficiently in the future is this easy for the sellers to understand and control you know to fashion designers blockchain technology can be confusing because it's very technical you know is it very user-friendly for organizers and sellers

4:09to be able to gather this information and use it efficiently to sell more okay so the simple formula equals to one HBS and one Govan tea-tray on but as you have said adopting the blockchain solution also mean dealing with private and or unfortunately philip wise a learning curve for our users and in order to acquire them the system should

4:36appear easy to use so in order to be decentralized without sacrificing anything both TRC exits fight protocol as well as known soil authentication provider will be used and the abbess tokens can be quickly and intuitively bought my brands prior to launch the marketing campaign directly to the admin panel and the EF cx-5 token standard is adopted in order

4:57to abstract the gas used in usage in the eyes of users great and you also mentioned that when you're trying on accessories and people are looking to before purchasing they can use augmented reality to augment accessories overtop of their bodies through the phone you know is this something that was super important to the buyers and sellers that you found through research and does this

5:24provide a competitive advantage in the fashion industry is it something that's going to be necessary moving forward well as I was telling you earlier in our personal opinion there are three major issues now the fashion industry's urgently needs to tackle and if they are the sluggish conversion rates which I was telling you earlier and if they are estimated to be around one percent and

5:47the mean the industry is missing opportunities which are magnified when considering a lifetime value of non acquired customers the rising customer acquisition cost meaning that the brand's seeking rolled as we were telling early as typically relying Google Facebook and social media giants but today acquisition costs can easily exceed 100 USD per customer and too many

6:10expensive returns meaning that one order out of four is returned and displays an unbearable burden on ecommerce bathtubs because the cost of shipping handling credit card processing repackaging average talking for seasonal sensitive products is utterly exorbitant so thanks to the abbot's app the user will be able to try on real-time fashion accessories

6:33in the same way users experience Instagram or snapchat filters and in this way we can definitely contribute to shrink fashion returns by using the gap between the customer is a expectation and the absurd product and thanks to AR we can expect conversion rate to increase and thanks to our HDX token we can provide brand a more stable customer acquisition process as well as

6:57an incredible opportunity to resell the creation with just a 3d model great and you mentioned that it requires one hbx token to be able to try on these accessories can you explain is it very easy for a buyer to be able to acquire these tokens and use them within the system and is that a very important factor for a flawless purchasing process of a fashion

7:23okay yes it is very very easy because brands can go in that be a bits admin panel um they select the product or a group of product that they want to sponsor and they can target their audience and they allocate the tokens when they when users are trying on products yeah we interact with the etherium blockchain protocol in order to produce a piece of Tryon on the

7:46main board pose of a proof or proof of trying is doing short fashion brands that only real and unique customers are trying their products who habits and once they verify the authenticity and the HBx token started back to habits wallet mm-hmm great and you mentioned that the product is live in beta application right now there are people that are able to try on accessories what

8:08does the road map look like for your development in launching to the full market application um we are gradually rolling out the iOS beta for the abbot's app from a closed beta to an open beta and right now users can register and try on sunglasses hats and earrings that are real products acquired through a real chromatographer effort and in the future

8:31updates will include necklaces watches and sneakers um that so that that that is the state the current state of our application so we're currently looking for funds in order to release our app in the European market first and by the end of the year so 2020 q4 we can launch the application in the European market but the the accessory segment for us is just a

8:57scalable niche to test the AR technology application to the fashion industry because in our roadmap upon successful feedback in this pilot market we plan to expand into clothing and apparel beyond the boundaries of the accessories business with the launch of our flagship product which is the abbot's mirror which is a fuel body a are smart mirror that will be sold in both b2c and b2b

9:20and b2c markets and currently our smart mirror is into four concept phase and we expect to be able to release the first fashion by 2022 great and you mentioned you're expanding into clothing sneakers which is very cool on the partnership side I'm guessing you have to partner with different kinds of companies and strategic partners to expand your product lines do you have any

9:43partnerships that are already in the works or what kind of partners are you looking to partner with as you continue to expand out the products so habits is a even commerce that is made for both dependent designers and both real and big brands but so the our commercial opposition is going to a city pace and brands have expressed their you know the

10:11the petite very happy about habits but aside from that we have been actively developing habits together with a melenz which is an ER block team focused development company and also nabbit fashion brands do not have the if they do not have the 3d models we have a partnership to win an Israeli company named good quality dog fashion so together with them we can produce 3d

10:34infection specifically fashion 3d models in enormous quantities and using a 3d model not only enables users to try them on to AR but in an enormously streamlines the product listing process and with the recent coronavirus crisis a lot of retail stores and fashion outlets have shut down their brick-and-mortar locations I've seen boards across this across the city and people aren't even

11:01able to go in is this a good opportunity for habits to seize now that people are sort of moving on they're looking for alternatives to shopping and have you noticed an increase in awareness because of this absolutely yes I personally believe that the coronavirus crisis as triggered at the last stage of an unstoppable process of the digital transformation and the

11:25fashion industry itself has not seen much progress lately but it is undeniable that augmented reality blockchain will bring huge improvements in both short and long term being able to try on your February fashion items and chase them will become the normality as brands will start focusing on online retail experience recently many famous brands have launched the various

11:49initiatives using AR but the main problem with these experiments is that nowadays offering truly innovative user experience requires the technology technologically advanced infrastructure that most companies cannot afford risk developed so in the current scenario with customers massively turning to multi brand channels it is no longer plausible for every single brand to add

12:13their own comments platform with the specific functionalities in terms of user experience important quality so the present clearly shows that what online customers want is a single interaction standard and ultimately a single channel guaranteeing a technologically stable and up-to-date service mm-hmm well that's great well sounds like you're well on your way to developing the main

12:35net for the full application rather for habits and your are you expanding your team and you also mentioned that you're looking for a little bit more investment as you continue towards the market application how can investors learn more information about habits as it continues to grow yes I was with earlier yeah we are actively looking for funds and we

12:59are also planning an IO an event for our X BX token as well so one of the most important thing that we really would love too is to find a growth part net for the Asian market because we would really love to be able to bring habits there as well and if everybody willing to know more can chat with us and stay updated to a telegram channel 3 I'm guru own fine works

13:22information on our website which is a bits project I oh great Georgia I'll leave the links for your website as well as the telegram in the description box below for the viewers that's all the time that we have for the interview this time but it's been a pleasure speaking with you and it sounds like this is a great opportunity right now for the growth of habits so all the best in your

13:42continued growth towards the market application and I'm looking forward to following up in the near future thank you very much Don thank you very much