One Part Geek, One Part Chic: XR Fashion with Electric Runway CEO Amanda Cosco

XR for Business

English - September 02, 2019 09:36 - 31 minutes - 28.9 MB - ★★★★★ - 12 ratings
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Previous Episode: Navigating XR with We Are PHASE2’s Samantha Wolfe

Next Episode: Lighting the Torch for In-App AR Development, with TORCH’s Paul Reynolds

The technology we talk about on this
show is pretty cool, but what’s function without form, right?
Thankfully, there’s plenty of both to go around, as Electric Runway’s
founder Amanda Cosco drops by to talk about. TL;DR — there’s a lot
of cool ways to use XR to stay in-fashion, from virtual try-ons, to
AR-enabled hair colour-changing mirrors.

Alan: Today’s guest is a great
friend of mine; Amanda Cosco, CEO of Electric Runway. One part geek,
the other part chic; Amanda Cosco is a leading voice in the
intersection of fashion and technology. Through her work with
Electric Runway, Amanda is committed to bridging the gap between
these two seemingly opposite industries, to help humanize technology,
and help push the fashion industry into the future. In addition to
contributing to notable publications such as WWD, Toronto Star, and
Wearable, Amanda shares her insights through talks given on both
local and international stages. She’s made several radio and TV
appearances, including CBC’s The Goods and TVO’s The Agenda. She’s
been recognized as a top woman in wearable technology, as well as a
key thinker on the future of fashion. As a consultant, Amanda shares
her expertise in the innovation economy to help future-proof business
models and save her clients time and money. Amanda earned a master’s
degree of arts from Ryerson in Toronto, and prior to that she
graduated from York University. She holds a certificate of digital
media skills from OCAD University. And she’s the chair of the Fashion
and Business Management Professional Advisory Committee at Centennial
College, as well as the Board of Champions at the Bata Shoe Museum.
If you want to learn more about Amanda and her company, Electric
Runway, visit electricrunway.com. Amanda, welcome to the show.

Amanda: Thanks so much for
having me, Alan, and thanks for that kind introduction.

Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure.
I’m so excited. You are a leader in this industry. You’ve been in the
wearable space forever. Tell us how you got started in this.

Amanda: Well, Electric Runway
actually began with a future fashion runway show that I curated for
the Maker Festival in Toronto. So the brand very much has its roots
in performance and the actual runway, but it’s evolved over the
years. And I had been a part of the burgeoning wearable technology
scene in Toronto. And it wasn’t until I covered a technology festival
in Toronto and had the opportunity to interview a cyborg — a
self-identified cyborg — for the Globe and Mail and did a story on
him. It wasn’t until then that I realized that wearable computing is
absolutely going to change us, as humans. And that’s when I decided
to focus my career as a journalist and entrepreneur on technology on
the body. And that’s also the time that Electric Runway began. And it
quickly became the umbrella under which I do lots of speaking and
events and curation, in order to just bring everything together,
that’s going on in this exciting industry. And what’s really great
about it, is that being focused on fashion and beauty gives me a
really specific lens, through which I can view technological
innovations like augmented reality and virtual reality. So, rather
than trying to cover everything that’s happening in technology —
which is impossible these days, because technology is disrupting
every industry — I’m allowed to sit in this niche of fashion,
beauty, retail, consumer experiences and really just talk about how
emerging technologies are brushing elbows with these innovations.

Alan: Incredible. So you’ve seen
a lot of technologies in the fashion space. With respect to
virtual/augmented/mixed reality, I know you hosted an event — about
a

Amanda: Thanks so much for
having me, Alan, and thanks for that kind introduction.

Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure.
I’m so excited. You are a leader in this industry. You’ve been in the
wearable space forever. Tell us how you got started in this.

Alan: Incredible. So you’ve seen
a lot of technologies in the fashion space. With respect to
virtual/augmented/mixed reality, I know you hosted an event — about
a year ago — I was at, and all of the mannequins had VR headsets on
them.

Amanda: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Alan: It’s incredible. They were
all decorated, all nice. They had like… it was like Bejeweled VR
headsets.

Amanda: Yeah. We were trying
to… well, it’s funny, that conference — it was called In-store,
and it was an immersive event on the future of retail — and we were
really trying to highlight the most prominent technologies that were
of interest to the retail industry, and they were augmented reality,
virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. And I had decided on
those themes in advance. And shortly after the event, Mark Zuckerberg
from Facebook got on stage at the Facebook annual conference. And he
said the three technologies that Facebook is going to be focusing on
in the coming years are augmented reality, virtual reality, and
artificial intelligence. So I guess Zuckerberg and I were on the same
wavelength that day. [laughs]

Alan: [laughs] Awesome. That’s
something that very few people can say.

Amanda: [laughs] Yeah.

Alan: So let me ask you a
question. What is one XR technology that you’ve seen really deployed
well? Because a lot of people listening to this podcast are retailers
that are thinking, “how can we leverage this technology?”
So, what are some of the things that you’ve seen, that have worked
really well?

Amanda: Yeah. So, of course,
we’ve seen a lot of gimmicks, right? So we saw Zara tried to have
augmented reality models in-store, where the consumer would have to
download an app and they’d be able to see this mini runway show.
We’ve seen lots of virtual mirrors and… a lot of the time it’s all
hype, right? When it comes down to, “what’s the return on
investment for this? How does it connect to your business goals?”
There’s a disconnect there.

But what we’re actually seeing is, when
it comes to fashion and beauty, there’s a strong data case to be made
for allowing consumers to try on things before they buy them, on
their live video, on their smartphone. And this augmented reality
technology can be embedded into your live video of your app, on your
smartphone or it can be embedded into the mirrors in your in-store
retail experience.

One example that comes to mind that I
covered early on, is Sephora’s collaboration with Toronto based
ModiFace. ModiFace, before it was acquired for L’Oreal, worked with
various beauty companies to embed AR technology into their mirrors
in-store, as well as into the apps on smartphones, so that people
could actually try on lipstick before they purchased it. And this was
a real great example of how augmented reality can connect to your
business goals, because of course, once you decided on the lipstick
that you liked, you could put it right in your cart. All of the
lipsticks were connected to an actual product in this Sephora store.
So you can imagine how much work went into categorizing and
cataloging the different colors and finishes of lipstick. And now
that’s connected to a shopping cart, so you can actually shop in
augmented reality without going into the store and having to try on
the lipstick. You can try it on at home and then it’s shipped to you
directly. So the try-before-you-buy experience is really exciting for
me. And I think that there’s a lot of potential in this area.

Alan: You know, it’s
interesting. I wrote an article about six months ago called Augmented
Reality’s First Killer App: VTOs, or Virtual Try-Ons. And I agree
with you 100 percent. If ModiFace — which is a Toronto based
company, and you’re based in Toronto as well — if ModiFace had
continued going the way they were going, they probably would have
been working with every single makeup company in the world. But
L’Oreal being the forward-thinking company that it is really made, —
in my opinion, — an amazing acquisition with buying ModiFace. And it
left Sephora and these other companies out in the cold, because they
took the technology with them.

Amanda: Yeah. And the beauty
industry is so competitive, and there’s so many new brands emerging
that are direct-to-consumer. For example, like Kylie Cosmetics and
with Kim Kardashian and her contour palette, there’s just absolutely
so much out there, and there’s so much competition that you need to
be digital first. You need to have a digital strategy in place. You
need to be able to connect with new consumers who are increasingly
mobile focused. So it wasn’t just a fun, “hey, I can make my
lips different colors.” It is that, but it’s connected to
commerce. So I do think it is the killer app. And like I said, I
think there’s a ton to be developed when it comes to trying on
clothes in the future.

Alan: I agree. I think that’s a
much more difficult problem. One of the things that I thought would
have been a really difficult problem, but you recorded a video — I
believe it was at CES — of you trying on a virtual try-on for hair
colors?

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely.

Alan: And that video went viral
— and I’ll
put it in the show notes, if anyone is interested — but yeah,
tell us how that happened.

Amanda: It seems it was my 15
minutes of Internet fame, but I got on the plane home from CES —
which is the annual technology conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, as
I’m sure your listeners know — and I got home and as I landed, my
phone was exploding with messages after I turned it off airplane
mode. My friends were saying, you’re on the front page of Reddit,
you’re on the front page of Imgur. And it was this video, as you
said, that I had recorded from the show floor at CES. I was at the
retail innovations area of CES, and it was a quieter area of the
show. But of course, with Electric Runway, we go in to technology
events and conferences looking for that fashion and beauty and
consumer experience angles. I was really interested in what they were
showcasing in the retail lounge. And yeah, there was this company and
it’s called Perfect Corp. That’s their real name — Perfect Corp. And
they were showing off this augmented reality technology that’s very
similar to the Sephora experience with ModiFace, which allowed you to
try the lipstick on. This was actually for trying different hair
colors, which I thought was really great because as a woman who’s
dyed her hair before, you’re always worried how is it going to look?
And with so many different hair colors being popular right now, like
pink and blue, you were able to really have a lot of fun with it. So
it was actually embedded into the mirror at the Perfect Corp booth.
And it’s called Beauty Cam app. And you can actually — again, on
your live video — try on the different hair color.

But what impressed so many people with
that was how accurate the tracking was. So, I have asymmetrical hair;
one side of my hair is short, the other is a little bit longer. So
with hair apps, I’ve seen a lot of like “coloring outside the
lines,” let’s call it. But this one was so on point. And as you
moved, you saw the color move with each individual strand of hair.
And it was so seamless that it looked like magic. And I really
believe that that’s why the video went so viral, was because it was
really just this moment of magic. And I really believe that when
technology works at it’s best, it feels like magic and it creates
that awe inspiring experience where you’re saying to yourself, “wow,
what else could I do with this technology or what else can be done?”
And this looks like The Matrix. It’s the future, you know? So I think
that’s why it was so viral, and why so many people decided to share
it. It was just that magical experience.

Alan: It was really cool. I know
I shared it, and it got thousands of views on LinkedIn.

So, we were talking about the mobile
smartphones and using AR from the phones or the camera feeds,
Snapchat’s using it extensively. Facebook’s got their Facebook face
filters and stuff. What about actual wearable glasses? What have you
seen? Is there anybody using that in the fashion world now? I know
one thing that I saw was Magic Leap partnered with H&M and…
Moshino?

Amanda: Moschino, yeah,
absolutely. So there’s a lot of experimentation in terms of smart
glasses in the fashion and beauty industry right now, for different
use cases. It kind of feels like how augmented or virtual reality was
maybe four years ago. With the smart glasses lots of companies are
trying to figure out how they can use this. And one of the
experiences, one that you mentioned, I recently saw at Collision
Conference in Toronto and H&M had partnered with the Magic Leap
to allow attendees to design their T-shirt in mixed reality using the
Magic Leap. So it’s kind of a playful, high tech take on the T-shirt
giveaway that you normally see at conferences. In this case,
attendees were fitted with a Magic Leap 1 and they had a blank canvas
— in this case, it was a black T-shirt — and they could pull in
different augmented reality elements and place them on the T-shirt
where they liked. And once they were ready, they were able to
actually print the T-shirt at the conference — they had a little
team of screen printers there — and they took the digital file and
made you a T-shirt in real time, right there while you waited. So you
got to say, like, I customized this T-shirt and it’s a great story.
H&M has this big sustainability initiative, where they’re
recycling lots of used clothing. And so lots of the T-shirts came
from that recycling program. It also positions them next to Magic
Leap, which is future, really, of mixed reality experiences.

I think it was a great campaign. It was
great for the users. It was great for awareness. And it really
provoked us to think about how the Magic Leap and other mixed reality
headsets can be used as a design tool.

Alan: Very cool, yeah. I
actually was at Collision and I tried the other demos and not that
one. I didn’t even know about it. Now I feel left out. Magic Leap,
what are we doing? We’ve got to get in there.

Amanda: I know. Well, Collision
Conference, again, was really big. I think it was a conference that
was bigger than most people expected for Toronto. And there’s so much
there that you really had to pick and choose what you did. Though, of
course, as soon as I saw fashion, I went right for it.

Alan: I saw “Healthcare in
Smart Cities” and went for that. I wish I’d got a T-shirt that I
designed in augmented reality. How cool is that?

Amanda: Yeah.

Alan: So what are some other
things that you’ve seen? I know you’ve been working on some stuff as
well. So I want to give you the opportunity to share those things. I
know some of them are probably still under NDA, but what are the
things that you’ve seen?

Amanda: Well, because Electric
Runway is half media and half consulting. So, we have a B2B side as
well as media arm — and on the media side, we’re really covering
everything that’s out there. And what I’ve seen, when I’m wearing my
journalist hat, is a lot of experimentation and play in mixed reality
with lots of companies just trying to see what’s going to work. And
again, separating what is a gimmick and what’s going to actually have
a long term effect. So we talked about the try-before-you-buy
experience. I’ve seen lots of merchandising tools that actually allow
in-store employees to use a headset to basically download information
about how a store should be merchandised, whether that’s a grocery
store or an apparel brand, which is a digital innovation compared to
the way it used to be done. It used to be that lead merchandiser
would have to go to all the different locations and make sure that
there was a uniformity to all of the different displays, so that
you’d have brand consistency, but now you can actually do this for
virtual reality where you’re showing how a store shelf or a display
window should look.

We’re also seeing in warehousing smart
glasses being used for the pickers, the people who are actually going
and getting those items that you’ve ordered on Amazon from the
warehouse and loading it into a cart to be shipped off. They’re able
to have that information displayed to them on a heads-up display like
the Vuzix to make them hands-free so that they can be more efficient
in their workflow. So it’s been not only on the design side, but on
this logistics and backend side in the fashion industry. And it’s
really exciting. You know, everything from store design, you just see
so many different potentials for improving the supply chain and
fashion, which is a huge pain point for a lot of people right now,
especially with retail getting faster and faster. The big factor for
people who are manufacturing now isn’t so much cost. It’s speed,
right? They want to be able to bring things to market quickly. And so
different companies like Li & Fung are experimenting with
bringing in augmented and virtual reality for speeding up the whole
process, the whole process that goes into bringing a T-shirt into
your home, so that it’s just more efficient and more direct.

Alan: Yeah. I was just at
LiveWorx — which is PTC’s conference — it’s mainly enterprise
solutions, so if you’re building a boat or you’re building a ship or
you’re building a military installation or something like that. But I
saw a lot of overlap with the fact that they’re using heads-up
displays for repairs. But the fact that these companies are starting
to look at them from a logistics standpoint, how do we just give
people better experiences when they’re picking and packing in
warehouses, things like that? So I think it’s really exciting. One of
the amazing things that I think we’ve only just scratched the surface
is is training. I know one of our interviews previous, Jonathan Moss
from Sprint, they’ve trained 30,000 people using augmented reality.
So they give every store employee the training on an iPhone or a
device and let them learn in three dimensions in augmented reality
about the services and products that they’re offering. And I think
this will be really, really amazing as we move into fashion. If you
look at every clerk in every retail store in the world has a
smartphone. How can we push better, more immersive type of content
for educating them on how to sell better to their customers?

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. And to
inform the consumer more. Because one of the big conversations that’s
happening in the fashion industry right now is sustainability and
transparency. They’re kind of two separate conversations, but
underneath the same umbrella of ethical manufacturing. And you can
use augmented reality to help bring a product to life, to tell a
story about who made it or where it came from or the materials. And I
think that digitizing of goods, of actual material goods — exactly
as you’re saying — allows you to add this layer of content to a
consumable product, that we didn’t have the opportunity to before. So
it’s a really exciting time.

Alan: There was a client that
called us and they wanted to have 3D models of their shirts. And so
we modeled some shirts and some mockups for them. But the idea for
them was that they wanted to speed up the process from design to
prototype to purchase, because the current system, they design, they
prototype in — let’s say China or India, wherever it’s made — they
ship the prototype over physically by a plane. Then they take a look
at them, they make any changes, and then they send them back. And
this process can take six months, to design a T-shirt or design a
golf shirt or whatever it is. By using the 3D models and being able
to see it real time, I think it’s really a game changer for these
people.

Amanda: Yeah, and I believe at
Li & Fung, who is experimenting with Magic Leap for exactly that.
And that will cut down on their shipping costs. It will cut down on
the speed to market, which is very important. As I said, for most
retailers, it’s speed. That is the biggest factor for them, not cost.
So if you can streamline that process and make it more efficient in
the process, you know, you’re cutting down on the amount of trips
that a specific garment has to take overseas or a shipping container,
then you’re making a more sustainable product in the end. And we’re
not too far away from a world in which nothing is manufactured until
it’s consumed already. So reversing the whole supply chain model
using mixed reality by creating something custom and then only
manufacturing it once it’s been purchased, which will solve the
overstock problem that many retailers are experiencing.

Alan: Yeah, I think Zara has
kind of got the best hold on almost real-time development of
products, they use their managers in store to really identify trends
immediately and then they make just what they need for those stores.

Amanda: Yeah, yeah. I mean, Zara
is doing it. H&M is doing it. I’ve seen different companies that
are doing it with scanning technologies, to create a perfect pair of
denim for you, so that you’re not getting something off the rack, a
standard size 6 or whatever it is. You’re getting something that was
actually made for your body, which is a better product for you in the
long run because it fits better and customized to your liking. So
hopefully the idea for me is that the supply chain and everything
about the entire back end of the fashion industry can be made more
efficient with new emerging technologies. But the optimist in me
talking.

Alan: Well, I think it’s needed.
I mean, we’re growing as a society, as humanity. We’re growing
rapidly. And we’re reaching this point where everybody knows that the
environment is vital to our sustained life on this planet. And yet we
still are consuming more and more things. So I think in the near
future, these technologies, AI, VR, AR, if we just tweak them
slightly for sustainability, transparency, what you were mentioning
earlier, I think we can really continue this growth, but in a
sustainable and economically responsible way as well.

Amanda: Yeah, and you know what?
And a lot of people might not know this, but the fashion industry is
actually the second most polluting industry in the entire world, next
to oil and gas. So if there’s room for efficiency, there’s room for
technological innovation. It’s definitely, definitely there within
the fashion industry.

Alan: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Amanda: Yeah.

Alan: That’s crazy. Is there any
way to recycle clothes, for example? I’m wearing a sweater, I’m done
with it. I mean, obviously, Canada; we have second hand stores and
stuff like that. But is there any way to take that cotton in and
reuse it?

Amanda: Yes, certainly. I mean,
it depends if it is cotton, or if it’s viscose, or spandex; it
depends on the material. Certain materials break down and can go back
into the environment in a way that’s a lot easier than something like
a spandex, which can’t break down. So it really depends. And there’s
a lot to be said right now about the emerging trend of recommerce, so
selling your clothes and goods secondhand online before it’s broken
down and put back into the environment. So the answer is yes and no.
I mean, yes. Certainly there are ways of developing recycling systems
for fabric scraps, but not everything. It’s not like you can just
throw it all into a bin and voila, pops out a new–

Alan: I think that that’s the
problem, is that a lot of the fabrics that we wear on a daily basis
contain multiple different types of fabric.

Amanda: Yes.

Alan: People don’t realize that
when you buy a pair of jeans, and it’s got spandex and cotton and a
number of other things in it.

Amanda: Right, yeah, yeah. So
this conversation of the circular economy is very prominent right now
in the fashion industry, and a lot of brands and retailers are
thinking about how they can leverage new technologies to become more
efficient.

Alan: Absolutely. So we would be
remiss if we didn’t talk about the… I don’t know if you saw the
LeBron James Nike augmented reality experience, that was in the store
and LeBron kind of pops out of this poster and slam dunks. Did you
see that?

Amanda: I didn’t see it in
person. But I did see an article about it.

Alan: It’s incredible. Went
viral, got like a hundred million views.

Amanda: Yeah, it’s very cool the
way that you can now add content to fashion in a new way, just like
we were talking about before.

Alan: Absolutely. Have you seen
the T-shirts, where you can point your phone at the augmented reality
T-shirts, and it picks up the trigger and comes to life. I saw that
maybe three years ago, and I thought for sure this is gonna be a huge
thing, but it never really took off.

Amanda: I’ve seen some examples,
like Marks & Spencer has a kid line of dinosaurs and lions and
all the different animals, and they come to life and if you have two
of them, they kind of interact. So that’s a lot of fun for kids. I’ve
definitely seen augmented reality T-shirts that change over time. So
one day it’s going to trigger this experience, but the next day it’ll
be an entirely new experience.

Alan: Oh, that’s cool. What
brands are doing that?

Amanda: So there’s a company
called Drawsta out of California — I can’t remember specifically
where — but she’s working on a number of augmented reality T-shirts.
And yeah, it’s been increasingly an era of experimentation. But I
still think that, as you mentioned, we’re just scratching the surface
in terms of what’s possible and we’re just seeing what sticks now,
over time.

Alan: It’s going to be
interesting because I think– we all have phones. And so for the
foreseeable future, in the next five years anyway, we’ll be using our
phones. But I think there’s going to be a major cultural shift when
companies like Apple decide to bring AR glasses to the world and
maybe they do it in five years, maybe they do it in two years, we
don’t know. But when that comes, you’re going to wear glasses that
recognize the world around you and give you really incredible world
context experiences. And one thing that we didn’t touch on, which I’d
love to get your input on, is the ability to use computer vision to
understand products. So, for example, I pull out my phone, I go,
“hey, I really love your shirt.” I point my phone and take
a picture of it. And an AI algorithm uses computer vision and says,
“oh, that shirt is from H&M, you can buy it here.”

Amanda: Yeah.

Alan: And that’s all done real
time.

Amanda: Image recognition and
computer vision is definitely a huge thing for the fashion industry,
especially because clothing is so visual. So I’ve seen lots of
experimentation with Google and their new software to be able to not
only recognize a shirt but be able to serve you up suggestions for
where you can buy one similar. That connected commerce experience,
leveraging computer vision and then plugging it into “what else
is available on the Internet” is emerging. It’s burgeoning, and
it’s very exciting, especially for someone who likes to shop as much
as I do. But I didn’t learn this until I interviewed the lady who
just wrote a book on augmented reality for fashion — her name is
escaping me right now, but I will think of it by the end of this
anecdote — but anyway, she works for Google, and she was telling me
that the emergence of image recognition and reverse image search, it
actually came from a fashion moment.

I don’t know if you remember when J-Lo
wore that Versace dress to… I believe it was the Grammys, and it
was like a plunging-neck green dress and everyone was searching for
it online. That’s when Google actually decided that they were going
to create a reverse image look-up, so that you could search things
via image. And it’s interesting that a fashion moment kind of created
that technology.

And the name of the author, sorry…
“augmented reality for fashion book.”.. I’m Googling right
now. See, Google?

Alan: I was Googling the same
thing. I’m looking for it as well.

Amanda: It’s Leanne Luce! I just
remembered it, yeah. So, she’s written a whole book on augmented
reality for the fashion industry — or no, I’m sorry; artificial
intelligence for the fashion industry, because it speaks about the
computer visioning. She is much more educated on that than I am, but
if you’re interested in learning more about how that technology is
going to change the fashion industry, she has a whole chapter on
computer vision.

Alan: Oh, incredible. So it’s
called “Artificial
Intelligence for Fashion.”

Amanda: Yeah, it’s a great read.

Alan: Amazing. I will put it in
the show notes.

Amanda: Yeah.

Alan: Well, is there any last
things you want to talk about? I know you have a podcast and you’ve
done — what, you said a hundred and something episodes?

Amanda: Yeah. The Electric
Runway podcast is on its 115th episode and we interview the makers
and shakers that are forefronting fashion, beauty and consumer
experiences. The episodes are a one-on-one interview format. They run
about 20 minutes each and they’re available for free on iTunes,
SoundCloud and Stitcher.

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