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Tech Talk: How Innovation is Fuelling Fashion

Modern technology and digital innovation have created a wealth of opportunities to deliver an engaging, seamless shopping experience. Here’s how…

These days, there are oh-so-many ways to enjoy fashion. With our ever-expanding network of physical stores and web shops along with the power of social media, the inspiration has never been greater. And the customer experience has never been so easy.

Fashion for all

In the age of anytime, anywhere business, the brands within the H&M group are finding more and more ways to bring fashion to everyone’s fingertips – all around the clock.

As the boundaries between physical and online shopping blur, it’s becoming easy to ensure that customer needs are met. With Click and Collect, you can order online and pick up in store, or return an online order if it doesn’t fit. You can simply ask the app to match your favourite look with a similar outfit, all while getting tonnes of new inspiration. You can even get it to search for the right size by scanning an item you’ve seen in store. The purchasing possibilities are endless.

It’s all about you

We like to make shopping relevant and we like to make it personal. H&M’s My Style, for example, is a partly personalised image feed, which enables products in our images to be bought through the H&M app. Meanwhile, #HMxME invites customers to share their fashion stories from Instagram while also providing an easy way for them to buy the items in the pictures.

The magic of mobility

You never know what time of day that fashion craving might hit, so mobile users are laughing. Downloading the H&M app pays – in many different ways. Take the scan-and-buy function, for example. The frustration of finding the perfect item in the wrong size or colour used to be overwhelming. But today you just scan it and let the app help you locate just the right thing.
From mobile payment to Image Search (see below), this is clearly the way to app-happiness.

Image Search: the ultimate photo opportunity

H&M’s mobile app includes an Image Search tool, which allows you to take your inspiration straight to the right purchase. Powered by image-recognition technology, the tool will recognise a garment from the user’s photos or from an image they have downloaded from social media, for example, then recommend similar outfit in the H&M collection that is available through the app. So, if you see a look you like, just take a picture of it and you’ll get tips on how to achieve it. Then if an item takes your fancy, you simply click on it and buy it through the app.