“Moving into our fifth year, we’ve brought a renewed, global value to the program, providing a collaborative environment for these innovators and iconic retail and fashion brand partners – returning and new – who aim to address the industry’s most pressing issues,” said Kay Koplovitz, Co- Founder of the Lab and Chairman of Springboard Enterprises. “To better benefit our companies, we’ve also increased the program’s tech prowess through the return and expansion of our technology partners, all of whom bring a unique perspective to the process of taking these emerging technologies further toward becoming mainstream.”
One of the nine selected companies is Fashwell. The Zurich based machine learning company focusses on image understanding. The vision is to recognize every product in any image. As an ETH Spin-Off and students of Prof. Dr. Luc Van Gool from the Computer Vision Lab at ETH, Fashwell continues to be a pioneer in the world of deep learning. Fashwell’s product recognition API enables developers and eCommerce players from different sectors to build next level visual products and solve real world problems.
Returning to work with this year’s class are NYFT Lab Founding Members Global Brands Group, LVMH, and Macy’s. Second and Third year veteran partners Bloomingdale’s, Kohl’s and MATCHESFASHION.COM retake their seats at the table, while newcomers Lands’ End, Perry Ellis International, and Tory Burch add their unique perspective.
The12-week program involves a working collaboration between the Lab companies and iconic fashion retailers, brands, technology partners and well-known industry experts. Microsoft – the NYFT Lab’s first formal technology partner returns for its third year, as Flex returns for its second year. The NYFT Lab also welcomes Avery Dennison to the program as well as a new partnership with Accenture, previously announced in August 2017. All technology partners will work with the lab companies to enable iteration, validation, and acceleration of their technologies to advance their businesses and the industry.
The 2018 cohort will again be in residence at Spring Place: an innovative collaborative workspace and business club launched by the team behind renowned cultural hub and creative group Spring Studios. The 2018 NYFT Lab will culminate with Tech Runway Demo Day on June 7, 2018 at the Meredith Corporation in New York.
(SK)