Wide Eyes Technologies: the ‘artificial’ partner of fashion
BY AMELIA PIJUÁN, Modaes
The fashion industry now welcomes a new partner: Artificial Intelligence (AI). With the help of Wide Eyes Technologies many companies like Privalia, Benetton or Austrian crystal manufacture, as well as others in the fashion industry have introduced this latest technological innovation into their systems in the last year.
Wide Eyes Technologies is a company that provides solutions and services based on visual technology and artificial intelligence for visual object recognition and trend analysis in the fashion industry. The company was founded in 2012 by Luis Manent, Rodolfo Guichón, Miguel Pousa, and Long Long Yu. It was created with the objective of coping with the problems that the emerging Spanish e-commerce presents.
Thereafter, Wide Eyes Technologies was segmented in two lines: a tool for third parties specialized in objects recognition, and the Similify App that let users find similar pieces in different online stores from just a photo they took of a garment they liked.
“After launching the Smilify App and obtaining a lot of information to analyze, we realized there were many opportunities in the market” explains the Wide Eyes Technologies’ CEO Luis Manent, to Modaes.es. The technological tools of the company evolved over time until Wide Eyes decided in early 2016 to; launch a unique solution for the fashion industry based on artificial intelligence. With these technologies the company, established in Barcelona, has managed to create a space for itself in some of the main flagships. This new solution enables through image recognition, big data compilation and other techniques based on artificial intelligence, recommends outfits and similar pieces. The programming interface works both in the e-commerce of stores chains and in physical sales outlets. Easy Check Out boxes, affordable showcases and personal fitting rooms for shoppers, are some of the special features characterized in these stores.
Wide Eyes has launched a new AI solution that suggests looks through image recognition and big data usage
Manent says that the Wide Eyes Technologies’ software is a system that scans and identifies images found in a catalog to build outfits based on the size and stock of the piece. From 2016 until the present, the startup has grown in popularity, getting clients like Austrian crystal manufacture, the Spanish company Privalia (that was taken over last year by the French group Vente Privee), some stores of Benetton in Russia, and other leading companies of great presence.
Wide Eyes Technologies is working in approximately 35 pilot projects; aside from collaborating with startups in the industry. Even though Manent acknowledges that for now, multichannel in stores of the fashion industry is a utopian dream. Although, he assures it will go from strength to strength in the years to come.
