XnFinity Artificial Intelligence for Retail

Project Information

X-AIR

Grant agreement ID: 957080

DOI

10.3030/957080

Project closed

EC signature date 28 August 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 December 2021

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 134 268,75

Coordinated by

XNFINITY LDA
Portugal

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - X-AIR (XnFinity Artificial Intelligence for Retail)

Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2021-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The retail industry has been enduring major transformations over the last years, set in motion mainly by the mass usage of mobile phones and their capacity to let us shop “what we want, where we are”. Industry’s players are as diverse as local commerce stores (traditional brick & mortar), department stores and e-commerce, where we also find international market leaders, like Amazon or Aliexpress. Retail sales amounts to 41 billion euros per day all over the globe; e-commerce revenue in Europe is expected to grow from US$292.2 billion in 2017 to US$499.5 billion in 2024 . However, these digitally native retailers have plans to open physical stores in 2019 and beyond (Business Insider), due to an increase demand for experiential spending (emarketer). Retailers knowledge and insights of their actual, but also potential, customers is the key between competitive advantage and struggling one step behind.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

As result was developed the first version of “Smart Loyalty” project. The main objectives of the “Smart Loyalty” project involve the study of applications aimed at customers and companies in the retail area and the development of an application aimed at small and medium retailers able to compete with the already existing applications. The application is intended to be as non-intrusive as possible for the customer, but at the same time, be innovative in data acquisition and analysis for retailers, with the application of different AI models.
Democratizing AI and innovation in retail, with a disruptive and ‘green’ solution was the outcome of the project.

“GAN models development and analysis for the fashion industry”, was another PoC developed with the objective of developing an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) pipeline that is composed of two models, which are a GAN model for unconditional images generation of unique and new clothes. The goal was also to conduct general analysis and evaluation of the developed models using standard metrics with respect to different hyperparameters.

With some retailers already with interest in the solution, we will start the exploration in 700 regional supermarkets group and 2 fashion groups.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our deliverables will go a long way in facilitating the customer analysis that will help the retail and fashion industry in the reduction of cost and improve revenue generation performance. With respect to the socio-economic impacts and the wider societal impact of the projects, we conclude that these projects help in making the retail industry greener, by minimizing waste and reducing the industry's pollution to the environment. With that, the companies can guarantee that the right quantity of each piece of clothing is produced and ensure that it meets the customer’s expectations. This will generate a huge impact not just in the environment but from a financial perspective as well. Hence, our projects results are vital in driving these factors and having a positive impact both economically and environmentally.

Our results were recognized by our partners (Microsoft) and by the media. ex: https://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/empresas/detalhe/xnfy-lab-ia-para-dar-superpoderes-ao-mundo-da-moda).

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