Fashion tech investment grew 66% during pandemic

Investment in fashion-related technology increased by 66% during the pandemic, according to research by The Business of Fashion and McKinsey. The report found that the value of the top 50 investments in fashion-related technology across the past year, either by fashion retailers or businesses that sell products and services to fashion-related companies, has increased by 66% to $16.2bn since 2019, indicating an increase of capital put into technology in the fashion sector. According to The Business of Fashion and McKinsey, around 55% of these investments went towards ecommerce technology, while the rest was mostly put into payments technology, buy-now-pay-later tech and social commerce. Investment in resale technology, supply chain and logistics management, non-fungible tokens, and virtual reality companies closely followed. Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion, said: "The pandemic cemented technology's critical role in the fashion industry, particularly in terms of ecommerce adoption. But now the industry must lean even further into new technologies by experimenting in the metaverse, embedding fully digitised workflows across their organisations and investing in traceability tools to help them reach sustainability targets. Those who choose to wait on the sidelines risk being left behind."