Cardiff University’s Data Innovation Accelerator was able to help a Cardiff-based online fashion business to overcome a crucial obstacle in their road to business success.

Meaning ‘to have’ in French, ‘Avoir’ summarises husband and wife, Amir and Kathy’s business idea. Their website, Avoir Fashion, is an online aggregator which provides links to world-renowned stores that sell luxury goods to automatically show shoppers the best price for a particular luxury fashion item.

“Not coming from a tech background has been hard. We had a very clear idea of what we wanted for our business but didn’t have the data skills to make it a reality,” they said.

The barrier to Avoir Fashion’s success was both simple and complex and lay solely with their data capabilities – how can you compare products in the absence of a common denominator?

After a recommendation by a friend, Kathy and Amir reached out to the data science team at the Data Innovation Accelerator in March 2019. A meeting was set up, the problem discussed, and immediately, the DIA team knew this was a business they could make a real difference to.

Accurate product comparison is fundamental to Avoir Fashion, but Kathy found that textual product descriptions varied hugely across different retailers through using manual comparisons in spreadsheets. For instance, a colour could be described as ‘cream’ or ‘nude’ and an item could be described as ‘sneakers’ or ‘trainers’. This is truer in the fashion industry than anywhere else and can be understood when we look comparatively at, say, electronics, where items are easily identified via a product code.

Kathy and Amir realised that the common denominator between products was really the image itself, but creating and harnessing image-recognition technology lay beyond their skill set. Eager to explore this challenge, the DIA were confident that a solution could be found.

After an initial ‘data innovation health check’, the DIA provided a comprehensive report confirming that the data could indeed be ‘normalised’ so that Avoir Fashion could successfully compare fashion items.

By using a combination of natural language processing and image recognition, the DIA’s data scientists were able to provide a clean data set – or ‘fashion dictionary’ – creating categories for their algorithm to analyse. This resulted in the accurate matching of high-end fashion items.

The collaboration ran for 9-and-a-half months and, as in most research projects, the team faced a number of challenges. Through the couple’s determination and the data science and research skills of the DIA team, the collaboration was able to reach a successful conclusion.

“The whole team was very professional and at the same time very friendly and approachable with no barriers. We could be open and honest about what we wanted and how we felt,” the couple said of the DIA.

“It was amazing to sit down with such knowledgeable people who had the exact skill sets that we needed and be given this opportunity. They understood our technical problems instantly and knew how to overcome them. It was such a positive experience and has given us the tools to continue our journey. We would recommend working with the DIA to anyone, especially start-ups like
us”.

So, what’s next for Avoir Fashion?

“Before working with the DIA we didn’t actually think about having a data scientist and now we realise that 2 or 3 are probably needed,” Amir said.

Thanks to the code produced during the collaboration, Kathy and Amir will be able to develop the product comparison algorithm and fine tune it to launch a high-end, fully functioning comparison site with the plan to launch in early 2021.

“This has opened the door for future collaborations with professors at the University, working on state-of-the-art image recognition technology and artificial intelligence, and even the possibility for us to employ Cardiff University computer science graduates,” Amir said.

“We have gone through a very difficult time, facing lots of challenges and setbacks, spending time, money, and effort, but now we feel confident for the path ahead and have the tools to make Avoir Fashion a reality, and we thank the DIA for their invaluable contribution”.

If you want to learn more about what the DIA can do for your business, contact [email protected] or 02922 510992

The Data Innovation Accelerator is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government