Fashion Intelligence Firm Jellibeans Raises $1 Million for AI Design Platform
Fashion data analytics and trend intelligence company Jellibeans has raised $1 million to further develop its AI-enabled fashion design platform Jelli.studio. The funding round is backed by Hong Kong-based knitwear supplier Aussco to accelerate its tech and create a one-stop-shop for brands and suppliers.
Jelli.studio’s AI design tool is billed as the “Canva of fashion design” — an end-to-end tool that will allow brands to create retail-ready collections sent directly to manufacturers in a single click.
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The platform will enable designers with little to no experience, including influencers or entry-level staff, to create collections using trend info. The company emphasizes the collections will be “sellable” and based on data.
The AI will work hand-in-hand with Jellibeans’ analytics. The platform analyzes historical data from more than 10 million products from more than 100 data sources across retailers, brands, resellers and social media channels to come up with its creations. Jellibeans’ sales data can feed into its trend forecasting infrastructure to inform the design-to-production process.
Jelli.studio uses generative AI to iterate its data-driven designs. Users can upload photos of their existing designs that the AI tweaks “to ensure commercially viable collections,” the company said. But users can also generate entirely new collections from scratch in “just a click,” taking about 30 seconds to iterate an item and bypassing the need for a design team.
The company also notes that this will eliminate the need for samples or prototypes.
It will operate on a freemium model, with the platform open to any new brand or influencer looking to create their own collection. Users can access it for free, but are somewhat limited to previews and color changes on the product offering.
Paying subscribers will have access to the full suite of forecasts, benchmarking and retail data, as well as the complete AI generating tool.
“Democratizing design and enabling all stakeholders to collaborate on the design-to-production workflow within a single platform like Jelli.studio enables even larger operations like ours to radically improve efficiency by saving us much needed time and money amid today’s voracious appetite for new designs, all the while reducing waste,” said Aussco senior vice president Grant Philips.
Aussco is a leading knitwear supplier behind accessible luxury brands Coach, Kate Spade and The Kooples.
The backing from Aussco, which also works with Alexander Wang, All Saints, Ted Baker, Maje and The North Face, will enable the company to have a “competitive edge in the [company’s] pursuit of technological transformation, enabling it to stay ahead of the ever-shortening window between design to production, while aligning with future trends and appetites.”
“Jelli.studio is a groundbreaking plug-and-play design and business intelligence tool for the fashion industry that not only makes it even more accessible, collaborative and data-driven than ever before, but also ensures that creativity and data-supported fashion design are capable of co-existing,” said Jellibeans cofounder and chief executive officer Joanne Chow. She said the desire to create an AI-based design interface followed accruing years of fashion data and insight with their dashboard tool.
Chow is also the founder of research and development consulting firm InDHouse, which has worked with Adidas, Sandro, Maje and Ted Baker, among others. Her cofounder in the California-based Jellibeans is Brian Marsh, formerly of Blackrock, who serves as chief operations and technology officer.
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