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Revolutionising the fashion industry with AI: the Truss story

The UK’s creative industries are world renowned, and offer enormous potential for growth – the UK fashion market alone contributes £62bn to the economy.  Recognising this potential, four entrepreneurs created Truss, a British startup using artificial intelligence (AI) to simplify the fashion resale process by providing more detailed product information.

Truss participated in the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme and joined Digital Catapult’s High Growth AI Accelerator with the main goal of building connections in the AI ecosystem, gaining access to a variety of resources, support, mentorship and advancing the development of its solution.

It was a transformative experience, marking a significant period in our business development. Throughout the accelerator programme, we not only gained early customers and secured funding but also forged lasting connections that I will continue to value. Digital Catapult’s guidance was crucial in boosting our confidence in our solutions and affirming our potential to build a remarkable company in this dynamic field of AI. Woody Lello
CEO & Co-Founder of Truss Technologies

Tackling resale fashion’s biggest challenges: time and accuracy

During the accelerator, Truss utilised out-of-the-box AI (OBAI) to develop ‘AutoID’, a cutting-edge AI solution that identifies the same clothing pieces across the internet i.e. if an individual was selling a supreme t-shirt, Truss finds multiple versions of that item to instantly provide rich product information and pricing recommendations based on real historical sales data.  Its mission was to reduce the labour-intensive and manual process of cataloguing items that businesses face in the fashion industry. The secondhand clothes market in the UK is booming with a 2022 survey revealing that four in ten consumers purchased secondhand goods, while another one-third sold used items, highlighting the growing demand for solutions like AutolD in the industry. (Statista).

The cataloguing process in the resale industry is notoriously time-consuming, with each item requiring thorough research to assess its value, pricing adjustments, and re-uploading to platforms, often involving hundreds of items daily. Truss aims to revolutionise this process by significantly reducing the time spent tagging individual products, which currently averages five minutes per item. By streamlining cataloguing to take less than three seconds per item, it drastically improves business productivity and saves valuable time.

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AutoID redefines cataloguing

AutoID uses AI to extract product information from images across the internet, resulting in a vast fashion database of over 50 million items. By leveraging advanced image recognition and machine learning, AutoID streamlines the cataloguing process, offering retailers, brands, and consumers unprecedented access to fashion data.

As part of the High Growth AI Accelerator, Truss benefited from both business and product mentorship, and ethical AI guidance. This support was crucial in refining its technology to ensure it aligns with evolving regulatory standards, particularly in data privacy and transparency. With the accelerator’s assistance, Truss not only enhanced AutoID’s functionality but also strengthened its market readiness, positioning it as a pioneering solution in the fashion-tech space.

However, during the accelerator programme, Truss faced an unexpected challenge when AI the software faced a challenge in matching the same products sold by different people, as the appearance of these products can vary significantly based on the photography style, limiting its effectiveness. This obstacle prompted Truss to apply successfully for the UKRI AI grant. With the grant’s support, Truss is developing its own AI model, specifically designed to overcome these limitations, significantly improving AutoID’s accuracy and performance across a broader range of image quality. This development is not only strengthening its solution but also expanding its potential applications in the fashion industry.

Looking ahead

During the High Growth AI Accelerator, Truss accomplished remarkable milestones that cemented its position as an innovative leader in AI-driven solutions. Key achievements include:

  • Developed new categories and expanded datasets to enhance the scalability and application of its solution.
  • Secured a £1.1 million CR&D BridgeAI grant in partnership with Depop and Selfridges to develop a multimodal catalogue search for second-hand apparel valuations and roll out automatic product identification with autoID
  • Presented at the High Growth AI Accelerator showcase, where Truss’ solution garnered widespread interest from key industry leaders and potential business partners.

On the back of these successes, Truss has expanded the team to support its continued growth, welcoming several new members, including a Product Owner and Full-Stack Developer. Its Instagram following also surged by 7,475%, reflecting a growing market presence and increased brand visibility.

Truss’s journey has been transformative, achieving one milestone after the next. Its growth after the High Growth AI Accelerator programme is a testament to the company’s ability to pivot and adapt, using AI to address real-world barriers in the fashion industry. With a strengthened team and fresh innovations, Truss is set to drive sustainable practices and support a circular economy by contributing to waste reduction and extending the lifecycle of garments.

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