Bally and The Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center celebrate the winners of the Fashion Innovation Award, virtual fashion edition

Swiss luxury brand Bally is proud to sponsor the Fashion Innovation Awards and today, as a founding member of the Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center, the Swiss association that drives innovation in the Lifestyle sector, the company announced the winners of 2021, virtual fashion edition: OppenFuture from China and Obsess from United States.

Caslano, November 23th 2021

The announcement was the result of an intensive process with calls for mature scale-ups and innovative B2B/B2B2C service providers, performed by Loomish SA, a Swiss investment advisory firm specialized in Lifestyle Technologies and scale-up scouting. The calls focused on two areas: virtual fashion and augmented customer experience.

In the virtual fashion category, the scouting focused on seeking solutions in the areas of 3D fashion design, virtual apparel, NFT’s for virtual fashion, fashion avatars, virtual models, fashion metaverse, gaming, and more. In the augmented customer experience category, the search was directed towards technologies in the fields of virtual try-on, virtual stores, in-store customer journey virtualization, improved eCommerce experience, phy-gital and/or interactive store windows, and more.

The large-scale international competition was conducted in partnership with Accenture, Microsoft, UBS, and with Loomish, as the scouting partner. The initiative was endorsed by the Switzerland Innovation Park Ticino.

Out of over 100 applicants coming from Europe, Asia, and North America, the high-level jury panel, including the entire top management of BALLY as well as executives from Accenture, Microsoft, Switzerland Innovation Park, and UBS, chose 12 finalists during the month of November 2021.

The finalists were invited to the final Pitch Day on November 23 at Bally’s headquarters in Caslano, Switzerland. Jurors and scale-ups participated in the event, invited to join either physically or remotely, due to covid restrictions.

Besides taking home the title of the Fashion Innovation Award winner, the two winners will get the opportunity to kick-off a proof-of-concept project with Bally next year.

Nicolas Girotto, Bally CEO, shared:

“It is always a pleasure to be inspired by the next generation of talent, committed to safeguarding sustainable, long-term business solutions. Innovation and sustainability are driving forces behind the future of Bally, and through the Fashion Innovation Awards, we are able to mobilize creativity, exploratory research, and material advancements that not only give Ticino a competitive advantage in fashion innovation but truly enable a more viable business model for the future.”

Jelena Tasic Pizzolato, Managing Director at the Lifestyle-Tech Competence Center stated:

“This year’s Fashion Innovation Award has been a true success, both when it comes to the quality level of the Award applicants and to the seniority of the decision-makers on the jury panel. Throughout the project, there was a great collaborative effort of the Award sponsors, partners, and jurors, as we had the opportunity to get a closer look at over a hundred exciting solutions from the booming virtual fashion arena.

Our special thanks goes to Bally’s top management for dedicating their time and resources to this effort, as well as to Loomish, for successfully mapping out the global virtual fashion landscape and giving us the opportunity to get in contact with its top players.”

The jury chose the following two winners:

Virtual Fashion Category:

OppenFuture Technologies, China

OppenFuture Technologies is a leading company in 3D and AR technology, which provides total solutions of online 3D interaction and AR try-on experience for eCommerce to enable the personalized online experience and make online shopping more efficient and more engaging.

Augmented Customer Experience Category:

Obsess, United States

Obsess is an e-commerce platform, enabling luxury brands globally to serve highly interactive, visual, and creative digital shopping experiences. Utilizing proprietary VR technology, Obsess creates HD-quality photorealistic virtual stores and virtual showrooms, that are available on a web link and don’t require a headset or an app to view.