WALMART’S FASHION NOW DESIGNED BY A.I.

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In an Ever-Changing Environment, Walmart Uses GenAI To Create Cool for Customers

Key Insights

  • Walmart’s new trend-sensing design tool uses AI and GenAI to bring on-trend, affordable items to the retailer, faster than ever before – without compromising quality.
  • Trend-to-Product shortens the traditional production timeline for Walmart fashion by as much as 18 weeks, getting cool clothes to customers while they’re still on-trend.

Key Insights

  • Walmart’s new trend-sensing design tool uses AI and GenAI to bring on-trend, affordable items to the retailer, faster than ever before – without compromising quality.
  • Trend-to-Product shortens the traditional production timeline for Walmart fashion by as much as 18 weeks, getting cool clothes to customers while they’re still on-trend.

Who decides what’s cool? Where do the latest fashion trends find their footing?

These are hard questions, because there’s not one answer, but many. Trends emerge all over: social media, fashion shows, red carpet events, the pages of magazines, city streets, the list goes on.

Trends come and go – fast – and that makes them a unique opportunity for a company like Walmart, where designing items that are cool and quality can be slow going.

Until now.

Introducing Trend-to-Product, a new proprietary tech solution created to support Walmart’s designers and merchants. Trend-to-Product uses AI and generative AI to analyze and synthesize global data and trends, pulling information from the internet and tastemakers to power the Walmart Fashion team in creating on-trend, high-quality items with speed – all at the low prices customers expect. It’s a big task. And we’re up to it.

From a trend to a product – in six to eight weeks

To understand why Trend-to-Product represents such an incredible leap forward, it helps to understand how things work now.

In the fashion industry, it takes around six months to design and produce a collection of clothing – from ideation and concepting, to the time items end up in stores and online. Why?

Because designers are also researchers. They scour the world for the coolest of cool, from runways to social media, trend services and beyond, to learn what’s in. Then, they turn to concepting. Mood boards, collection names, textures, colors, possible styles. It’s a ton of work – and it takes a ton of time. Which Trend-to-Product condenses.

It takes the research and design phase from weeks to minutes. And it doesn’t stop there. The tool uses generative AI to create those time-consuming mood boards, replete with collection names, colors, textures and ideas.

Then, our designers and merchants step in. They refine the mood boards, look at sell-through data and lean on their own experience to create the final pieces that will form the collection.

“Trend-to-Product empowers our private brand design and product development associates to spend less time chasing trends and more time doing what they love most – creating and delivering high quality, on-trend items for our customers for every season and occasion,” said Jen Jackson Brown, senior vice president for apparel brand and design in Walmart U.S. “We are excited by the early results of this new technology and the power it could have to transform the way we operate and serve our customers.”

In the final step, Trend-to-Product generates a fashion tech pack for the collection, which instructs suppliers on exactly how to make each item.

The whole process takes about an hour. And the items? They’re on shelves and online in six to eight weeks. From concept to completion, we’ve shortened the process of launching new clothes by around 18 weeks: people-led, tech-powered.

Get faster, stay better

When it comes to sensing trends and designing to meet them, competition is fierce.

Bill Chiodetti is the lead product manager of Trend-to-Product. He says one of the many factors making the tech remarkable is its balance of speed and quality. And while the tool is focused on fashion, the potential applications are much broader.

“From the beginning, we recognized Trend-to-Product could go beyond fashion, to help Walmart bring great products to market in any category,” Bill said. “Our mission is to help Walmart accelerate without compromise.”

To that end, the company is exploring how technology itself can keep improving the customer experience, not just getting faster, but better, too.

“Walmart has continued to invest in cutting-edge AI and GenAI technologies to make the lives of our customers, members and associates easier. Trend-to-Product is the latest example of how these technologies drive optimization, and when combined, can revolutionize an entire business line or industry,” said Vinod Bidarkoppa, the EVP and chief technology officer at Walmart International. “This innovation underscores our commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, ensuring that our customers always have access to the latest trends at the best prices.”

Trend-to-Product shares an origin story familiar to those who follow tech. An idea, applied elsewhere, might work here.

This particular idea emerged during the inflection point for generative AI, when a scientific paper suggested large language models could analyze existing chemical compounds and, just maybe, create a totally new one. In Bentonville, Arkansas, a team gathered around a whiteboard with a question: What if we applied that idea at Walmart?

At the end of the session, a standout concept. Trend-to-Product.

Andrea Albright is the executive vice president for Walmart Sourcing and was the earliest executive sponsor of Trend-to-Product. That means she had a front-row seat to innovation, bringing an idea from a whiteboard to the teams that would make it reality.

“We recognized the possibilities with customer-facing technology and saw Trend-to-Product as a way to bring the best of AI and GenAI to the first mile. Now, that vision is coming to life,” Andrea said. “And we’re not stopping with fashion. Imagine a future where Trend-to-Product helps designers create the next great lipstick color or a new flavor combination that sets the internet on fire. That’s where we’re headed.”