UK fashion retailer New Look has partnered with AI visualization platform Fermat to equip its buying and design teams with tools that generate virtual product renders, test multiple design iterations, and explore styling options. The deal cuts time-to-market and reduces reliance on physical sampling, giving teams more room to experiment with designs before committing to production.
Anica Wislawski, Creative Director at New Look, said: "Creativity has always been at the heart of New Look. It's what helps us create distinctive products that resonate with our customers and keeps them coming back season after season. Fermat gives our designers the freedom to bring ideas to life faster, explore more creative possibilities and refine products through multiple iterations before they reach the customer."
"More importantly, it allows us to remove time from parts of the design process and reinvest it where human creativity matters most: understanding our customer, identifying what they'll want next and thinking about how they'll wear and style it. By combining creative instinct, customer insight, and AI powered tools, we're able to make more informed decisions and shape trends into wearable ideas that work in everyday life. It strengthens the golden thread from concept to customer, helping us create better products, better outfits and ultimately more confidence for our customer."
Virtual prototyping cuts sampling waste
Designers can now produce virtual product renders in minutes instead of waiting for physical samples. The platform lets teams tweak silhouettes, colors, and fabrics on screen, running through many variations without the cost and delay of traditional prototyping. This shortens the design-to-production cycle and reduces material waste tied to discarded samples.
Reinvesting time in customer insight
By automating repetitive visual tasks, the tool shifts staff focus toward higher-value work. Wislawski pointed to understanding customer behavior and anticipating next-season preferences as the areas where time needs to be spent. Faster iteration cycles also mean designs can align more closely with real-time market signals rather than months-old trend forecasts.
Customer data feeds into design decisions
The partnership fits into New Look's wider effort to apply data and AI across the business. Insights from Club New Look, the retailer's loyalty programme, now help inform product decisions by revealing what shoppers actually browse and buy. As part of its AI for product development approach, the company is linking these purchasing patterns directly into the early stages of design and range planning.
Why this matters for Product Development
For product development teams, the practical shift is straightforward: virtual renders replace early-stage physical samples, cutting lead times from weeks to hours and lowering per-item trial costs. Designers can test 10 variations in the time it once took to produce one. The integration of loyalty data means briefs are shaped by hard sales evidence rather than intuition alone - a concrete way to de-risk line decisions. Teams that add AI-based visualization now position themselves to respond faster to demand swings and reduce overdevelopment, directly improving margin and speed to market.
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