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Tech Couture & Virtual Shoes on Azure

ELSE Corp and Microsoft bring the Virtual Retail innovation to the Russian market 

Milan, October 3, 2017 – Following the successful launch of ELSE. Shoes™ platform on the European B2B market during theMICAM Fair; ELSE Corp, as an official partner of Microsoft, took part in a two-day event roadshow, organized by Microsoft Russia and held on the 28th and 29th September in Moscow. TheMICAM, an international footwear fair held this past September in Milan, was an opportunity for the company to introduce the industry to their experiments and collaborations that promote the value of Made in Italy through new Industry 4.0 technologies. The ELSE. Shoes launch event was a big success, which had ELSE Corp’s lounge buzzing everyday with curious visitors who wanted to witness and join in on the company’s “3D Retail Revolution”, which is completely transforming fashion retail and manufacturing.

The Russian Federation is considered a high priority market for ELSE Corp and its partners – while approaching it as a technology partner for brands and manufacturers, which are the clients of the startup, following their own international distribution strategies; and directly as a B2B and B2B2C collaboration with local Russian retailers for virtual distribution of ELSE Corp’s existing and future clients and partners – brands and manufacturers, under the “powered by E.L.S.E.” label.

The market presentation for ELSE. Shoes in Russia was organized by Microsoft’s Russian office, as it has been a co-marketing operation between the startup and the technological giant. ELSE Corp’s two days in Moscow began with the Retail Day on September 28th, which was an executive gathering of important Russian retailers. It was an exclusive event for IT leaders from fashion & luxury retail, amongst others. With the world-renowned restaurant “Nobu” as the setting, ELSE Corp’s CEO, Andrey Golub presented the company’s Virtual Retail strategy and technology, their plans for the Russian market, and gave a live demo of their ELSE.Shoes solution for the footwear sector, using as a best-in-class example, the Virtual Boutique of FaceShoes, a recently acquired, high-value and high-potential brand-partner from Bologna, Italy.

Day two, again organized by Microsoft Russia and its partners, comprised of an educational event “Tech Couture & Virtual Shoes: Discussions about Fashion and Technology” and was seen by the startup as their official pre-launch on the Russian Market. Many opinion leaders from the Fashion and Retail industry participated in the event, along with top fashion & retail journalists and editors, there to represent the most important and relevant magazines in print and online. The event and the press conference that followed, took place at another famous restaurant in the Russian capital, “New Vintage”, attended by the top retail market expert Natalia Chinyonova, who covered the natural evolution of the fashion retail sector – a vision close to ELSE Corp’s. The latest powerful trend directing fashion retail, according to Chinyonova, Senior Business Technology Consultant of the Fashion Consulting Group, is product customization. She commented: “Customers in turn, start appreciating the rationality of fashion shopping. Brands that place personalization at the heart of their strategy, quickly become market leaders. Clothing has become a “technological gadget”, and loyalty has become much more than just having a loyalty card”.

Through the two days, it was made clear that in the fashion industry, a revolutionary situation has appeared: buyers do not want to buy as before, sellers cannot sell as before, and the fashion industry craves change. At the event, the Digital Transformation Lead of Microsoft in Russia and CIS, Mr. Arseny Tarasov, presented Microsoft’s vision for the future of retail and the evolution of fashion retail, and spoke about the “Store of the Future”, again, a vision strongly mirroring ELSE Corp’s. In Tarasov’s words: “Andrey Golub is a real disrupter of the fashion industry. He has proven that there’s a place for Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Technologies in fashion. Precisely thanks to those technologies, we now can shop in new ways, like creating our clothes and shoes in a personalized way and much more”.  Speaking of the future of the store, he added: “In the nearest future, shopping will evolve into different and even unbelievable forms, shops will become centers of leisure and entertainment, and clothing itself will become technology”.

“Each person is unique,” said Andrey Golub, co-founder and CEO of ELSE Corp. “Using the Microsoft Cloud we created a new powerful technology which confirms this sense of individuality, and also simplifies the choice of a best suitable product. We believe that the fashion mass market will gradually disappear, while individualized shopping will become an exciting and comfortable adventure”.

Using the Microsoft Azure smart cloud the company is creating solutions that are truly set to change the face of the fashion industry, something that is echoed repeatedly by industry leaders who believe strongly in ELSE Corp’s trajectory and future role in the fashion industry.

For more info see our official event page: http://www.else-corp.com/press-conf-moscow

Please see here the official press release by Microsoft Russia: https://news.microsoft.com/ru-ru/e-l-s-e-microsoft-menyayut-mir-fashion-ritejla/

Please see here their Featured Story about ELSE.shoes: https://news.microsoft.com/ru-ru/features/tech-couture/

For more information: http://www.else-corp.com/

ELSE Corp is an Italian startup based in Milan, founded in 2014. Since then, the company has been working on designing and developing a technologically advanced Cloud SaaS API platform for Virtual Retail or no stock retail for the Apparel & Footwear industry. The platform E.L.S.E., Exclusive Luxury Shopping Experience is aimed at providing an extraordinary Customer & Shopping Experience in 3D (applications, web, mobile apps, Virtual Reality, Augmented and Mixed Reality environments), that supports at its core Mass Customization and cloud based hybrid & distributed Manufacturing services, integrating all their components and processes into brands’ and retailers’ e-commerce, CRM, ERP and PLM systems; from 3D Design and Interactive Visual Merchandising for customized and MTM sales, to on demand production.