Managing fashion products is challenging, not only for creative and stylists, but also for supply chain managers. Customers are more and more demanding high product variety and innovative products, and competition in the fashion industry is more and more centred on the ability to timely react to changes in customers’ desires. At the same time, social media and digital channels encourage customers to be involved also in the New Product Development (NPD) phase. As a consequence, fashion companies have to make the Supply Chain (SC) more flexible, by changing the way they manage their processes. Flexible SC are able to adapt effectively to disruptions in supply and changes in demand whilst maintaining customer service levels. Moreover, increasing collaboration, both inside and among SC partners, is often seen as a powerful instrument in achieving effective and efficient SC management, as well as higher supply chain agility.

Therefore, fashion companies have to balance the need to reduce lead times of collections, minimizing stocks and obsolescence risk, acquire information from big data coming from digital and social media channels, guarantee a high level of quality and let the customer involved into the processes of product development.

Starting from a multidisciplinary approach, the IT4Fashion conference aims to collect and present new or improved SC business models and technologies applied to the fashion industry, to share knowledge among practitioners and researchers and, summarizing, to increase knowledge in the area of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) in that industry.

Submission of papers

Authors are invited to submit their papers presenting the results of original research or innovative practical applications relevant to the workshop. The papers should be maximum 10 pages, written in English: the template can be downloaded from IT4Fashion website. The presentation at the workshop should not exceed 20 minutes. Authors will receive detailed instructions after submitting abstract of papers to IT4Fashion 2017. Each paper will be peer-reviewed by two experts and all accepted papers will appear in a Springer Advanced ICT series book. Selected papers will be considered for publication in an expanded form in relevant international journals, indexed by SCOPUS. A special issue of the best papers of the conference will be organized by the two following international journal, indexed by SCOPUS:

International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education
International Journal of RF Technologies

The tracks and its proposed themes are the following:
1. Fashion New Product Development
2. Fashion Design
3. New materials for fashion product
4. Product lifecycle management
5. Wearable technologies
6. Corporate Social Responsibility
7. Business Models and entrepreneurship
8. E-commerce and omni-channel management
9. Social and Digital strategies for fashion system
10. Fashion operations and supply chain
11. Challenges of the retail industry
12. Brand management and strategy
13. Mix of theoretical and practical education
14. Fashion Business, Technology and Innovation
15. Fashion Marketing and Communication Strategy
16. Business case of fashion companies

Venue and accommodation

The conference will be held in Florence – venue & accomodation.

Outline Timetable of dates

Extended abstract Submission: January 30th 2017
Conference notification of Acceptance: February 10th 2017
Full paper Submission: March 25th 2017
Proceedings notification of Acceptance: May 10th 2017
Camera Ready version: June 30th 2017

The abstract (1 page) should be submitted in Word or PDF to info AT it4fashion.org with the following information: author, affiliation, email address, title, structured abstract and key words (between 5 and 10) or done through the conference management system using the following link: Paper Submission

All the anstract accepted for the conference will be the possibility to present at the IT4Fashion conference. Full papers what will be presented at the conference will be published into the conference proceedings book edited by Springer (SCOPUS Indexed).

The camera ready version of the full paper should be submitted according to Springer Instructions for Authors. Papers should not be longer than 10 pages.

Registration and fee
• Regular registration fee: 450 euro
• Second author registration fee: 200 euro
• Discount for phd students: 50 euro
• Early registration fee: 350 euro (before 15th of March)

Conference Chairs

Rinaldo Rinaldi, University of Florence, Italy
Romeo Bandinelli, University of Florence, Italy

Scientific Committee
Hamideh Afsarmanesh, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gaetano Aiello, University of Florence, Italy
Kate Armstrong, University of Greenwich, London, UK
Romeo Bandinelli, University of Florence, Italy
Liz Barnes, University of Manchester, UK
Verónica Arribas Barreras, ISEM Fashion Business School, Navarra, Spain
Alessandro Brun, Politecnico of Milan, Italy
Luis M. Camarinha-Matos, New University of Lisbon, Portugal
Fethi Çalişir, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Federico Caniato, Politecnico of Milan, Italy
Ricardo A. Cassel, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil
Elisabetta Cianfanelli, University of Florence, Italy
Donatella Corti, University of applied sciences and arts of southern Switzerland (SUPSI), Switzerland
Pamela Danese, University of Padova, Italy
Stefano Dotti, University of Bergamo, Italy
Raffaele Donvito, University of Florence, Italy
Marcello Fera, Second University of Naples, Italy
Jonathan Gander, University of the Arts London, UK
Nevin Cigdem Gursoy, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Patsy Perry, University of Manchester, UK
Antonio Rizzi, University of Parma, Italy
Matteo Montecchi, The British School of Fashion, GCU London, UK
Rinaldo Rinaldi, University of Florence, Italy
David Romero, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
Klaus-Dieter Thoben, BIBA – Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH, Germany
Quan Yu, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway
Sergio Terzi, Politecnico of Milan, Italy Yi Wang, University of Manchester, UK