Research & Development
With a view to creating new value through cutting-edge technology, we founded ZOZO NEXT, Inc. in 2021. The company is centered around ZOZO Research and MATRIX, our group’s R&D division.
ZOZO Research operates under the mission of “Quantifying Fashion” and conducts research based on the wealth of information we have accumulated through our business. The insights gained from the research are applied to various activities and services including those that utilize AI.
Related Links
ZOZO Research – Our Mission
Research-Driven Service Innovations
ZOZO Group leverages research findings to develop new technologies and enhance our existing services.
AI assistant That Decodes Ambiguous Fashion Terms
ZOZO NEXT, inc. and a research team from Waseda University have co-developed a new technology that enables AI to quantify ambiguous expressions unique to fashion—such as “casual,” “adult-casual,” and “office-casual”—by analyzing individual item characteristics. This groundbreaking technology is expected to assist users in making more informed decisions across all aspects of their fashion life.
ZOZOMETRY, a Smart Measurement Solution without ZOZO SUIT* for Business
ZOZO, Inc. has launched ZOZOMETRY, a smart measurement solution that generates high-precision 3D data by scanning body with a smartphone. It enables business users to perform body scans more efficiently and reduce related costs through centralized management of scan data. ZOZOMETRY has already been adopted in industries such as custom-made apparel and R&D, and is planned to expand into the medical and fitness sectors.
*A body suit for 3D body scanning
A technique for managing scheduling problems by optimizing mixed-integer programming.
ZOZO Research presents a technique that uses mixed-integer optimization to solve task assignment problems with ZOZOTOWN’s customer support operations as an example. The approach includes minimizing penalties for insufficient processing capacity, applying minimum task duration constraints, and employing a two-stage optimization framework.
"niaulab by ZOZO ": The Ultimate Personalized-Styling Service
ZOZO, Inc. launched "niaulab by ZOZO," The ultimate personalized styling service that integrates expertise from professional stylists into a custom-built AI system.
Data shows that users who experienced “niaulab by ZOZO” visited ZOZOTOWN approximately 1.5 times more often and spent nearly twice as much as they did before using the service.
※Based on behavioral data from approximately 1,000 users who experienced the service between February 2023 to April 2024, measured over a 30-day period after using the service. New and inactive members at the time of application were excluded from the analysis.
Research Highlights
We are mainly engaged in research and development of AI technology.
A paper from ZOZO Research has been accepted to The Web Conference 2025, a leading conference in the field of web and data mining.
ZOZO Research has developed new datasets and evaluation methods that focus on users’ sentiments—specifically, whether and why they would like or dislike personalized recommendations. These datasets are expected to help reduce mismatches in purchases on e-commerce platforms like ZOZOTOWN.
A paper from ZOZO Research has been accepted to ICLR 2024, a leading conference in the field of AI.
ZOZO Research conducted a study on novel loss functions for efficient learning of similarity between data by applying mean field theory—a technique from statistical physics—to deep metric learning. This research introduced a simpler and more efficient loss function inspired by interaction theory in magnetic materials. Experimental results indicated that image search and recommendation systems performed more accurately when using the proposed loss function.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Technical Communications
ZOZO Research assessed the fashion aesthetic evaluation capabilities of GPT-4V, a multimodal large language model. By comparing its output with a dataset of human evaluations collected from several hundred participants, the study confirmed that GPT-4V’s assessments demonstrated a certain degree of consistency with human judgment.
Open Innovation
ZOZO Group is committed to research and development to enhance its service quality and deliver a more user-friendly platform. The company also actively contributes to academia and industry through technological innovation.
ZOZOTOWN’s Fashion Recommendation Data and Algorithm Development Platform Released as Open Source
ZOZO Research released "Open Bandit Data & Pipeline" — a large-scale open-source resource consisting of both a dataset and algorithm development platform.
The "Open Bandit Data" is a dataset comprising over 2,600 data units obtained from an actual recommendation algorithm.
The "Pipeline" is an implementation platform that allows users to test new algorithm and evaluate their real-world performance with high reliability, in addition to measuring their accuracy.
Large-Scale Outfit Coordination Dataset and Trend Shift Evaluation Platform Released as Open Source
ZOZO Research released "Shift15M, " a large-scale outfit coordination dataset consisting of real data and an accompanying implementation platform as an open-source resource to support research on distribution shift.
It enable users to understand annual trends in outfit coordination and to investigate distribution shifts through reproducible experiments. It is expected to accelerate research in this field by providing a way to capture the ever-changing trends in fashion more accurately.
Collaboration with Partners
ZOZO Group works together with a wide range of partners—including companies, universities, and research institutions—to tackle social issues.
Scoliosis Detection Using ZOZOSUIT®
ZOZO, Inc. and a research team from the University of Tokyo successfully detected moderate to severe scoliosis primarily in younger generations which may require treatment using ZOZOSUIT® and a dedicated smartphone application. This approach is expected to contribute to the practical implementation of a new at-home self-screening tool for scoliosis.
ZOZO Technologies, Inc., Predecessor of ZOZO NEXT, Begins Joint Research on Functional Textiles with the University of Tokyo and Hosoo Co., Ltd.
ZOZO NEXT, Inc., the Yasuaki Kakehi Laboratory at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies of the University of Tokyo, and Hosoo Co., Ltd. have launched a joint research project aimed at developing innovative textiles that dynamically change their appearance and characteristics in response to environmental conditions and computer control. The project combines the advanced techniques of Nishijin weaving with cutting-edge interactive technology.
ZOZO, Inc. to Launch Joint Research with Yale University Applying Economics to Maximize Customer Lifetime Value for ZOZOTOWN Users
ZOZO, Inc. has initiated a collaborative research project with Yale University (U.S.) to enhance ZOZOTOWN’s service functionality and optimize customer value.
This research seeks to better understand customer incentives and the psychology behind purchasing behavior. By combining Yale’s expertise in quantitative marketing and empirical industrial organization with ZOZOTOWN’s extensive and diverse user data, the project aims to optimize personalized communication strategies for individual users.
Awards
First runner-up Presentation Award — the 27th Workshop on IBIS 2024
The study “Controllable Attractive and Repulsive Forces in Power Set Distributions” conducted by ZOZO Research received the Second Best Presentation Award at the 27th Workshop on Information-Based Induction Sciences (IBIS 2024), Japan’s largest conference in the field of theoretical machine learning.
The 42nd Case Study Award — The Operations Research Society of Japan
A presentation by a researcher from the ZOZO Research, titled "Inventory Allocation to Minimize Inter-site Transportation After Expansion of logistics warehouses", has been awarded the 42nd Case Study Award by the Operations Research Society of Japan.※This research is based on a project conducted within the company from March to June 2020. The presentation was made at the Corporate Case Study Exchange Meeting during the Autumn Conference in September 2021.