Li & Fung honoured at HKB Technology Excellence Awards for AI-powered design platform

The LF Design Ideation tool enables designers to navigate the complexities of fashion creation.

Global supply chain management company, Li & Fung, has been honoured with a win in the AI - Supply Chain category at the coveted HKB Technology Excellence Awards 2024 for its development of an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered design platform, LF Design Ideation, which has revolutionised fashion design, enabling faster ideation to prototype timelines, automated design suggestions, and streamlined mood board creation.

LF Design Ideation provides designers with a powerful tool to navigate the complexities of fashion creation with unprecedented ease and speed by ingeniously integrating the capabilities of two AI design powerhouses, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, into a unified, comprehensive solution.

This synergy offers a limitless reservoir of design inspiration and capabilities by bringing together DALL-E's ability to generate vivid images from textual descriptions with Stable Diffusion's capability to create imagery based on existing visuals.

The AI-powered design platform also features the utilisation of a generative model, a LLM-based vision model, which facilitates a range of groundbreaking functionalities. This includes the capability to analyse user-uploaded images to identify not only the basic elements like colour or type but also intricate details such as texture, fabric type, patterns, and apparel styles.

The technology’s interface is designed for ease of use, allowing designers to effortlessly modify product designs or colour schemes through simple drop-down menus. It leverages AI tagging to prompt mood board creation, facilitating the automatic compilation of styles and thematic elements extracted from the product.

Moreover, the platform utilises a LORA model to transform apparel images into detailed technical sketches, streamlining the process from initial design inspiration to the production-ready Techpack generation.

By leveraging the unique capabilities of these AI tools, LF Design Ideation has empowered the 125 designers at Li & Fung to redefine their creative process. Where it once took designers an average of two weeks to progress from ideation to design mock-ups, the introduction of LF Design Ideation has dramatically accelerated this timeline to a matter of days or even hours.

The tool’s capacity to significantly reduce the timeline from ideation to design mock-ups, coupled with its versatility across different product categories, underscores its role as an indispensable asset in both the apparel and hard goods sectors.

“LF Design Ideation reflects Li & Fung’s commitment to innovation and its visionary approach to embracing technological advancements in fashion,” said Keith Ip, Chief Technology Officer at Li & Fung.

As a leading player in the global sourcing and logistics industry, Li & Fung has been successful in transforming the traditional paradigms of fashion design.

The HKB Technology Excellence Awards celebrates innovation and excellence in Hong Kong's dynamic tech landscape, highlighting companies that lead the way in technological disruptions within their industries.

The Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards is presented by Hong Kong Business Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2025 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's outstanding contributions in pursuit of technological innovation, please contact Julie Anne Nuñez at [email protected].