by Jan SCHUTTE, founder of LE CHEMISEUR®, published in March 2024, updated June 2026

What is the precision economy?

The precision economy is the use of technologies like AI and connected manufacturing to deliver more personalised, higher‑quality services while reducing waste — and therefore environmental impact.

Examples, already everywhere

Personalising each user's content with AI is already the norm on social media, streaming (Netflix) and e‑commerce (Amazon).

Ride‑hailing platforms match driver supply to demand in real time through dynamic pricing: better service for the customer, and less idle time — so less waste — for the driver.

Beyond services, the precision economy is reaching physical goods. HelloFresh and Quitoque deliver exactly the ingredients for a recipe, down to the millilitre of soy sauce, at the right moment. Laboté formulates custom cosmetics for each skin type. Precision agriculture waters and treats each plant according to its needs. Tomorrow, no doubt, medicine will become predictive and personalised, like the company Zoï.

How to put the precision economy in place

Machine learning is the easy part

Machine learning means finding the mathematical formulas that predict new data from past data. It's the basic building block of an AI.

On a narrow, measurable problem, it's surprisingly simple and very reliable — far easier than building a general‑purpose language model like ChatGPT. Our fit AI is proof. Launched in 2020, it now draws on the data of more than 50,000 customers and keeps improving. The customer gives their weight, height and age: that's enough to predict their fit with great precision. In 81% of cases, the fit is right the first time. When an adjustment is needed, it almost always comes down to 1 or 2 cm — easy to specify from a first shirt.

Quality data is the harder part

I quickly understood that having a lot of data isn't enough: you need quality data, and above all you need to know how to read it. The expertise in measurements and pattern‑making that we built from our earliest days proved invaluable.

That's probably what sets us apart. Over ten years, by measuring our customers and drawing our own patterns, we've learned to read men's body shapes. Combined with data from more than 50,000 men, this expertise makes us one of the players who best understand, in Europe, how a man is built and how a shirt should fall. In short, data applied to the shirt has become our real craft.

Separating the influences. For instance, we compensate for each fabric's shrinkage directly within our AI. Otherwise you mix up the effect of the customer's build with the effect of washing — and you lose precision.

Collecting the right data. When we launched trousers, our AI still lacked precision on the hips. It wasn't the data that helped us, but the meetings in the showroom and the fittings: they pointed us to two extra body‑shape questions to add on the site. Results improved immediately. We keep refining our AI with every order.

Integrated manufacturing, out of necessity

To personalise a product and ship it at the right moment, you need specialised production lines and complete logistics and IT integration.

That calls for long‑term relationships with suppliers. In fashion, this is a real paradigm shift: most brands hunt every season for the cheapest supplier by squeezing prices. Long‑term partnerships, by contrast, let you grow together and focus on innovation. That's how we gradually optimised our packaging, then our entire logistics, to create eco‑friendly shipments — easy for the workshop and fast for the customer.

Hard to set up, easy to improve

It's what I like most about LE CHEMISEUR®, and what makes me confident about the future: we improve constantly, and fast.

Why? Because we know our customers, and because — with no stock and no distributors — we can change almost any aspect of our site or a product, almost instantly.

The environmental gains

Less waste

Efficiency is at the heart of the precision economy. By matching production to real demand, you remove the costs of surplus and overproduction — and you cut your environmental footprint. The industry, by contrast, produces billions of garments that are never sold each year: up to $140 billion in unsold goods, according to Business of Fashion and McKinsey.

At LE CHEMISEUR®, every shirt sold emits 43% less CO₂ than the average ready‑to‑wear shirt sold online, thanks to the elimination of overproduction, fewer returns and European fabrics.

See the detailed study →

More mindful consumption

The precision economy also opens the way to healthier consumption, one that favours quality over quantity.

Today, the men's shirt market rests largely on impulse buying: poorly fitted shirts, made in China, bought during the sales.

By ordering made‑to‑measure, the customer thinks about what he needs and accepts a two‑ to three‑week wait to receive a truly personalised, high‑quality product.

The new luxury

We must move toward greater sustainability. But many of us still want to treat ourselves. The precision economy offers a brand‑new answer: it no longer pits pleasure against ecology.

The new luxury is to consume less, but better: high‑quality products, made especially for you, with no waste.

That's also why LE CHEMISEUR® is now a certified B Corp menswear brand.

About: LE CHEMISEUR® →