The interview took place at a party. Monique Fischer hardly knew anyone there. When asked what she did for a living, she said, «I’m a saleswoman.» The response was, «Ah, interesting,» and then the conversation was over. She’s convinced that if she’d introduced herself as a lifestyle consultant or styling coach, the conversation would have continued. «Oh, that’s interesting, too. What would look good on me?»

For Fischer, this scene highlights a problem in her industry. The fashion retail sector faces a shortage of sales professionals; the job is poorly paid and holds little prestige. Yet good saleswomen are «real sales machines.» They determine whether a product succeeds at the point of sale.

Fischer herself has three decades of sales experience. She served as Vice President of International Sales and Sales Director at Willy Bogner in Munich, Strenesse, Gerry Weber, the Paris-based Vivarte Group, Luisa Cerano, and Zimmerli of Switzerland. She has opened over 300 franchise stores and 300 shop-in-shops and introduced brands to new markets on three continents. In 2012/2013, the British trade magazine Drapers named her one of the 100 most influential people in the fashion retail industry. Today, she is self-employed, advises brands on international distribution, and serves on boards as a certified supervisory board member.

From the order pad to the scan

When she started at Bogner, she still wrote up orders by hand. Her handwriting wasn’t always easy to read, so in the evenings the team would go through the orders to find mistakes, such as incorrectly noted color codes. After the sales days, they would sit there for hours adjusting the collections. Today, you hold a scanner up to an item, and a photo appears on the screen—and with some ordering tools, even a video. The time that used to be spent on administrative tasks is now dedicated to serving customers.

Looking back, AI provides reliable analysis: What sold well, which dress didn’t sell well last year, and why. This helps prevent overproduction and brings purchasing closer to actual demand. But the machine doesn’t take the place of brands when it comes to looking ahead. Trend researchers might say that blue is the next big color. «But the question is: How can I convey that to my target audience?»

Shein and Temu operate differently. There, the process is «100 percent» AI-driven, says Fischer: testing trends on social media, producing small quantities, measuring how quickly they sell out, and automatically sending reorder requests to manufacturers.

The sleeve is too short

In the high-end segment, that’s not enough. Fischer often doesn’t realize why a piece didn’t sell until she holds it in her hands again: «It was actually a good piece, but the sleeve was too short.’ That’s why she also advises top management to visit the stores regularly themselves. There, you can see who’s buying your products and what’s missing. Her favorite example is the sleeveless dress for a customer over 50 who would need short sleeves or a matching jacket.

Many brands don't even want the customers they have. Top management often dreams of a customer with model-like measurements, even if their actual customer base is 50+. It’s important to use fresh faces in external advertising to appeal to all age groups, but internally, you need to understand your actual customers and their needs and meet them. «The customers you already have are responsible for generating revenue; those you don’t yet have must be strategically cultivated.»

«Can I help you?»

Fischer would ban this phrase from every store. In 99.9 percent of cases, it’s followed by a «no,» and that first “no” creates a barrier between the sales associate and the customer. A simple “It’s nice to have you here,” accompanied by eye contact and a smile, is better. She sees salespeople as hosts in the future. The more digital business becomes, the more important personal contact will be.

She sees the difference when comparing the two countries. She notes that Swiss stores have a higher staff-to-customer ratio than those in Germany, provide more personalized service, and that stores with skilled sales staff generate significantly higher sales per square meter. She regrets, however, that Jelmoli has nevertheless disappeared from Zurich. Foot traffic has declined everywhere, «we can’t sugarcoat that.».

If a customer tries on an item in the store and then says she plans to order it online, Fischer responds with a question: «How much is advice worth to you?»

Where AI Gets in the Way

Fischer sees a lot of value in apps and social media. A major Swiss retailer suggested items that matched her last purchase in its new app. «That was really helpful.» It becomes uncomfortable, however, when customers feel like they’re being watched: an item you looked at in the store pops up on your phone afterward, or after searching for information about illnesses, you see related offers. «It’s a balancing act.»

She considers chatbots that lead customers into endless loops when handling complaints and returns to be a customer service problem. When customers can no longer reach a human representative, they eventually give up because their time is worth more than the 300 euros they want back—which results in losing good customers forever.

Fischer is currently helping the founder of a sports fashion brand set up a social selling strategy. The brand is sold at select retailers and is also recommended by people who have their own communities. They’re looking for people who believe in the product and would recommend it to their best friends—ideally with a personal story to share. At a retreat focused on health and fitness, the brand was able to win over customers who then recommended it to others. AI helps with newsletters and social media. Fischer rejects standardized, AI-generated responses to the community.

Leading Like in the Tango

Her leadership concept is called Mindstep and is rooted in Argentine tango. When she was learning tango, she realized that the dance involves communication on multiple levels: physical, emotional, and mental. Anyone who thinks one thing but leads another won’t get very far. After just a few steps, the leader can sense whether his partner has understood him. If not, he must give clearer cues or choose simpler steps. Fischer compares the music to the market: Anyone who ignores the beat won’t succeed.

In her booklet *Why Executives Should Dance the Tango*, she argues that every executive should take at least one tango class in order to gain a holistic understanding of communication.

She has experienced many different leadership cultures. In Germany, where she lived for nearly 30 years, instructions were given clearly and directly. At a French corporation, decisions were made before and after meetings, not during the meetings themselves. In Japan, where she frequently presented collections between 2004 and 2013, she once saw a high-ranking manager sleeping in his office. She was told to be quiet—he was thinking for the company.

The Master Plan for the Ruins

Fischer uses AI every day as an assistant: for workshop summaries, cover letters, and analyses that used to take hours. She invests the time she saves into her concepts. She advises a company planning to invest 100,000 francs in AI not to develop anything in-house. Instead, she says, the money should go toward systems that track inventory and sales, a robust CRM, and consistent brand communication.

And what’s the fastest way to ruin a fashion company with AI? «Let AI handle 100 percent of your buying or design, and fire all your buyers and designers immediately.» Most companies that fail, however, fail for several reasons: collections that miss the mark with their own customers, poor leadership that drives away good people, and positions that are given to cronies instead of the right people.

She advises young people who want to enter the fashion industry to start by learning the basics of AI tools. After that, other things matter: networking, attending events, being reliable, and not promising anything you can’t deliver. «At the end of the day, this industry is all about people.»

About the person

Monique Fischer is Swiss and has served as international sales director at companies including Willy Bogner, Strenesse, Gerry Weber, the Vivarte Group, Luisa Cerano, and Zimmerli of Switzerland. Through Monique Fischer Consulting, she advises companies in the textile, fashion, and luxury goods industries on sales, brand positioning, and interim management. She is a DVCT-certified business coach as well as a certified supervisory board member and offers training for executives and sales professionals under the name Mindstep. moniquefischer-consulting.ch

The entire conversation on Spotify

The story begins in 1991. Marek Krynski, a math and philosophy student, sees a segment on MTV about the Love Parade in Berlin. Weeks later, he wakes up in the middle of the night with a thought: We could do that in Zurich, too. «It was like a divine inspiration,» he says in the podcast. «I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.»

Zurich in those days had hardly any clubs, but it did have closing times and a ban on dancing before major holidays. «It was very boring and dead in the city,» Krynski recalls. A visit to Berlin’s Tresor finally convinced him: If Zurich’s Kaufleuten were hosting events similar to those in the German techno stronghold, then Zurich, relative to its population, would be «the most techno-enthusiastic city in the world.» On September 5, 1992, 1,000 to 1,500 people marched down Bahnhofstrasse behind sound trucks. The procession was registered as a political demonstration. «Abolish the ban on dancing» read the first flyer. The Tagesschau news program covered the event.

The forced relocation to the lake basin made the parade a big event

The fact that the parade nearly disappeared after just two editions is almost forgotten today. In 1994, the city refused to grant a permit, arguing that the event was too large, of no interest to anyone, and would litter the streets. Only after weeks of public pressure did the city council relent and move the parade to the lakefront. What started as a stopgap measure turned out to be a stroke of luck. It was only there that the parade could grow to attract an audience of up to one million people.

Krynski himself organized the parade for the last time in 1996, founded a supporting association, and handed over the reins. He still goes every year, though, preferring to be right in the middle of the procession, far away from the permanent stages. When asked if everything was better in the past, he replies dryly: «Yes, yes, of course everything was better back then.» There’s only one thing that really bothers him: that alcohol is now being sold at the parade. On Saturday, he’ll be out on the route again, just as he has been every year since 1992.

The episode is hosted by Christoph Soltmannowski, who was part of the Street Parade’s founding team and organized the press conference back then that helped turn the Zurich City Council’s initial ban on the Street Parade into a major issue. The two discuss counter-demonstrations, early restrictions («No sitting on the parade route») and the musical roots of techno, with audio samples ranging from Chicago house to Belgian New Beat.

The full episode of «Studiocast» with Marek Krynski: youtu.be/QgofY2As9Rc

Selena Calleri is a computational linguist, legal theorist and in-house AI consultant at the TX Group. In the podcast «AI and society - paths into the new world», she talks about a question that is on many people's minds: Does AI really understand language - or is it just simulating?

For Calleri, the answer is clear: «It's actually always just an educated guess. The AI tries to statistically predict what the best possible answer is.» Anyone who has studied computational linguistics, as she has, was immunized against the hype early on. Language models have always been tools for language modeling - now they are simply better because they have more data and more powerful algorithms. She believes that talking about a «thinking being» is a confusion of categories.

A thousand perspectives - and none of your own

She calls what is missing «situatedness». A person is embedded in their history, their experiences, their relationships - all of this shapes their perspective, whether they like it or not. A language model, on the other hand, is a mixture of a thousand perspectives, but has none of its own. The philosopher Donna Haraway aptly describes this blind spot as a «view from nowhere» - the claim to an objective view from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Blonde jokes as a symptom

Calleri's assessment of the much-vaunted neutrality of AI is particularly pointed. «AI is no more neutral than we are - it simply reflects all opinions in the world.» The training decides what goes in, and therefore also what comes out. As an example, she cites multilingual models in which blonde jokes suddenly also appear in language areas where such stereotypes simply do not exist culturally - a side effect of multilingualism that transfers cultural imprints unnoticed. In short: language models hold a mirror up to us - and it shows our own prejudices.

The mirror does not lie, it only shows us

How can this be improved? Calleri does not advocate technical patent remedies, but rather more diversity - in teams, in training data, in discourse. More perspectives at the table and a willingness to tolerate contradictions instead of rushing to force a consensus. «There is no absolute truth,» she says with the composure of a philosopher who means it.

Her view of the next ten years is sober: she expects a growing social divide between a hyper-digitalized class and a counter-movement that focuses on sovereignty and self-determination in technology. This tension will increase noticeably in Europe in particular. What can help? Creating spaces in which people can talk to each other who don't normally do so. «Community building», says Calleri - and suggests, not entirely tongue-in-cheek, eating together as an underestimated means of democratization.

The video podcast «AI and Society—Paths to a New World,» hosted by Christoph Soltmannowski, is produced by the Text Akademie Foundation. Two episodes are released each month on Spotify, YouTube and the major other podcast platforms. Produced by Castalavista.

Anyone using ChatGPT or Claude today assumes they are talking to a single model. But this idea is outdated. Sven Pfiffner, AI researcher at the Computer Graphics Lab at ETH Zurich, explains: "The future belongs to networked specialists - different sub-models coordinate with each other, similar to specialists in a hospital. The user is transformed from prompter to orchestrator: it is no longer the fine-tuning of every instruction that counts, but the ability to communicate what you want. "This is becoming less and less different from how I would explain it to a team colleague," says Pfiffner.

Trust is good, evaluation is better

As autonomy increases, so does the question of control. As AI works probabilistically, the unexpected can always occur, admits Pfiffner. Ongoing qualitative evaluation is therefore crucial - recording, analyzing and readjusting interactions. He warns of the difference between demo and reality: "Many manufacturers only show controlled scenarios. "It's not the most impressive demo that counts, but the verifiable quality in real use."

Avatars: Fascination and risk

The more complex the systems in the background, the simpler the interface must become. Chat windows are only an intermediate stage in the long term, says Pfiffner. He is working at ETH under Dr. Rafael Wampfler on a digital Einstein that speaks with the physicist's voice and reacts to its counterpart via webcam. However, the more human the machine appears, the higher the risk of emotional attachment. OpenAI had to scale back its GPT model in 2025 after users developed a personal dependency. Pfiffner believes the responsibility lies with the manufacturers: "It has to be clearly communicated - this is a machine, not a person."

AI as a colleague, not a replacement

Pfiffner does not foresee any mass redundancies in the near future, but does see a change: repetitive tasks will be delegated and people will gain space for creativity and personal experience. "Everything an AI creates is a combination of everything it has seen. Humans have their own feelings - and you will always feel that." His advice: develop an intuition for AI systems through regular interaction instead of getting lost in technical details.

The episode on Spotify

The video podcast «AI and Society—Paths to a New World,» hosted by Christoph Soltmannowski, is produced by the Text Akademie Foundation. Two episodes are released each month on Spotify, YouTube and the other major podcast platforms.

Turrell's practical examples seem almost utopian: he increased his personal productivity twentyfold within a year. He used to create one project proposal per day - now it's up to 30. Instead of ten contacts, he now maintains 150 personalized follow-ups. This leap is the result of a consistent orchestration of AI tools that is fundamentally changing knowledge work.

The looming employment crisis

But progress has its downsides. Turrell warns of a massive crisis on the labor market in the next 15 years. The discrepancy between the education system and the AI economy is huge. An example from his company illustrates the explosive nature of this: he would theoretically need 20 employees for his current output - in reality, he manages the workload with just two employees and AI. Company growth therefore no longer necessarily leads to new job creation.

Architecture instead of blind faith

Despite the euphoria, Turrell remains a realist. He describes current language models as "approximated intelligence" that occasionally produces errors. A simple prompt is not enough for serious business use; a complex architecture of verification, intelligent data management and human quality control is required.

UnDavos and the future of mankind

With his "UnDavos" initiative, Turrell is also creating an inclusive counterpoint to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in order to generate practical solutions in areas such as AI and health tech.

In ten years' time, it is estimated that AI will be able to perform 98% of tasks better than humans. According to Turrell, our niche remains in critical thinking, genuine creativity and physical presence. Success will accompany those who see lifelong learning as a survival strategy and collaborate with AI instead of competing against it.

with a focus on impact and action. The doctoral researcher currently lives and works in Berlin.