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In recent years, the fashion world has begun to digitize rapidly. Fashion retailers have had to adjust to customer demand amid virtual showrooms and online shopping boosted by the pandemic.
One of the industry’s biggest challenges is getting shoppers to buy items in their carts, which can be difficult for customers who can’t imagine how clothes or accessories will look on themselves, rather than on a model. That’s StyleScan Inc. It is trying to change that by offering visual technology powered by artificial intelligence to improve the online shopping experience.
The company, which is based in Brentwood but has its primary studio in Van Nuys, was founded in 2018 by Larissa Posner, who holds a certificate in machine learning business applications from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more than 10 years of experience advising companies on investing. Relationships and strategies. Posner also spent time working as a catalog model.
In the year While working in quantitative finance in 2018, Posner realized she didn’t have time to shop in physical stores and many were closing around her. She thinks it’s a “retail apocalypse.”
“Barney’s is closed on the Upper West Side near my house. Every major retailer was closing their chain stores because of what they called the ‘Amazon effect’ at the time,” Posner recalled. “Everybody started shopping online, not going into stores. At the same time, I looked at Shopify and some of these other platforms, and their stocks are rallying and doing amazing. Naturally, you should assume favorable conditions and anticipate the future of e-commerce. So what do we do now to build a product that the market will demand later?
Posner said she wants to be her own client. She had the idea to upload her photo and see herself in retail items. She brought together computer scientists, venture capitalists and fashion executives to develop virtual clothing technology.
Posner went to the group in financial services at Corporate Profile, an investor relations firm that represents publicly traded biotech, technology and financial services companies, and asked if they could predict stock prices.
“The answer was ‘yes’. Now we have many breakthroughs in computer vision and AI. “We can superimpose one outfit from one photo onto another,” Posner said. “We need to train and build neural networks and train algorithms. But yes it is possible. And I raised my first million dollars. That was 2019.
That’s when it gets serious.
How it works
StyleScan’s image processing technology takes a 2D photo of an item of clothing or an accessory and converts it into a 3D volumetric mesh, which can be placed on people of different shapes and sizes.
According to Posner, this technology can be used to make many areas of the fashion industry more sustainable and cost-effective, one of which is traditional photography.
“A single photo of an outfit, say, on a mannequin. Now, that garment can be viewed in every size, not just one sample size. Now, it can be seen in women of different skin tones, body shapes, sizes,” Posner said. “And they’re all digital.[We]can generate zero waste. We can turn things around in 48 hours, whereas if you were doing a traditional photo shoot it would be at least two weeks, maybe three weeks. And then cost, you probably can’t compare cost.
The StyleScan team surveyed 12 clothing companies of all sizes, from small to large, to find out how much an e-commerce photo shoot costs them. For small retailers, one final image can run around $50, while large luxury brands charge up to $1,000 per image.
“With StyleScan, it’s the price of a bottle of water,” Posner said.
In addition to cost savings and sustainability, retailers using their technology have seen increased sales and conversion rates, Posner said.
The company offers two types of services, model switcher and style switcher. In the first, a customer can select an item on the retail site and choose from a variety of models to visualize the pieces.
“Our next product is Style Switch, where you can dress a model from a list of retail items and be your own stylist and build a whole look and preview before you buy,” she said.
Who benefits?
Customers who want to use the company’s technology choose from a list of subscription levels based on volume and how many models they need for their site.
“Do you want just one item, one model, or do you want something in multiple sizes and colors? … It depends on volume, revenue, and availability. Also, it requires a little integration into our partner’s e-comm. Integration is just managing their Shopify account. it is.
The company is an official Shopify partner. Customers will be given access to Shopify where they can upload any images.
StyleScan plans to offer a variety of models.
“Maybe someone will be a certain amount of influencers and that will be something you can access with your higher premium package,” Posner said. “A pack where you can not only change the model, but also change the style. That’s our premium crème de la crème pack.”
After 30 days with StyleScan, jewelry retailer Miliana saw a 93 percent increase in conversion rates and a 367 percent increase in total dollar sales.
“Typically, you photograph earrings on a white background and nothing else. And what you find is that a consumer comes to the site and then they can’t visualize the item. How big is this earring? Where does it hit you? And so, the customer now goes to Google. He starts scrutinizing the item and you have the potential to lose a customer, Posner said.
With StyleScan, we’ve added our magic button ‘virtual model test’. Now, you can see it on women of different skin tones and you can see the item and visualize how big it is.
Posner says it’s key not to operate like a black-box company where customers upload photos of the clothes and download the resulting images.
“We have professional designers, professional stylists (and) professional creative directors on staff, so it’s like a cyborg where one person runs the software and the human does the quality control of whatever comes out and delivers to the client.” he said. “We ensure that there is aesthetic control over the software output.”
With the transition between technology and fashion comes a lot of uncharted territory, but Posner said tech companies and decision makers in the industry will always be on a learning curve as they try to understand how to navigate these changes.
Posner also says she’s proud to see her customers see the direct impact StyleScan has on their businesses and enjoy working with them more.
“Since we launched… we’re seeing customers coming back and doubling and upgrading their subscriptions and looking for more SKUs per month… fueled by styles. Now they’re not just seeing the aesthetic improvements, they’re seeing the efficacy data as well,” Posner said.
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