There’s a certain romance to shopping in person. The dressing room movie montage, the serendipitous moment of finding the perfect piece in a discarded corner…shopping is much more than just trying on clothes. It’s about the experience as much as it’s about the products themselves. Where luxury stores offer niceties and glasses of champagne, other brands blast music in moody lighting. Some stores use specific scents or colors to communicate who they are to shoppers in order to provide a well rounded experience that goes beyond the clothes they’re selling.
As online shopping continues to soar in popularity since the global pandemic, apparel brands are learning to translate these experiences into the digital realm. By shifting focus to creative social media campaigns and engaging websites, clothing companies are adapting to a more virtual model. But where other industries have implemented algorithmic curation to modernize with an increasingly digital world, the fashion industry has fallen behind.
Why are fashion platforms struggling to curate for users’ personal tastes?
We’re seeing extremely successful algorithms offer personalized recommendations in adjacent industries. Spotify does it with music. With individualized playlists and daily mixes, they have taken over the role of ‘friend with incredibly niche music taste.’ We experience it daily on TikTok, where algorithms captivatingly provide personalized entertainment dependent on our viewing habits. Yet popular clothing sites don’t offer the same services. The way a really good salesperson can read a shoppers aesthetic and anticipate their tastes, online shopping platforms seem unable to harness AI to recommend products that will sell.
We think they’re missing something.
The clothes we buy exist in the physical world in a way that music and entertainment don’t. Shortly after we click ‘purchase,’ clothes live on our bodies. Because everyone’s body is slightly different, the way something looks and feels will always play a determining role in consumption. Online shopping platforms can’t provide the same emotional experience as physical stores until they show how clothes will look on their customers. We think virtual try on is the fashion industry's answer. As consumers continue to crave increasingly personalized digital experiences, platforms need to cater to more than just customer tastes, they need to cater to customers' bodies.
Learn more about virtual try-on here.
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