Essay about Assignment: Personal Stylist

Submitted By axeloban
Words: 1748
Pages: 7
Open Document
A Personal Stylist for Every Shopper - The Business of Fashion

24/10/2014

FASHION 2.0

A Personal Stylist for Every Shopper
BY VIKRAM ALEXEI KANSARA 1 DECEMBER, 2013

London-based start-up Thread, which has attracted a number of influential investors, advisors and retail partners, is building a scalable personal styling service with an ingenious blend of human stylists and intelligent algorithms.

Thread.com | Source: Thread
LONDON, United Kingdom — A personal stylist for every shopper. In today’s increasingly style-conscious but time-pressed world, where even shopping online can be fragmented and frictionful, it’s a compelling vision.
But a service that can curate fashion just for you, sourcing and recommending products that fit personal parameters like taste, style, size, brand preferences and price isn’t easy to deliver. Basing such a service on human stylists alone makes it expensive and impossible to scale. Meanwhile, the kind of algorithms that power sites like Netflix (a movie subscription service with over 29 million users that is known for having one of the world’s most effective personal recommendation engines) often fail to capture the nuances of fashion, with its subjective tastes, trend cycles and gatekeepers.
Now, a London-based start-up called Thread is tackling the problem with a blend of man and machine, using intelligent algorithms to help professional, human stylists be more efficient and deliver personalised fashion recommendations at scale.
“There is a wave of new technology where you have humans and machines working together to do things far better than either could do alone,” said co-founder and CEO Kieran O’Neill, a serial entrepreneur who launched one of the web’s first videosharing sites (pre-YouTube) when he was only 15 years old and, later, dropped out of university to found Playfire, a successful social service for console gamers, which was backed by the founders of Skype and acquired last year.
“It would be impossible to deliver a truly personalised experience at scale with just stylists and no technology, as it would simply take too long to pull the outfits together each week by hand. At the same time, if it was purely algorithmic then the quality would simply not be there. By man and machine working together you get a superior result than either working alone,” continued O’Neill.
When Thread first launched, its ratio of stylists to users was about one to one hundred. But the company — which currently employs two full-time stylists and 40 freelancers (working part-time) — aims to radically improve this. “We’re working on changes that will let us get to one stylist per 10,000 clients and far beyond,” said O’Neill, who founded Thread, in June 2012, with Ben Phillips, an ex-Google engineer, and Ben Kucsan, a product designer who has worked for Twitter and Google. Shaunie
Brett, a stylist who previously worked with Joe McKenna and has held positions at Burberry and a personal styling site called
The Chapar, has come on board as style director and manages Thread’s team of professional stylists.

http://www.businessoffashion.com/2013/12/thread-kieran-oneill-offers-a-personal-stylist-for-every-shopper.html

1/4

A Personal Stylist for Every Shopper - The Business of Fashion

24/10/2014

“Thread gives people their own personal shopper for free to help them find the clothes they love,” said O’Neill. “It solves a problem I had personally for many years: I wanted to dress well, but I was busy and didn’t have time to shop regularly. Beyond my own experience, I have many friends who want to dress well, but don’t enjoy the current shopping experience. They feel overwhelmed by Westfield [shopping mall] or the 50,000 items on ASOS, and often aren’t sure exactly what to pair with what.
They all want to look good, but right now there’s so much friction to buying clothes, it’s crazy.”
Thus far, the company, which currently targets the fast-growing menswear
Show More

Related Documents: Essay about Assignment: Personal Stylist

History Of Cosmetology

Since I currently have a wonderful job as a sales rep for an industrial supplier, I decided to focus on the next chapter of my life for this assignment. Down the road, I would like to open my own business and so my next big interview will presumably be with a bank. Naturally, a bank will do their own reference checks and credit score checks so I will focus on my character and achievements from a business standpoint. To cover a brief overview of my vision and goals we must go back to childhood.…

Words 1235 - Pages 5

Dani Papers

Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Danielle Shay ENG 225: Introduction to Film July 23, 2013 The scene and film that I have chosen for this assignment is Jacob and Bella Dance from Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1. The production design is by Richard Sherman. The art director is by Lorin Fleeming. The director for part 1 and 2 is Bill Condon. And Stephenine Meyer wrote all the books. The production design “is the creation and organization of the physical world surrounding a film story.” The production…

Words 774 - Pages 4

Freedom of Speech and Australian Male Politicians Essay

are still burdened by the essentialist view that they belong primarily in the home. Nowhere is this more obvious than in politics, where news media's stereotypical representation of female politicians focuses more on their physical appearance and personal lives than the issues they stand for. Australia swore in its first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, on June 24, 2010, and since then there has been countless critical media articles published. However, the difference between Gillard and…

Words 2147 - Pages 9

Hair Stylist Research Paper

Working With A Hair Stylist To locate another beautician, it is fitting to search for another lady with a cut that you like, and discover who her beautician is. Another alternative is to meeting hairdresser at prescribed salons and see what they recommend for you. For African-American ladies this is especially vital, since working with dark hair takes exceptional abilities that are not basic to each beautician. An expression of alert: If hairdresser is lounging around with nothing to do, sitting…

Words 948 - Pages 4

Essay on DFA7130 Teaching, Learning and Assessment.

Contents Glossary of terms Section 1 • Introduction • Learner 1 Profile • Learner 2 Profile • What the learning theories tell you about different ways to help learners learn most effectively • How different types of assessment help in supporting and monitoring learning and helping learners to make progress • How applying learning and assessment theories might help you to develop and extend your current approaches to enabling and assessing learning Section 2 • Scheme of Work…

Words 2907 - Pages 12

Pay Systems Essay

Running Head: PAY SYSTEMS IN U.S. ORGANIZATIONS Pay Systems in U.S. Organizations TUI University Nicole M. Hawkins MGT 511 Module 1 Session Long Project Dr. Kyle Steadham Introduction Pay systems within the United States vary from organization to organization, as there is a vast divide in compensation scales amongst the public and private sector. This paper will examine the difference of internal and external equity; and if employees are compensated fairly. This will also lay-out how…

Words 1837 - Pages 8

Wedding Project Summary

uke ssays.co m http://www.ukessays.co m/essays/marketing/the-wedding-pro ject.php The wedding project Need help? ☎ 0115 966 7955 1.0 Execut ive Summary The Wedding Project One of the most signif icant days in a person's lif e is her wedding day! To ensure that such a momentous event goes of f without a hitch, appropriate planning is required. And when it comes to wedding planning, picking one's partner could very well be the easiest of all the planning decisions to make. Months will…

Words 3385 - Pages 14

Apple and Samsung Brand Positioning Essay

1.0 Introduction APPLE Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc., which is a multinational corporation that creates consumer electronics, computer software, and commercial servers, and a digital distributor of media content. On 1 April 1976, Apple was established in Cupertino, California and incorporated on 3 January 1977. The founders are Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who started with a Apple’s computer company in the year 1976. Apple has expanded into a very complex company that specializes…

Words 7759 - Pages 32

Business Journalism in India Essay

Business and Magazine Journalism (combination of Niche I and II) 1 Growing importance of business journalism, a brief history (2) 2 The structure of financial management in the country starting with the Finance Minister, (5) rest of the bureaucracy, RBI governor, Planning Commission, SEBI, Banking sector 3 The Budget preparation and presentation, factors influencing the annual budget, role of (5) subsidies and foreign exchange reserves 4 Companies, balance sheets, AGMs window dressing…

Words 26083 - Pages 105