How does a fashion e-commerce company provide customized services?

1. StitchFix, an American fashion e-commerce company, is a customized service platform and is known as the Netflix of the fashion industry. Its current market value is approximately US$2.8 billion, and it ranks fifth among the "Global 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2019" selected by Fast Company magazine. An article in Fast Company introduces its two differences.

2. First, use algorithms to capture users’ tastes and enhance warehousing efficiency. Simply put, this company is like your personal stylist. After becoming a member, you will receive express delivery regularly, which contains 5 pieces of clothes that have been selected for you. If you feel satisfied after trying it on, you can buy it and keep it. If you are not satisfied, you can return it for free. If you don’t buy one, you’ll need to pay a $20 styling fee.

3. How does this company know each user’s clothing preferences? First of all, after user registration is completed, a detailed questionnaire must be filled out, including your basic information, favorite clothing colors and styles, occasions you often attend, etc. After that, as purchase and return records and feedback continue to accumulate, StitchFix can continue to improve the accuracy of the algorithm.

4. Eric Colson, the soul of this company’s algorithm system, currently leads a data science team of 80 people. He once served as the director of the data science and engineering team at Netflix. This algorithm system can also improve the company's warehousing efficiency. For example, it can flexibly adjust inventory based on users' purchase records; it can also help warehouse employees calculate the best route for picking up goods, reducing the waste of time.

5. For StitchFix, the recommendations from the algorithm system are not enough. They also ask professional stylists to give more personalized suggestions to assist the algorithm. The company has nearly 4,000 part-time stylists, who will browse the matching suggestions recommended by the algorithm, and then adjust the suggestions recommended by the algorithm based on user feedback on the recommended content, and finally decide which clothes to send. This platform currently cooperates with more than 1,000 clothing companies. If they cannot find products that meet user needs from existing products, they will design and produce them themselves.