Fashion Meets Analytics through New Startup, Stylitics

As a full time working analyst who recently purchased six pairs of shoes within a five day time span, I may have found just the site to obsess over.

Stylitics is a New York City based startup that helps consumers keep their style fresh and better understand their wardrobe habits. In addition, the site offers brands a way to track consumer demographics, and the media/content providers have quick access to consumer fashion trends.

Co-Founder Zach Davis, who describes his style as classic and lists Cary Grant as a style inspiration (swoon) says that he has always been a follower of style through friends, but now is trying new things he didn’t 6 months ago. Though his career background was not in fashion before Stylitics- it had consisted of experience in music, consumer insights/marketing, and mobile- Davis has always been interested in seeing what products impacted people. And now, he believes that consumers are smarter than ever and want more data so Stylitics is a good fit for that.

Through Stylitics, users can see the actual percent of how much they wear certain items in their closets as opposed to others. Right now, the site is very appealing to 18- 35 year olds and particularly moms who like the idea of managing their kids’ closets. Personally, I like the idea of having an “assistant” help me remember what I wore last week.

Since consumers are most concerned with two things- relationships with brands and privacy, the Stylitics team has addressed both.

Consumers have personal pages customized with all of their wardrobe data and no data is shared with Stylitics partners directly by name. Brands only have access to anonymous data. However, consumers can get a brand badge by wearing brands multiple times in a row and can opt-in to directly engage with brands (this helps relationship building between consumer and brand).

On the brand side of things, brands can see the trend of any type of clothing item, with information like where consumers wear the particular style, what styles of that item people like the most, and the popularity of their brand generally speaking or in certain areas of the country. This is to “give them perspective of how things are changing in real time”, Davis says, adding that brands also have complete access to data in the form of sleek inforgraphics.

Right now Stylitics has five partner brands, including Gilt Groupe and Lucky Brand. And just last week, Davis had a meeting with Ralph Lauren.

For bigger content providers like a Glamour or Lucky Magazine, Stylitics provides up to the minute fashion facts (with infographics) that these magazines can easily use. For smaller content providers, such as blogs, Stylitics offers the option to include a link to the blog, through which a blogger can therefore better understand the style of their own readers. (Coming soon on Pretty Innovative!)

After starting to use the site and learning more of the behind-the-scenes information from Davis, it’s no surprise to me that Stylitics won the Wharton Business Plan Competition just last April.

Upcoming goals for the team include adding Facebook Connect to the site (this week!), creating a mobile app (late December 2011), and ramping up to about 30,000 very active users by the end of next year.

Right now though, I’m just trying to find some time to finish adding photos (found on the site or added by hand) of my wardrobe to the site so it can start working for me. I already have a feeling that I wear a certain black boyfriend blazer from Zara a little too often…

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