An Online Marketplace for Fashion That Gets Personal
An online marketplace called Shoptrue launched on Tuesday. It’s driven by machine learning and meant to provide a more personalized shopping experience.
According to the company, the Shoptrue platform displays about 2,000 fashion brands and provides a one-click, unified checkout experience. The platform aims to enable shoppers to share their preferred fashions and style point of view, either publicly or privately, and to seek out style ideas and product recommendations from stylists and influencers.
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Shoptrue has an onboarding quiz to help establish baseline preferences and generate a personalized “shop” with an initial set of curated recommendations culled from the men’s and women’s products listed on the site. The quiz is also designed to help provide editorial content mapped to users’ interests.
With its machine learning technology, the Shoptrue platform intends to constantly learn and improve based on a variety of user interactions, product engagement and purchase behaviors, so over time, the user’s experience will feel increasingly individualized.
ShopTrue was launched by Romney Evans, who cofounded the True Fit fit technology company. According to Evans, the Shoptrue marketplace provides a “highly personalized experience” matching people to their preferred brands and styles in a way that’s more accurate and personal than typical style recommendations seen on many e-commerce websites.
“Informed by a data-driven understanding of the relationship between shoppers and what they love to wear, the Shoptrue team has developed exclusive capabilities that reinsert the user into the AI curation experience, as opposed to style recommenders that rely solely on a prescriptive algorithmic approach,” Evans said in a statement. “Shoptrue is grounded in the belief that AI [technology] should complement and enhance every part of the fashion discovery process, but not replace it.”
Also in on the venture is Condé Nast veteran and fashion tech entrepreneur Brandon Holley, who has become Shoptrue’s chief fashion officer. Holley built Everywear, a software platform providing style inspiration, which has been incorporated into Shoptrue.
In addition, John Lashlee, a former data scientist for Netflix and LinkedIn, has become Shoptrue’s vice president of data science.
With the marketplace format, Shoptrue does not own the merchandise listed or manage the shipping to customers, but would get commissions on the sales. It sells items from Nike, Ganni, Wolford, Helmut Lang, Adidas and Max Mara, among others.
According to the company, Shoptrue will soon be able to pre-filter size and fit specifications on behalf of shoppers to ensure they only see products that are available in their preferred sizing, eliminating discouraging stock outs for customers.
Further streamlining the shopping experience is the site’s one-click unified checkout across brands.
Company executives also said Shoptrue is geared to help consumers receive the styles and fits they want, will help brands and retailers capture more shoppers and reduce returns, in effect supporting the growing trend toward more sustainable commerce.
“It will take time, but today begins our rollout of an exciting stream of innovation and distinctive experiences that will make it easy to get only what you love,” said Evans. “We aspire to delight shoppers and earn their trust as we improve their shopping experience every month and every quarter through innovation, trial and error, and by listening to their feedback.”
Evans also indicated that Shoptrue enables users to curate and eliminate items they don’t like, and build “shops” that reflect their preferred style, brands, fit and size. The site will exit beta in the first quarter of 2023 with the introduction of these peer-generated shops.
“We are making it easier for people to find only the things they’re going to love, and then give them the tools to organize and share their style POV with the world,” said Holley.
