This document discusses how data alone cannot decode fashion consumers, as fashion choices reflect personal style and identity. While e-commerce sales are growing and data can provide product recommendations, fashion involves nuanced factors that are difficult for data to fully capture. Therefore, fashion companies must leverage both data-driven algorithms and human curation to create personalized shopping experiences that deliver the emotion and excitement of fashion for digital consumers.

1. D A T A A L O N E C A N ’ T D E C O D E
T H E F A S H I O N C O N S U M E R

2. Today our sartorial psyche and shopping behaviors are as close to our
phones and computers as our fingers are.
We can express our personal style, discover new brands and buy items
with just a few swipes.
And e-commerce — which, by 2018, is expected to generate
$86 billion in sales of apparel and
accessories in the US alone
is playing a critical role in shaping the fashion industry at large.

3. D A T A I S T H E N E W B L A C K
In e-commerce, data is also being used to aid personalization and product
discovery, by delivering more accurate product recommendations.
Retailers can build discovery
algorithms based on each shopper’s
purchasing behavior, the items in
their shopping cart, or items they
have searched for or liked.
If a shopper searches online for a 70s-inspired fringe leather jacket, a
fashion company can use that data trail to better understand what other
products she might like.

4. B U T C A N R O B O T S D E F I N E
S T Y L E ?
Fashion is intensely personal. Our clothing choices reflect a tremendous
amount about who we are, how we perceive ourselves, and how we want
the world to see us.
Clothes can serve as a security blanket, a suit of armor, and a source of
confidence, and each fashion purchase is the result of complicated,
nuanced and often unconscious factors.
So much more than just online
searches go into our fashion choices,
and it’s difficult for data to capture
the whole picture.

5. A L G O R I T H M S A R E N O T
E N O U G H , B U T N E I T H E R
A R E H U M A N S
Fashion companies must leverage both data and people to create
an unbeatable commerce experience that delivers the
excitement, emotion, and nuance
of fashion for the digital era.

6. L E T ’ S D I S C U S S .
Join Lauren Sherman, reporter at Business of Fashion in
conversation with Tracy Sun, co-founder of Poshmark and Eric
Colson, Chief Algorithms Officer at Stitch Fix – two industry leaders
in building personalized shopping experiences online – as they
discuss the how combining the science of data and the personal
touch of human curation creates an unbeatable online shopping
solution for today’s fashion consumers.