Product Discovery Elevated with Fashion AI for The Handsome, the Fashion Powerhouse
2 Common Problems & Their Solutions
YesPlz.AI, March 2023
The Handsome is one of the most popular online luxury fashion retailers with a rich selection of brands and products for both men and women, that are fashion-forward and stylish.
The Handsome’s global shoppers value fashion trends, and love discovering the latest products to take their wardrobes to the next level.
The Handsome is a fashion powerhouse, with thousands of new products added everyday, but didn’t have enough engineering resources, just like other fashion retailers, to realize all of their ideas for product discovery and recommendations.
As a global luxury online retailer, it considers the website to be the key point of the shopper experience, and needed a product discovery experience that matched its stylish aesthetic, sophisticated shoppers, and editorial styles.
The Handsome’s Challenges Are Common in eCommerce
Problem 1: Lack of advanced product discovery
A common problem for eCommerce retailers, The Handsome’s product catalog is robust and filled with variety, but only popular products were being sold (a typical longtail problem, especially for retailers with larger catalogs), leaving much of their product catalog undiscovered by shoppers. The only way to show more diverse products to shoppers was to build advanced product discovery, which wasn’t possible due to resource constraints.
Problem 2: Limited engineering resources
Although The Handsome team had amazing ideas on how to improve product discovery based on their own experience, they had limited engineering resources to build out their ideas internally. Struggling to keep up with their already heavy workload, the engineering team simply didn’t have the capacity to build out new product discovery.
The YesPlz AI Solution for The Handsome
With automated product tagging, powered by AI, YesPlz was able to step in and generate a variety of product discovery for The Handsome, including:
- The Virtual Mannequin Filter
- AI-Powered Recommendations
- A Unique Fashion Discovery Quiz
The Handsome and YesPlz AI collaborated to build the Discovery of Taste, based on The Handsome’s knowledge of their own shoppers. The Handsome team had the ideas and logic to build super-powered recommendations, and just needed an AI boost from YesPlz to get the product built. By combining their respective strengths, The Handsome and YesPlz AI were able to work together to build effective product discovery that made sense for these particular shoppers.
And, there was no need for internal engineering resources–by speedily integrating with YesPlz AI discovery, The Handsome had instant access to effective, innovative product discovery tools, without needing to expand their internal engineering resources.
A Virtual Mannequin Filter to Engage Shoppers
Powered by fashion AI image tagging, the Virtual Mannequin Filter unlocked advanced product discovery for The Handsome, all while maintaining the sophistication that The Handsome needed to keep its brand image and appeal to shoppers.
The Handsome shoppers were well-versed in fashion–and the Virtual Mannequin Filter empowered them to actively engage in their own product discovery journeys.
The Handsome shoppers can now filter by preferred silhouette, pattern, and color on a virtual mannequin, making the shopping experience innovative and intuitive.
And best of all–shoppers can now discover new products and styles they might not have been able to previously express using text-based search, solving The Handsome’s longtail discovery problem.
The Virtual Mannequin Filter makes navigating The Handsome’s vast product catalog easier and more manageable, as shoppers can now easily filter the styles they love.
Behind the scenes, The Handsome only needed to plug into the Virtual Mannequin Filter after using YesPlz AI image tagging–a simple and easy integration process.
Collaboration To Build A One-of-a-Kind Fashion Quiz
“Discovery of Taste” is a unique fashion quiz born from the collaboration between YesPlz AI and The Handsome. Shoppers can discover their own personal style by swiping “like” or “dislike” on a set of images, and are then given product recommendations based on their style category.
Based on The Handsome’s shopper knowledge and YesPlz’s user interviews conducted to simulate the discovery experience, “Discovery of Taste” is a memorable discovery experience.
For example, a shopper may receive “Modern, Classic” as their fashion tastes–and then sees timeless, modern products like a silk blouse, a wool turtleneck, and cream-colored blouses. Shoppers can even see definitions of their personal style results, to learn what exactly what their style means.
The Discovery of Taste also helps The Handsome learn more about shoppers to build even better product discovery and recommendation apps.
Shoppers’ product discovery is expanded, as she starts to see new products, solving the problem of insular discovery.
And, product recommendations are generated using fashion AI, so there was no extra work required from The Handsome.
Shoppers are guided to find new products in an engaging, entirely new way that’s delightful and memorable.
Built from The Handsome expertise and YesPlz’s fashion AI, “Discovery of Taste” is an example of the power of collaboration between retailers and YesPlz AI.
AI Product Recommendations That Are Perfectly Different, But Similar Enough to Spark Interest
The perfect product recommendation is one that’s similar to a shopper’s tastes, but different enough to inspire more product discovery.
YesPlz teamed up with The Handsome to create AI-product recommendations that understand what shoppers are looking for, based on style like silhouette, length, brand, and fit. By creating curated recommendations using AI, The Handsome can now show shoppers a diverse range of products that are relevant, but still interesting enough to spark discovery.
AI-powered product recommendations also create more opportunities for shoppers to discover less popular, but still relevant products.
Best of all, AI tagging makes recommendation-building seamless and fast, since recommendations are generated using pre-tagged product attributes.
The Initial Results
While we anxiously await results, The Handsome is already seeing more engaged shoppers and an overall better UX experience. Internally, The Handsome was able to free up internal resources to focus on their most pressing needs, and now has a full product discovery system using AI that is self-sufficient.
We’ll update soon with initial results!
