Terry Boyle, co-founder of startup retail site Behold, believes fashion ecommerce is broken for customers.
"It gives them too much choice they don't want, it's not truly personalized and it's too item focused," he told dot.LA.
Consumers don't wear 50 to 80% of what they own, said Boyle, the former president of Nordstromrack.com, Trunk Club and HauteLook. So, Boyle's company packages mostly designer outfits for shoppers hoping that it will make purchases more attractive.
Behold raised $5 million and Tuesday launches its tech platform, where customers can browse outfits recommended to them by artificial intelligence (AI) and a group of professional stylists.
The funding round was led by L.A. investors including Upfront Ventures, Greycroft, Troy Capital Partners, TenOneTen Ventures and Zillow and dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff.
While most people are buying sweatpants and comfy clothes, Boyle thinks the consumer market will shift back to dressier clothes, outfits that tend to be more expensive.
"Just because you can hang out in sweats and a t-shirt doesn't mean you should," Boyle said. "How you dress affects how you feel, so you're starting to see more and more people, as you walk around town, dressing up even if there's no real reason to."
Behold's website is set up like a personality quiz for clothes. Users can click through a series of outfits, ranking them on a scale from ones they'd wear "Never" to "Often." After "training your stylist" by adding measurements, your budget and a few favorite designers, the website generates a curated board of outfits using its "Smart-Collab" technology. The idea has been embraced by subscription box services like Stitch Fix and Frank and Oak.
Every Monday, Behold stylists send seven to 10 personalized outfits to each registered user who can then choose to adjust the outfits or purchase pieces individually. Consumers can choose clothes from a range of prices, although most are designer brands. A quick review of the site by dot.LA found the the tool steered customers to higher priced items even when asked for cheaper ones.
As the pandemic moves retail shopping online, the L.A.-based company sees their model as one that makes discovering new clothes more personalized. Boyle said it's also a smart move for wholesale companies and designers struggling to make money through traditional retail marketplaces like department stores, which have seen a wave of closures.
"The pandemic has made brands more open to understanding that their future channel partners may look different than the ones they had in the past," Boyle said.
Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.
Snap’s parental controls.
Courtesy of Watchful.
Snapchat is planning to introduce Family Center, which would allow parents to see who their children are friends with on the app and who they’ve messaged within the last seven days, according to screenshots provided by Watchful, a product intelligence company. Parents would also be able help their kids report abuse or harassment.
The parental controls are still subject to change before finally launching publicly, as the Family Center screenshots—which were first reported by TechCrunch—reflect features that are still under development.
Santa Monica-based Snap and other social media giants have faced mounting criticism for not doing more to protect their younger users—some of whom have been bullied, sold deadly drugs and sexually exploited on their platforms. State attorneys general have urged Snap and Culver City-based TikTok to strengthen their parental controls, with both companies’ apps especially popular among teens.
A Snap spokesperson declined to comment on Friday. Previously, Snap representatives have told dot.LA that the company is developing tools that will provide parents with more insight into how their children are engaging on Snapchat and allow them to report troubling content.
Yet Snap’s approach to parental controls could still give teens some privacy, as parents wouldn’t be able to read the actual content of their kids’ conversations, according to TechCrunch. (The Family Center screenshots seen by dot.LA do not detail whether parents can see those conversations).
In addition, teenage users would first have to accept an invitation from their parents to join the in-app Family Center before those parents can begin monitoring their social media activity, TechCrunch reported.