2025, eTail Boston. Keynote – Technology as an Engine for Human Connection: How Stitch Fix Is Personalizing Retail with AI

[Introducer]: so up next I wanna invite Greg Strom of the Agile brand and Noah Zamanski, who is the VP of Product client experience at Stitch Fix. They're gonna have a moderated conversation about some of the things that the Stitch Fix Team is doing, and I'll let them take it away and share more.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: All right. Good morning everybody. Looking forward to talking about this. Wow, it's just a little past 10 and we've already talked a lot about some really interesting stuff with ai. We're gonna talk about another aspect of ai, talk about some pretty. Interesting things that Stitch Fix is doing.

We're gonna start with talking about personalization and ai and in addition to how AI can be really powerful in creating that personalized content. Also, how that personalized content can create greater. Customer experiences create greater customer loyalty. And we'll get into some some very recent announcements as well from from Stitch Fix.

So Noah welcome. Thanks for joining us here.

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Greg, thank you very much. It's great to see you. It's great to be in Boston at eTail.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah. Yeah. And you are an alumnus of the Agile Brand podcast, so always. In addition to that why don't you talk about your role at Stitch Fix?

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Sure. So I'm the VP of Client and styling experience, and I lead the product to technology teams that are transforming the way our clients and our stylists really engage with our service.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Great. Stitch Fix uses a lot of AI and personalization and certainly customer data to really tailor the experience. There's another aspect that is really unique about the company as well, which is the idea of human stylists and how those are. Also part of the process. So how do you look at the balance between, you've gotta understand customers, their customer data, their preferences, all of that, and automate and use AI to do that.

But also you've got those human stylists. How do you get, how do you get the balance right? So one doesn't overshadow the other.

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Yeah, it's a great question. And for those of you who don't know, stitch Fix. Stitch Fix is a leading online styling service that helps clients discover the styles that they love, that fit perfectly, so that they can always look and feel their best.

And really from the time when we were founded nearly 15 years ago, it's been about combining the human empathy of stylists with leading edge data science and technology to really deliver the most. Personalized experience to our clients. And, style is deeply personal. And, getting it right is hard.

And that's why we've taken that approach and that's what continues today and really sets us apart. And so the best part of, I think our experience really is. The vast network of seasoned stylists that we have across the country. These are really trendsetters and fashion experts, and they're deeply and highly motivated to understand you and to basically deliver a great, the perfect pieces for you and to help you evolve your style over time.

And so for us, we realized that, we weren't really about a year ago, we weren't really giving our stylists the right visibility that they deserved. And so we decided to change that and we launched stylist profiles and photos. And really what that was about was to shine the spotlight on our stylists and to showcase their expertise, their personalities, and their interests.

And what we observed was really a dramatic increase. In our clients requesting the same stylist back, and that's one of our leading indicators of engagement. And so we knew then that, that how important that human connection was in this world of combining AI with with human stylists.

And so that really, that's the center and that really is amplified. By the tools that we provide our stylists that are AI enabled and the recommendations that we provide to our clients on the site. So for us, it's really as we're moving through this world and the space is moving so quickly we saw some amazing generative AI examples here.

For us, it's really not, choosing between the AI and the humans. It's really advancing both, and that's really what's at the center of our service.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah, and that's great to hear that there's that. That interplay as well as AI is also being used by the stylists. So there's a lot of a lot of technology being used.

But to your point the empathy and the understanding to do that and to do that well, to not only give customers what they're wanting and the right. Sizes and all those things as well as to give those stylists what they need to really make the best human judgments. It takes data, right? It takes a lot of customer data to get things right and to get them right consistently and to learn over time.

How do you look at that value exchange and just, making sure that customers really understand that yes, if you feed more in, you're going to get better results.

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Yeah, absolutely. I, there's so many options out there today, and our clients their time is precious. And for us, the most important thing for us is to set up a two-way dialogue and prove that we're listening to our clients.

And that's really the foundation of trust. And that's the most important thing that we deliver to our clients. And I think the most important part of that value equation. And one example of that is we recently launched a style file, which is an AI powered personalized style profile that we provide to every client after they go through our onboarding.

And it basically helps them understand that what we understood from their style. And just to give you an example, mine is an adventure sport and that's made up of different style elements such as coastal and rugged and active. And it helped me understand, my style and have a conversation with my stylist about that.

And I don't know. You've done your stuff.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah. Yeah. I forget which one off the top of my head. But yeah, it's a great experience and I think that. That's like a whole other take on transparency too, and in, understanding. Okay, when I give information, when I say I like this, not that this is what this AI engine or this brand is understanding.

And I, I think that's a powerful thing because it does actually show, we know that lots of companies have lots of information on us and they're tracking things, but when you actually show, hey, here's what we see. Then you have an opportunity to influence that as well.

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Absolutely. And we look for a variety of ways to do that, both explicitly and implicitly.

Like we've had this experience on our side for a long time, which we call the style shuffle, but it's basically where we show trends and outfits to our clients and they can rate them. And that's a really great explicit signal that we have. The more our clients use our. We don't waste any signals.

We're constantly processing every single item that's sent back to us or that's kept the feedback that the clients lead on the site. Our clients know that the service gets better and better with time. And one of the things that we've been really leaning into is what we call contextual nudges, which is putting into language and explaining to our clients like why we're recommending.

A certain item because it matches their style file or because it's complimentary to an item that they've just purchased. Just having, explaining what the algo is doing, we found has been as impactful as doing improvements to the algorithm itself.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah, definitely. So Stitch Fix has some announcements this week.

Want, I want to get to those as well. And, a lot around AI and generative ai. We'll start with the generative ai. How are you looking at AI assistance and AI assistance in the shopping process, and how does this also reinforce the human aspect as well?

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Yeah, we're very excited.

We've got a bunch of exciting announcements this week. AI assistance is one of them. It's worth just noting that, we've been experimenting and using ai especially with large visual models behind the scenes for quite some time. And two examples of this one is our notices product, which leverages.

Our large language models and our personalization models to help our stylists write really personalized notes to our clients with every fix and the way that we process all like the written natural language, the written comments from our clients is all processed through lms and embedded into our model, our personalization models, so that we're wasting zero signals.

And so the AI assistant is really one of our first. Instances of getting that technology out to our clients. And the problem that we're trying to solve here is our clients tell us that sometimes when they come to our service, they don't exactly know how to express like the styles that they're looking for.

And so this is a really great use case for kind of a multimodal experience where you have natural language and visualization to help clients actually. Visualize what they're talking about, because oftentimes they'll know it when they see it, but we have to help them do that. And so the AI assistant really starts with our request note and it's made up of three components, that natural language to get the conversation going, whether it's a business trip to Boston or it's a wedding in Cabo.

Once we start to understand what the client is looking for. In the backend, we start generating personalized images for that particular client with the vibes. We call it the vibe check in real time. So this is where it's coming to life visually, and I'm seeing, and I'm rating that in real time. And then we put it all together into a visually expressive request note that the client can then send to their stylist.

So it really is a new way of thinking about, starting that in. Inspiration and it's early days. We are experimenting right now on, on our iOS app, so check it out. It's a lot of fun. But we're really excited about where else within the styling journey this could apply, whether it's through an onboarding experience or a preview experience, and we're learning more and excited to to learn more about it.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And again, I think it's. It's something that it humanizes it, it personalizes it, and it also connects the human stylist to the buyer, which I think, so often we're thinking about solely like efficiency improvements or just let's automate stuff. Without having humans involved.

And I, I think that's an important part. Of the equation and certainly a differentiator for you. What about connecting stylists directly with, we talked about how AI is able to enable both customers to have more personalization as well as stylists to learn.

But what about connecting the two?

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Yeah, that, that's one of the the other announcements we're very excited to, to share today is we're building on that the work that we did with the stylists profiles and photos. And now we're launching what we're calling stylists connect, which enables our clients to reach out to our, directly to our stylists in near real time.

Whether they're looking for, some last minute styling advice or have a question about the latest trends. Or fit. It's really about taking that connection to the next level and building on that. And for me it's really about hyper-personalization. I used Styles Connect to plan an outfit for my niece's graduation.

And the conversation I was having with my stylist was it was so natural and it was happening in real time and she was sharing outfits and a great jacket and a shirt. And then she sent that to me in my fix, which is what we call our the box that we send out. It just fit perfectly.

And I got so excited. I took a picture and I sent it to her and then she gave me a bunch of different style advice from that. And that was the moment where I was like, Hey, this is actually a really magical experience that really doesn't exist anywhere else that we can really provide the technology tools for our client and stylist community to really take connection to the next level.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah. Yeah. And I know we talked a bit about. Generative ai, but part of the shopping process and part of buying is really to be able to visualize how it's gonna look before you get it. And, mini, whether that's minimizing returns or just making customers more happy and loyal and stuff.

How are you looking at generative AI and that process?

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Yeah, so we we're excited, by the AI assistant, but we're really not stopping there. And one of the, we saw a lot of impressive visualization in the prior presentation and that space is moving very quickly.

And so our clients have said to us that they really, the most powerful thing for them is to visualize themselves. In in their, in emerging styles and outfits. And so over the next coming weeks we're going to be enabling just that which is really exciting to be able to use a very personalized approach to enable our clients to visualize.

Themselves in in outfit recommendations and and looks. And so more to come there. We'll have more to share in the coming weeks, but that's where we see this going.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah. Nice. Before we wrap up here, I know we've talked about a lot here rapid fire here.

Yep. How do you look at continuously improving? Because, as you mentioned, there's more to come, there's fast moving space. How do you look at. Improving not only the AI and the technology component of this, but really the end customer experience and, balancing that, that personalization and the human aspect of it.

What guides the way that you and your team are approaching new ideas.

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Yeah. So for us, I think it's a few areas. You mentioned a how fast AI is moving and just as we have, since our founding nearly 15 years ago the technology and the AI component is at the center.

Of our service and we're committed to staying ahead. And so that's really number one. Number two, it's really, keeping our stylists at the center as well. And, in a world that's moving to more automation, it's counterintuitive for us to be, investing so much into the human aspect.

But we really see that's what sets us apart and we don't see a world that is. AI or humans for us that world in the future is very much AI with humans. And then, with those two guiding principles, the final one is, is a simple formula, but we basically focus on listening to our customers and clients.

We take an experimentation approach and then we think about moving with velocity. So this is this is how we think about moving forward. And we can, really accelerate the number of cycles of learning cycles to be able to deliver, innovations as quickly as possible to both our clients and stylists.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah. Yeah. And in that scenario, you're able to get feedback not only from customers but from the stylists and then the data, right? So that's, it's all kind of feeding. Together, which is again, a little bit unique from some other some other companies. So I would imagine that.

Accelerates the learning even, or at least the learning potential.

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Absolutely. And we, yeah, we see that as this is like the same, a part of the same flywheel. Yeah. And we, the future for us is really figuring out a very, personal and seamless way to integrate that, continue to integrate the AI technology with the human connection.

And we are, we're really. Excited about what that future looks like because of what we're seeing in the market and what the data's telling us.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. I think that wraps things up here. So I, I think it's really refreshing to hear about that human component still being there.

So it's and and yet the powerful use of ai. Noah, thanks for talking with me today,

Noah Zamansky, VP, Product, Client Experience, Stitch Fix: Greg. Thanks so much. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Great. Thank you.

Greg Kihlstrom, Host, The Agile Brand: Thank you, gentlemen. That was great.