Choosy

About Choosy
• CEO and Co-Founder Jessie Zeng, CTO Sharon Qian and Chief
Operating Officer- Mo Zhou
• A technology start-up that uses machine learning based algorithms to
identify fashion styles trending on Instagram
• Value proposition: to offer unique, eye catching designs inspired by
those worn by celebrities which retailed at much lower prices as
compared to the original pieces ( $100s or $1000s priced between
$50 and $100)
Fast fashion
• Fast Fashion:
• traditional retail apparel cycle of 4-6 times per year
• in 2000s H&M, Zara and Forever 21 brought it down to once a week.
• After debut on runways, fast fashion retailers designed similar, sometimes
identical, designs to be sold much cheaper
• Production and shipping cycles of less than 6 weeks
• China a major manufacturing hub from 2000-2015
Shop the Creative’s original model
• Developed out of a personal blog by Zeng
• Took style inspirations from streets of New York or Instagram
• Ordered similar samples from a wholesaler in China through an app
• Modeled for the same.
• Based on feedback, list designs for sale on her website and submit
orders for production

• Problem: Difficult to get style inspiration, wanted to automate the

search process
From Prediction to Action
1. Understanding of Customer demographics
2. Analytics and Machine Learning
3. Rapid Manufacturing and Supply chain
1. Understanding Customer Demographics
Influencer Marketing
• Three segments of Influencers
• Zeng herself was an influencer

• Brand building:
• Partnered with 3 influencers each with 500K to 1 million Insta followers for
photo shoot and promotional video
• Subway marketing campaign
• Advertisement in trains and stations
How was AI used at Choosy?
• Machine Learning: Supervised : Image Classification
• Recognise trending fashion
• Identify patterns
• Divide the influencers into categories
• 8L design
• Image classification models to identify between celebrity face or clothing
• CNN – deep learning
• Sentiment analysis: NLP to analyze positive and negative comments
2. Analytics and Machine Learning at Choosy
• Search and Classify relevant images:
• Image classification algorithm using 7 million parameters
• CNNs to recognize objects in images
• Trained to detect clothing : Training data – 800000 fashion images annotated with 1000
descriptive attributes
• CNN would review all photos posted by a curated group of high-impact Insta users over
a period of time and extract that had relevant clothing images
• Classified the influencers
• Each photo was classified .. Given a score between 0-100 based on number of likes,
sentiment analysis using NLP
• Use data about top selling product… get images with styles similar to top
selling
• Also expand to accessories and home decor
3. Rapid Manufacturing and Supply chain

• In 2018, Choosy launched with 10 styles per week in standard and plus sizes
• Each day, team reviews top insta photos of previous week, to decide which to create
• Design is finalized
• Development estimates the product’s measurement to create a computer rendering
• Product team submits rendering to Choosy’s team in China, which creates pattern for
each design, purchases the right fabric and sews 2 samples
• One sample sent back to US for photo shoots and other to manufacturer
• 20 manufacturer
• Pictures of Models photo shoot posted on Instagram and Website as biweekly
“drops”
3. Rapid Manufacturing and Supply chain (contd…)

• Algorithmic search for searching buying intent or interest

• Direct messages

• Inventory:
• No excess inventory
• First run made to order
• If style sold well, more were manufactured
• Production cycle of 7-10 days, total 2 weeks
• Third part logistics facility
• Return rate 15%
Challenges
• Legal issues
• Control by influencers
• Website design
• Finding the right product mix
• To drop ship?
• Plus sizes