![]() ![]() Rumi Neely of Fashion Toast “had one of the bigger audiences in the early days. That strategy revolutionized our business.” “We were working with influencers when they were still called bloggers, before Instagram. “Those early bloggers were perfectly positioned to take advantage of a long-term social media wave,” he said. The nascent firm got a boost from another key change, the “shift from fashion magazines to blogs,” which were the influencers of their day, Mente said. “For us, there’s no such thing as fear of failure with experimentation,” he said, “because the data that we gain from this failure also ultimately helps us improve and assess, then ultimately make the algorithms better.”Ī plan was hatched for Revolve as an online sales platform for a broad lineup of existing fashion brands. In a sense they considered it an asset.ĭata and analytics would drive their choices, becoming part of their “trend forecasting algorithms” that incorporate “data from analysis of thousands of styles, dozens of attributes per style” and the constant accumulation of customer interactions, Mente said. Neither said they were worried about their lack of fashion experience. ![]() Even in 2003, fashion shoppers were growing weary of having to trek to bricks-and-mortar stores to shop for clothing, unsure of whether they would find what they were looking for, Karanikolas said. The pair’s deep dive into keyword searches and online behavior divulged something they hadn’t considered before, well before some longtime fashionistas and clothing industry veterans noticed it. ![]() “And it really helped us spot opportunities consistently, I think, before a lot of the rest of the marketplace.” Data was something we were comfortable with,” Karanikolas said. “Technology was something we’d just grown up with. “We were both very analytical,” Mente said, which helped them home in on an idea for a new business. Mente and Karanikolas were out of a job, but had gained valuable insight about themselves and how well they worked together. But the stock market downturn that began in 2000 turned the boom into a bust. Karanikolas was hired by the same company in 2000, after earning a degree in computer engineering at Virginia Tech.Īs the youngest employees at the company, the two 20-somethings quickly bonded. Mente was in an entrepreneurship program at USC when he dropped out to join software company NextStrat in Los Angeles. That works perfectly when the limitations are understood and taken into consideration,” she adds.Karanikolas and Mente had planned to ride the tech industry dot-com boom that had begun in 1995. Yet, they still want to move forward with the technology because it is such a transformative tool. They want to incorporate generative AI but are also rightly cautious: They have a lot of IP to protect, and are wary of leaks. “On the other side of the spectrum, there are the big brands. They think it’s like magic, which is really a stretch. “On the one hand are the VC-funded startups, which really overestimate what AI can do. On the one hand are the VC-funded startups, which really overestimate what AI can do. “We work with brands that are using generative AI for the first time. For products that are already out there, it’s likely that Midjourney or Dall-e have already incorporated it in their training data.” She also sees a huge gap when it comes to how big brands or smaller startups are approaching the technology. If it’s not out there yet, then it wouldn’t be ideal. Salma Aboukar, founder of generative AI agency Qreates, says her rule of thumb for brands is “if the product has already been released, you can use generative AI. Images uploaded to AI image generators are typically also added to the platform’s database, making leaks possible. Generative AI for fashion design is showing promise, but challenges persist. ![]() Cala uses AI to instantaneously generate designs for fashion items. ![]()
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