Stylitics received $15 million in Series B funding this week to grow its sales and marketing teams and develop new types of online and in-store styling experiences.
Founded in 2011 as ClosetSpace, a mobile application that provided consumers with outfit recommendations, Stylitics has now rebranded and switched its focus to offering customers like Ann Taylor and Under Armour a visual merchandising platform.
Retailers can recommend outfit inspiration to shoppers through Stylitics’ “Ways to Wear It” widget, suggest accessories to go with products through Stylitics’ “Wear With It” function and let consumers “Mix and Match” products through Stylitics’ software.
The firm uses a combination of artificial intelligence and human stylists to create outfits personalized to the weather, event or desired color palette. Brands can use the software to craft emails and ads personalized to individual customers. It also offers an opportunity to highlight oft-overlooked items.
Founder and CEO Rohan Deuskar said Stylitics increases customer engagement with brands, drives sales and builds loyalty.
“This round of funding validates the increased demand brands have for more intelligent and high-performance visual content,” Deuskar said in a statement. “At a time when the retailer with the best visuals wins, we are offering a new category that is on-brand, dynamic, personalized and outperforms the others with the value it creates.”
In addition to personalizing style recommendations for consumers, Stylitics also tags outfits to create a searchable database, which in-store customer service representatives can use to show customers how to style particular articles of clothing. If a brand installs touchscreens throughout a store, customers can also search for outfits themselves, Stylitics adds.
Stylitics charges brands a monthly subscription for its software. The company claims that, by using Stylitics, customers realize a 1.8 percent increase in conversion rates, 23 percent increase in units purchased per transaction and a 21 percent increase in average order value.
The announcement brings total investment in Stylitics to $20.7 million. PeakSpan Capital led the round, with participation from Trestle Ventures.
Following the funding, PeakSpan Co-founder Phil Dur will join Stylitics board.
“With the rapid growth of digital commerce, retailers are scrambling to keep pace with the consumer demand for more visually exciting and compelling shopping experiences,” Dur said in a statement, adding: “We see Stylitics solving a very real need for brands to extract more value out of their creative assets and scale their content in a fast and affordable way.”
