The Future of Fashion Technology: AI, Branding & Live Shopping Trends | Anya Cheng

0:00Today's episode was a fun one. Talk to Anya Chang. She is the founder of Taylor.style. talking about how they're using AI to help you style your wardrobe. And again, hey, this is the Netflix of wardrobe wearing online. What does that mean? It means ultimately you rent before you own. You don't even have to buy it. You don't have to do laundry. Are you kidding me? No laundry, stylish clothes, saving time. Check, check, check all that and more right about now. Look, we get it. You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that. And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed, but you have a few concerns.

0:39But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people better? AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that. From crafting the perfect survey, it's harder than you might think, to analysis that digs deep, finds patterns, and surfaces trends quickly. Survey Monkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities make it faster and easier than ever before to get insights from real people, helping you make confident decisions for your business. Try it today at SurveyMonkey.com slash Ryan. We have those unique data. We put it together and we buy two companies their styling information from their 10 years operations.

1:18Then we layer on top of larger language model. As they grow, we also grow, but we always one step ahead. If you are a small business or starting a company, now is your time because building AI is easy. All you need is unique defensive data. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now.

1:58We're here to help you get right now. Hey, we can talk about what you should have done. We can talk about what you should do. We need to talk about right now. You know what's right now? It's AI. It's lots of it. It's every day. It's in front of us. But ultimately, hey, I like to look good. It's my style, my image. That's why I go straight to the source. It is Anya Chang. She is the founder and CEO of Taylor. She's making everybody look good. What's up, Anya? Hello, hello, this is Anya from Taylor AI. We use AI to pick clothes for you. In the past, only celebrity has human stylists. Nowadays, with AI, everybody has your personal stylists in your fingertips.

2:32But in addition, we send people real clothes for you to wear for a couple days, a couple weeks. No more shopping, no more laundry. After this, it's a rental service. Before starting a company, I helped build Facebook, Instagram, shopping for Meta, head of product for eBay, also senior director at McDonald's, run their food delivery business. When you are ordering McDonald's from your phone, that was my product, and help Target to build their tech office here in Silicon Valley. Excited to be here today. You really are 40 under 40. I mean, I tell you what, girls in tech, 40 under 40, she's got it going on.

3:02You've been around the block. That's right, that's right. Yeah, and I'm also teaching at Northwestern University. I teach marketing and product management there. So excited to share some example and case studies. Anya, I want to talk mainly in our short time together about what you're doing with Taylor, how you've grown that business, the future of all AI. It's related to your business. But let's at least, because you do have an impressive background, you've worked Facebook, you just named the who's who of some tech brands and otherwise. What's the one thing that our audience could know about you and what you learned working at some of those giants?

3:35And maybe one of the biggest takeaways that then led you to your own path? I think one thing is the reason that I started a company was that when I was working for big tech companies before. As a female leader for a big tech company, I came from a data scientist and marketing background, but I did do large technology teams. So I always feel a little bit in path of syndrome. Am I ready for the day? I'm sure many people like me who have a dream feel that sometimes. I start feeling like maybe at least I need to look great, dressed up, looks presentable. When I'm freaking out, nobody will find out.

4:06I started using some subscription boxes like Stitch Fix and some other subscription boxes out there, but you all have to buy. They do style you, but once they send you the box, within a few days, you have to decide if you're going to buy. It's almost like Netflix show versus buying a DVD of Home Alone. If you're watching a Netflix show, you don't have to decide, right? You watch for three minutes, you don't like it, move on, who cares? It's subscription, tons of options out there. Versus buying a DVD, you have to really show. And I didn't like the pressure of a commitment. I started renting clothes, a company like Newly,$500 million revenue in just five years, backed by Urban Outfitters, Rent the Runway or More, lots of women's rental companies.

4:48All of them required me to pick. Hundreds of thousands of garments, pick, pick, pick, spend two hours. And it was an aha moment for me that I realized I do not like browsing and shopping. And I don't know fashion. I don't have strong fashion sense. I don't know what to pick. And most of fashion companies seems to have the desire for people who are into fashion, not for people like me, just want to get ready for the day and be successful. And that's what Taylor was for. But for your questions on what did I learn from big tech companies that end up applying here, I think one thing that I learned really important in big tech companies is always focus on finding the right problem versus only focus on figuring out a solution.

5:27Because when you are fixing a wrong problem, no matter how great your solution is, it's going to be wrong. For example, when Target, they thought of the one problem, which is mom, when they go to store, sometimes they forget one thing. Yes. How about we build something called shopping list? You list the shopping list, you go to the store, the app becomes an in-store GPS. Turn right, turn left, never forget one thing from the store. The laundry feature spends six months, lots of money, geo-fencing all of the products in the locations in different stores. Eventually, nobody uses it. Why? Moms, they are going to the store to get lost.

6:01They like to wander around the store and they have been in store for 10 years. They said they get away from their noisy kids. They want to be lost in the store so they can buy something and spend time there. Me time. Solving the right problem is extremely important. And that's why we found that these busy men who are not into fashion, but single guys, salespeople, recruiter, professor, professor, really don't care about fashion, but need to look good. And we are solving the problem to help them to be more successful. Smart. Gotta solve the right problem. It starts there. Anya, before I turn a little bit more to Taylor and some of the specific things you guys are doing with AI, one question for someone as astute as yourself on the marketing side.

6:39We're in this world now, and obviously sales is everything for a company. Where do you fall on the performance marketing versus branding? Do people care about brands anymore? Is it just about, hey, you solved my problem, you got a product, boom, don't really care about the brand. For someone like yourself that's in tech, I can easily see you falling into solution, sale. does brand still have a place? Yeah, I truly believe so. Example was my old company, Sears. Sears, when we were at Sears, Kmart, our website actually faster than Amazon. The feature, the performers, every single website content 10 years ago is actually personalized.

7:18Not everybody see the same website. Not everybody see the same email. Not everybody see the same ad 15, 15 years ago. Sears was more cutting edge than eBay. Most people don't believe so, but when I joined eBay, I realized so. It's so true. However, people don't like the brand. They never really attached to it somehow. It's the great, amazing website with some product. But then when you don't have a brand, people don't have relevancy to you, right? So for example, what we found that in our model, people are not really just buying clothes. They are buying the chance to succeed. When we say, man, trade a rental subscription, nobody cares.

7:55But when I say, hey, I can help you to dress up for your day and night, which you don't have to worry about your day and night. Just focus on a conversation. People buy the service. People use their service. And I can tell you at Meta, at one point, they actually do blind testing. They sell the glasses. And at one point, they just put on the hide glasses. They put like Oculus versus some other brands on, Apples and some others. We see people actually choose differently. I do think that both are equally important. We know the marketing funnel. If you don't have consideration, there's no performance marketing needed.

8:28However, it's also if you only have branding, but you don't have performance marketing, you can never convert those awareness and consideration. We recently won the American Marketing Association Award of Excellence in Marketing by doing very well on ChatGPT. Nowadays, people say performance marketing more and more get into ChatGPT SEO versus Google SEO because more people are asking questions there. How we do it is that we use human and machines in a loop and exercise. We start with identifying the user journey, why people search for something even on ChatGPT, identify the question people will ask.

9:02We have human to write down the overall outline. We use AI to generate content from the human stylist, revising the content with their point of view. And then when we send the customer's outfit with a styling note, customer provide feedback, put your feedback into the notes with the content. And then those content generating to automatically to the website, which will get more traffic coming in from Chagipity and as regular SEO. And it become an automated flywheel. So then we won the award. We got 10 ,000 impressions for free from there. But I truly still believe brand is important. So does the performance marketing.

9:39A woman after my own heart talking about the purchase funnel here. I love talking about purchase funnel. You got awareness, consideration, intent, and then you got to make a purchase. Yo, man, heart beating. I'm a marketer at heart, Anya. I will say it's really smart what you're doing because people are moving from SEO. Hey, all about all this list. No, just give me the answer. It's about answers. It's about solving the problem. It does lead to a fascinating discussion is when there's only one answer, what happens to SEO? We'll let someone else smarter than me solve that one. Anya, you just talked a little bit of how you're using AI.

10:11It's been at the core of the business, I take it, since day one from what I heard and what you described. what's been the biggest learning lesson being on this cutting edge of AI? Era of AI is very different from the era of algorithm. If you look at last generation, Google is a black box of algorithm. What's rent high is important. But nowadays, unless you are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, otherwise most of you are going to use OpenAI, the Chagipiti's parent companies, or Elon Musk's AI, or Google's AI, etc. So nobody is going to build your own algorithm. Means what? Means data is way more valuable nowadays.

10:50Building AI is easy. It's like building a website. 20 years ago, you need a whole bunch of engineers. Nowadays, you need$10 on Shopify, you're done. Nowadays, the key thing is you have your unique data. So you can bring your data later on top of whatever large language model, the Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg build. At Taylor, we know customers' true preference. Why? If you go to a store, Macy's, Nordstrom or Amazon, you buy your spot, don't buy something largely because of price. Your decision is polluted by the price. But when you watch your Netflix show, the show is not on discount. You watch which show is you truly like it.

11:29The same thing for our membership model. We pay people pay$100 per month. Whatever the clothes they pick along with our AI, our AI actually pick for them. But when they work together on deciding that, it's what they truly like. We also get feedback every other week because the customer wanting to make sure the next shipment is better. Versus in the past when I'm working for Target or eBay, people never give feedback unless it's one star and they're so pissed off about that. Right? And we also know future. AI don't know the future. AI know the past. But we are working with 300 fashion brands. They are designing something for the future.

12:03Next year's trend. This year, the most popular color is mocha. Like not brown, mocha, the mocha color. But what's the next year's color? They are designing that. They are deciding that. And we also have human stylists. They have know-how. Why you don't just search? Why celebrities still use human stylists? Because they are still better. We have those unique data. We put it together and we buy two companies their styling information from their 10 years operations. Then we layer on top of larger language model. As they grow, we also grow, but we always one step ahead. If you are a small business or starting a company, now is your time.

12:39because building AI is easy. All you need is unique defensive data. For example, my friend is a doctor. He's a dentist. All he does is you just have one practice for 15 years. But he has those images for 15 years with different teeth issues. So now he's building his AI to detect teeth issues because he has those images, those unique data that no one else has. Think about that. And then for your previous questions on the SEO for Chagipity, One thing you should know is that in the past for Google, they only considered structured data, means copies. Remember an image like Google doesn't read Ryan's image, but we have to write Ryan right about now show behind the image so that Google can read.

13:25However, nowadays AI, they read both. They read image, they read videos, they read both. Multimedia become a lot more important. User generated content become a lot more important. And that's the difference between SEO nowadays on Chagipi versus before. That's good. Hey, that means I'm out there, man. I got thousands of episodes and highlight clips and smart people like Anya coming on the show, telling us all the good stuff. Hey, we're covered, Anya. We're good. Exactly. Walk me through. I'm a busy executive. My wardrobe sucks. Not mine. Mine's stylish because I got things like Taylor and other things that I use.

14:01But talk to me what that process looks like. Yeah, our customers, they signed up just like Netflix show. They signed up for a membership,$79,$98, however program they pick. So then they can't get to wear like 10 clothes per month, for example. So they start with a simple style quiz. How our AI know about you? We ask you some questions. We do ask you your high-end weight, which we don't always use because a lot of customers, they think they are taller and thinner. They will put, I am definitely size medium. No, no, no. Go to your closet. Pick your favorite outfit. Oh, my God. When did I become a size extra large?

14:39Yes, you are. Hey, I'm 6 '5", 265. So believe me, I know. There's no mediums in the closet for me. That's right. So we do also ask them to go to their closet and look at their favorite outfit. What size is this? And then most important question we ask is your purpose. Because our customers, they don't care about looking good. They care about looking good so that they get a job, get a day, a closer deal, order a show. Number one, every single day. They want to get 5 million followers, like following and traffic every single episode. That's why they care. They care about success. No matter what's their definition of success.

15:18Some people's success means more time with their kids so then they don't need to worry about their farmer's outfit, farm market outfit. Some people's success means they close a deal, want a$10 million deal with this new client. Our job is to make sure we dress up to success, to project the best image that you want. And then from there, we ask you to upload a few pictures. You like this, like certain item. And if you like, we get a 15-minute consultation call with a human stylist. Our human stylist will get on Zoom call and then we'll talk with you. You can show the closet, your body, or whatever you want to show.

15:52From there, we send you the first shipment, seven items, for example. you're already mis-matched to multiple outfits that fit with your upcoming schedule and then from there if you wear after you wear for whole weeks if you're traveling give it back to the hotel lobby with the return envelope that's prepaid you go home without doing any laundry when you get home the next day the new coast has arrived so no more shopping no more laundry like your netflix show subscribe you can watch a lot of things so you get to try it you don't have to buy it and you get to trade in and out the clothes that you want and do you get the option to keep it or is it just renting no matter what you get the option to keep it and the good thing is that for most of the busy men they never go to a trash store so we all know sustainability buying secondhand is great and exact travel nobody have those times so in this model after you wear for a few weeks usually it's quite on discounts 10 20 50 70 off so then most people just buy it they It looks like still very new, just like your airport rental car.

16:57They tend to be very, very new. Average renting three times is already so. And we partnered with over 100 brands, Marine Layer, Johnson & Murphy, Bonobos, all kinds of brands, you name it. For both the most famous American brand, but also we source globally. Best brand in Italy, best brand in Netherlands, in UK, in Japan. So you get those amazing brands. Come here and then you can try. I can tell you most of our customers think, I will never wear pink. And our stylist, how about this? I give you a bonus item for free. Try this one. And they were like, okay, this is great. Can I buy two of that?

17:32So many of us never know our true style because we have been wearing the same thing again and again in the last 10 years. Hey, real men wear pink. I like it. I love this because you get to try stuff. You just hit the nail on the head. You try stuff that maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable buying. And you know you're not stuck if you don't like it. But a lot of times it forces you into trying something a little different and you can sample it. And then you get to at least expand your horizons of what you might wear. I'm a black t-shirt guy. I come back to the black v-neck a lot, but I've had to expand the palette.

18:06My wife's like, all right, black v-necks, it's time to take a little break. And you got to have a little splash of color. That's right. That's right. Most of them, they don't. We ask, what color you usually wear? Blue. Everybody's blue, right? But this year, the famous color is mocha. And last year, famous color was red wine. Do you have those colors? If not, check it out. These are still very, very trendy. And you don't have to know. Our human stylist without AI will pair for you. We even tell you, okay, what shoes you should pair with, what belts you should pair with. And that's where we are expanding into as well.

18:40Our customer uses more like executive assistant, concierge service, or more like the gadget guy behind superhero in those movies. So you ask questions about branding and what we are really selling. I think we are not really just selling clothes. We are selling the peace of mind, the convenience, the chance to succeed. And that's what our customers are really buying for. That makes a lot of sense. What about like, okay, tuxedos or I think sometimes you think of rentals and you think of suits or something. Is this a service to use for those types of single one-off events? No, not at all. Our customers, we don't have suits.

19:15We don't have tuxedos because most people don't wear them nowadays. We have blazers, sport coats. We have t-shirts, hooties, sweaters, and all kinds of things for everyday wear. Our mission is to help people get ready for their days. So our customer uses more like your Netflix show. In the old time, you buy a DVD once a year, like, okay, holiday, we will do this. But nowadays, you open your Netflix show, you become everyday. In the old time, you only rent a car once a year when you go on a road trip with your family. Nowadays, you open Ubers and Lyft, you're renting a car every single day. So the sheer economy is getting a lot more getting into everyday life.

19:54And also, we partner with fashion brands from all over the world. So instead of burning those inventory, today, 30 % of the clothes go directly from factory to landfill, generating 10 % of carbon emissions, 20 % of polluted water. Fashion is the most polluted industry in the world. Instead of burning those inventory, we also help them to find a new outlet. And also a lot of brands send us their latest collections. Over 100 brands we partner with, a lot of them, they will be sending, testing their latest collections through the platform. Then they get feedback right away. Then they can decide how to produce next year.

20:31Our customers, on the one hand, helping to solve the environmental issue. On the other hand, become the guinea pig to try the latest collections that's not even out there. Maybe you are wearing the most trendy shirt for next year. Hey, win-win. As we wrap up here, Anya, I got a question for you about a trend that's been taken off, especially in the late States, been overseas a lot more. I just want your perspective. Live shopping. Where does Anya fall on this? Are you a proponent? Do you think this is a trend that's going to expand? I personally do, but I'd love to know someone like yourself what you think about what's happening in the live shopping space.

21:07You're asking the right reason because I do live shopping for Meta. So, I do live shopping, Instagram, Facebook shopping. I help to build the team. I actually build a live shopping feature for Meta. I think for sure it's going to expand. Most people ask me the question differently though. They say, ask me why it's so slow in the US. As you know, it's been super popular in China. Southeast Asia, most of the countries there, live shopping is there, everyday life. And every year I heard VC investors come to me and say, Anya, can you do diligence in this company? We really think that it's going to blow up next year.

21:42But then after a few years, still not yet, like not everywhere yet. I still truly believe it will be very, very popular. But the reason why it hasn't been, I think it's many reasons. So number one, I think in the U.S., we tend to be a little bit more fragmented in terms of platform, like commerce platform or payment platform. Most people don't feel comfortable giving Facebook your credit card. But in China, Southeast Asia, many of those companies, their platform for payment is exactly the same platform for their e-commerce. That's where they shop, where they do the payment, where they book appointments for doctor appointments.

22:20They are super apt as all of those things. While here, we feel like Amazon is Amazon, eBay is eBay, Instagram and Google Maps, they are all separate functions. Customer behavior takes a while on being emerged. The other thing I think is also because of talents. If you look at those countries that have very strong live shopping, their engineers, the same thing, they are engineers who build payments and shopping are the same people who build chat conversations. While in the US, I can tell you a lot of Google engineers or Facebook engineers in their entire life, they never view anything that was a physical product.

22:57Live chattings or other stuff, whatever Google map, there's no physical product. So it's very different from the engineer who work in Amazon. they need to consider the warehouse, the shipping time, the physical product, which is very, very different. User experience, technology, collecting taxes, doing returns, make sure you're right on time, in lifetime in the offline environment. So also talents are very, very different. However, despite those things, I still super believe that either commerce company, like Amazon, those companies will incorporate a lot more social into it. I also do believe social company, Meta, Instagram, and TikTok will still incorporate a lot more commerce in order to pull their attribution that they actually make an impact for the sales for advertisers.

23:45And I also still do believe there will be standalone social commerce platform emerge. Today you see, for example, Sephora. I do see a lot of startups doing just Sephora type of company, but the entire site is native from social commerce with social contents over there. So I truly believe there's still the future. Yes. Whatnot's taking off. I'll tell you where it's taking off and there's no looking back, and that's trading cards and collectibles. Yes, I have a business in that. And let me tell you, people are hook, line, and sinker on live shopping. We'll see maybe in Taylor's future. Who never knows?

24:22But ultimately, they're already breaking the mold using AI. Taylor, where can everybody keep up with you and Taylor and learn more? If you are investors, if you are suppliers and or talents or partner dating side, fitness center, career center, shows who need outfits, feel free to reach out to me. I'm Anya, A-N-Y-A at Taylor.ai. That's T-A-E-L-O-R.ai. Or if you are just customers who want to get ready for your day, No more shopping or laundry. Always looks great. Have human and AI stylists to style you. Then go on taylor.style. That's T-A-L-O-R dot S-T-Y-L-E. Taylor.style. Use the code podcast25, podcast25, to get 25 % off your first month.