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Former Stitch Fix COO taps into AI powered fashion for new platform

Former COO of Stitch Fix Julie Bornstein joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to weigh in on the launch of her new shopping platform ‘The Yes’.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance "On the Move." I want to bring in the former COO of Stitch Fix, who is launching a new product, so to say. It's called The Yes. And I'm going to use an analogy that all of us can understand. There's that scene in "Minority Report" where Tom cruise gets new eyeballs, and the computer recognizes him and says, hello, Mr. Yamamoto. What The Yes does is if I go shopping, it sees me differently than everyone else who might come to the site, and therefore offers me different products than it might offer other people. Julie Bornstein, welcome to the program. Did I get that correct? Is that what The Yes does?

JULIE BORNSTEIN: Yes, it does. I love the analogy. I haven't heard that one yet.

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ADAM SHAPIRO: And it's not nearly as gross as "Minority Report." But this is-- you're using new technology to do something that has been done on limited levels in the past. Different people want different things, and you can determine what they might want in the future based on their previous purchases.

JULIE BORNSTEIN: Yes. Yeah, The Yes is a new, modern way to shop. And we use AI and humans to build an experience that for the user is much more relevant to them. And so similar to, really, a Spotify or Pandora where you have the ability to tune the app to your tastes and share what you like, we ask you a Q&A when you come onto our app. It's for iOS at the moment.

And then we share with you back styles and brands and trends that are relevant to you. And every day, you have a new home feed that's specific to you. And as the user, you can, yes, and no, things you like and don't like. And that's how we get smarter over time.

JULIE HYMAN: Julie, it's Julie. I like the idea of something that makes-- the curates, right? Because as we know, shopping online can be an overwhelming experience. What I want to ask you about, though, is launching right now. You just launched this thing on Wednesday, which is pretty incredible that it's happening at this time. Is that when it was supposed to launch? What was your thought process going through launching a product right now?

JULIE BORNSTEIN: Yeah, I know-- who would imagine launching a new business during a pandemic? We have been working on this for two years. So this has been a long project that has been a real labor of love. And we built a lot of technology, which is why it took us that time. We were planning to launch at the end of March originally. And obviously, we were all just understanding what was happening with COVID-19, and really just trying to make sense of the world. And so we decided to pull our launch and hold off, see what was happening, and understand kind of the landscape better.

We did decide late May felt like the right time as we got closer in for a couple of reasons. One is that we are stuck at home shopping. And so it's really a good time that if you're going to be online, you know, a better shopping experience is very relevant for consumers. The second is that we work with 150 brands. And all of these brands are brands that basically have had orders canceled from department stores. And obviously, their retail channels have gone away.

And so we are real partners to them, and we felt like we really want to do anything we can to help them. And then, you know, we sort of-- we're a venture-backed company, and we needed to launch. And so we obviously wanted to wait until we understood kind of what was going on. And I think we all feel like, all right, we've sort of adjusted our lives for the moment, and it's a great app to just play with and tune even if you're not ready to buy. So we decided to go for it-- but you know, not without lots of thought and care for the world. We also actually decided to donate $1 for every download to Good Plus Foundation, which is helping families in need with essentials to do our small part in, you know, what's happening in the world.

DAN HOWLEY: Julie, this is Dan. I want to ask-- is there a way to filter through customer reviews as well, just to get an idea of how the clothes fit and feel? I mean, I know you might buy a shirt, you think, you know, the texture looks a certain way, but you get it, and it just doesn't look the way you want, or maybe it falls apart, you know, after a certain amount of time. How can you-- how can you kind of address that?

JULIE BORNSTEIN: So when-- because we're just starting, we don't have customer reviews yet. And so that will definitely be a part that will be added over time. But what we have done is we ask you some really key questions when you're starting the process. So there's an onboarding Q&A when you first download the app. And we gather from you your price point, your brand preferences, your sizes, actually, that you wear-- whether you run big in that size or small. Are you a guy-- we don't have guys-- are you a woman who wears a large but sometimes an extra large or a large and sometimes a medium?

So we ask all sorts of questions to really get a sense of what matters to you. And then we have built this very extensive recommendation engine that understands every attribute. We have about 500 attributes for every single product. So we understand its price, its quality, its style, all of those things. So when we make recommendations to you, it factors in all of those things relative to you. And then we will certainly have consumer input over time that will add to the process.

JULIE HYMAN: Julie, it's Julie again. Who do you see as your main competition here? Because as you describe it, there are some similarities with your Alma Mater-- your last company, which was Stitch Fix, where you were chief operating officer. So is Stitch Fix a main competitor? Is it department stores? Who are you trying to draw customers from?

JULIE BORNSTEIN: Stitch Fix is not a competitor, because it's a really different service offering. We are a shopping platform, and Stitch Fix is a service for people who want someone else to shop for them. So they live quite complementary to each other. And I'm still a big fan and investor in Stitch Fix. We are a little more focused on the consumer who wants more agency in their shopping and who is a little more brand-oriented, because we are really a, you know, very specific marketplace for brands.

But we only work with the brands themselves, and so we don't have lots of clutter in the experience. We've made the experience very streamlined. I would say, yes-- any place you go and you buy from lots of different brands like a department store would theoretically be a competitor.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Do you worry that some of the, well, trillion-pound gorillas in the room-- Amazon-- might use this same kind of concept to push you aside?

JULIE BORNSTEIN: We have spent two years, and I have spent 20 years, obsessing over fashion, shopping, and women. And we have really spent the last two years building the most extensive taxonomy that exists in fashion. If you are going to make a recommendation in fashion and you're going to help someone find something, you need to understand every dimension that exists.

And so it's just not what Amazon does, it's not what Google does-- you know, they're taking broad swaths across lots of categories. Our focus specifically for now is on women in fashion, and we don't believe that it's really the focus of what these other shopping engines are doing.

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right, Julie Bornstein's labor of love is now live. You can go see it Yes-- Yes.com and check it out. We appreciate your being here. We wish you the best, and we look forward to an update from you when you come back.