Stitch Fix CEO on how ‘Stitch Fix Freestyle’ is changing the future of retail

Yahoo Finance's Sibile Marcellus spoke with Stitch Fix CEO Elizabeth Spaulding about how Stitch Fix Freestyle aims to reshape online shopping with features that include browse and discover, a customer rating system, and more inclusivity for customers.

Video transcript

SBILIE MARCELLUS: What are your expectations for Stitch Fix Freestyle? Do you expect that it could possibly transform e-commerce and the way we shop online?

ELIZABETH SPAULDING: Absolutely. We envision that we are creating the blueprint for the future of retail. So much of what e-commerce has been is search and scroll. And it's inconvenient. We know that over 3/4 of consumers have frustration with e-commerce, even though they're moving towards it. It's not perfect. There's a lot of frustrations. You know, think about going to a website where 95% of it is irrelevant to you. And you're doing all the work to search for what's relevant.

And so there are three or four characteristics that we think about in terms of shaping the future of retail and the future of shopping. First is the point I was making of moving from search and filter to browse and discover. The way that Freestyle works is we're making it a browsable, shoppable experience where we've curated to your preferences. We're leveraging our style graph, which understands from our millions of customers what style preference really looks like if you've told us a few styles that you love. That is a very different idea.

The second is dynamic and real-time, leveraging consumer feedback on a real-time basis. I mentioned that the items we ship, we're constantly getting feedback, that thumbs up and thumbs down rating system. Many of our clients are coming back daily or a few times a week and giving us more feedback, so we can make that experience better and better and better for them.

The third is around inclusivity. A lot of fashion historically has really left people out. And our focus is around inclusivity and this being right for each individual consumer and a mission-- we've dramatically grown our plus business in the last few years, as we think about brands that we onboard, making sure that there's great representation. So those are a few of the characteristics that we think will define the future of retail and are very much what is defining how we are building and expanding our freestyle experience.