To market itself as more human, Stitch Fix introduces stylist profiles

Stitch Fix — which offers a service in which stylists pick out clothes for clients on a specified cadence — has been testing these profiles over the past quarter, initially by just adding stylist photos. As a result of these changes, Stitch Fix says customers are 12% more likely to write to their stylist with a specific request — indicating deeper engagement. 

Stitch Fix CEO Matt Baer, who joined the company a year and a half ago, has said that he wants to put a greater spotlight on stylists and emphasize the human element of the business more. And stylist profiles are a key component of that. But it’s just one of a number of changes Stitch Fix has outlined as it seeks to get back to growth. Baer has also said on earnings calls that he is also focused on bringing more newness to Stitch Fix’s inventory assortment and giving clients more flexibility in regards to how they buy. 

Bringing stylists to the forefront of the Stitch Fix experience will also require buy-in from the stylists themselves, who have had a contentious relationship with the company over the years. At the beginning of last year, some stylists quit after Stitch Fix eliminated the full-time styling position, shifting to only relying on part-time stylists. Others felt like the stylists themselves had increasingly been devalued over the years as Stitch Fix pushed efficiency and grew increasingly focused on performance metrics like the number of fixes that stylists completed within the hour. 

Tony Bacos, chief product and technology officer at Stitch Fix, said that the idea for stylist profiles came out of focus groups that Stitch Fix held with clients. One question that came up in these focus groups, he said, was, “Do you guys really have human stylists? Or is this just AI?”

Bacos said the skepticism can be partially attributed to the fact that AI is creeping more into the mainstream. But, he added a “light bulb” also went off for him that Stitch Fix had been too focused on prioritizing efficiency and that it had lost sight of highlighting its stylists. 

“If some of our clients are… not confident that’s a real person, then we’re doing our clients a disservice,” Bacos, who joined Stitch Fix last year said.

When new clients sign up for Stitch Fix, they fill out a style quiz. Then, stylists — aided by the company’s algorithms — use that information to create a “fix” or a box of clothes and accessories to send to the customer. Customers do have the opportunity to view and approve items before they’re actually sent. The stylist also fills out a note explaining what items they picked for the client.

Clients have control over how frequently they buy; they can order fixes as often as every month. Baer has also recently introduced changes allowing customers to get up to eight items in any given fix; in the past, it was a selection of five pieces.

When Stitch Fix launched, it was a novel way to help shoppers break through the clutter of online commerce and, in theory, help clients find items they wouldn’t stumble upon themselves. But in recent years, Stitch Fix has lost clients as styling has lost its novelty for some customers; others still are wary about trusting a third party to pick out clothes for them. During its fourth-quarter earnings, reported in September, Stitch Fix disclosed that the number of active clients dropped 4.7% year over year to roughly 2.5 million. Net revenue was $1.34 billion, or a decrease of 16% year over year.

In the past, Bacos said, the stylist-client relationship might have felt more like a pen pal relationship, as customers simply received a box of clothes and a note from their assigned stylist. 

With the stylist profiles Stitch Fix wanted to give clients more of a sense of who exactly the stylists are. First and foremost, that meant giving stylists more space to share information about their own personal fashion sense.

It also meant adding a photograph so clients could see who the stylists were. That, according to a subreddit dedicated to Stitch Fix stylists, has given some people pause over privacy concerns.

Bacos said Stitch Fix has made changes to how it has rolled out photos in light of stylists’ feedback. He said Stitch Fix has given stylists guidelines to make sure that photos aren’t, for example, easy to find via a reverse image search on the internet. He also stressed that the only other information shared about a stylist is their first name — not their last name nor any location information. 

Bacos said that emphasizing the humans behind the styling is critical to creating trust with customers. He compared it to gig economy companies like Uber or DoorDash also providing the name and photo of someone completing a service.

The final component that will make up stylist profiles is select client testimonials and badges that are awarded based on customer feedback. Bacos said Stitch Fix is still iterating upon this; he said the company is not just going to “automatically publish” every customer review to a client’s page. But, he said, Stitch Fix wants to figure out what information from customer reviews is most useful to getting new clients onboard with the service and convincing them that there’s a real, reputable human who is picking out clothes for them.

Gabriella Santaniello, founder of consultancy ALine Partners, said that, overall, she thinks that Stitch Fix’s decision to add stylist profiles is a good idea. “You don’t know who is behind the styling, and I think people can think it is just a computer,” she said.

But one big challenge for Stitch Fix, she added is that it’s very easy for customers to get discouraged if a particular fix misses the mark, given that the company’s whole value proposition is centered around very personalized styling.

“If I was getting monthly or quarterly delivery of clothes, and somebody just got it so wrong, I think I would be like, ‘they don’t even know me,’” she said.

To that end, Bacos said that Stitch Fix has been working to bring more newness to its inventory. “We could do everything else perfectly, and if the items that we put in a box and send to clients don’t make them happy, then we’re going to miss the mark,” he said.

Stitch Fix has also been investing in other product features to show customers that the company gets their style. Earlier this year, the company rolled out what it calls StyleFiles, that sort clients into one of dozens of style categories. Now, Stitch Fix is thinking more about how these new features, including stylist profiles, can all work together.

“It is certainly not something that we were viewing as a feature to, like, build it and forget it. I would think of this more as a building block that we’ll be adding to over the next, call it, six months or so,” Bacos said.