Consumers aren’t lacking for choice. Instead, they’re usually drowning in a sea of options, and it’s up to brands to find ways to go beyond simply removing friction and bring back the joy in shopping.
Adding AI, and agentic AI into the mix can unlock new opportunities, but also brings with it new challenges. We’re going to talk a little about all of it.
We are recording here at eTail Palm Springs, and hearing from leading brands and the platforms and companies they rely on to innovate in retail. To help me discuss these topics, I’d like to welcome back to the show Noah Zamansky, VP Product, Tech, & Design, Client Experience at Stitch Fix
About Noah Zamansky
Noah Zamansky serves as the Vice President of Product and Client Experience at Stitch Fix, where he leads cross-functional teams spanning Product, Design, Engineering, Algorithms, and Platform Development. A seasoned leader, Noah has a proven track record of shaping product vision and strategy, designing exceptional user experiences, and spearheading the launch of new business ventures. Before joining Stitch Fix, Noah held the role of Senior Director of Product Management at eBay, overseeing Fashion and Vertical Experiences.
Noah Zamansky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nzamansky/
See it in Action
Here is the image that Stitch Fix customized for Greg to show how their Vision gallery works:
Resources
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Transcript
[00:50] Greg Kihlstrom: Consumers aren’t lacking for choice. Instead, they’re usually drowning in a sea of options. And it’s up to brands to find ways to go beyond simply removing friction and bring back the joy in shopping. Adding AI and agentic AI into the mix can unlock new opportunities, but also brings with it new challenges. We’re going to talk a little about about all of it. So we’re recording here at E-tail Palm Springs and to help me discuss these topics, I’d like to welcome back to the show, Noah Zamansky, VP Client Experience at Stitch Fix. Noah, welcome back.
[01:19] Noah Zamansky: Greg, it’s great to be back and great to be here in Palm Springs.
[01:21] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, I think this is episode three, maybe four you’ve you’ve been on, so a returning champion here. So always always great to chat.
[01:28] Noah Zamansky: It really is. It’s it’s episode three and it’s it’s great to chat, uh Greg. Exciting, uh exciting to be here and and uh share what’s what’s happening at Stitch Fix.
[01:36] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And for those that didn’t catch one of your previous episodes, uh do you mind giving a little background on yourself and your role at Stitch Fix?
[01:42] Noah Zamansky: Yeah, so yeah, like you said, I’m the VP of Client Experience and for those who don’t know Stitch Fix, we’re the leading online styling, uh experience and service that helps clients discover styles that they love and makes them feel and look their best. And, yeah, I am I work with an amazing team of engineers, data scientists, product managers and designers who are redefining the future of of personal style, styling, and, you know, really coming at it from an angle of of data-driven innovation and and human-centric design.
[02:14] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, great, great. Yeah, so let’s let’s dive in here and talk about a few things but want to start with just uh one of the things that I teed up in the intro, which is just, you know, how inundated consumers are with with choice. And so, you know, the path to purchase is defined by this choice paralysis and, you know, with consumers drowning in a sea of options. How is Stitch Fix cutting through this to make shopping actually feel fun and and personal again?
[02:42] Noah Zamansky: Absolutely. I mean, shoppers, you know, it’s it’s hard work shopping today, right? and at Stitch Fix, we really are coming at it from a different angle and redefining that. And we think that that shopping should start with inspiration. And that’s why we recently launched Stitch Fix Vision. I think we talked a little bit about it in Boston, but I think, it was, we didn’t go into too much depth. But essentially, it’s, a style visualization experience that allows clients to see themselves in the outfits. And all they need to do is upload a selfie and full body image, and we share, we generate images of the clients in, outfits that are inspiring and they’re fully shoppable. And so it really kind of changes the the kind of, you know, psychology behind the whole shopping experience, going from like, hey, there’s a lot of hard work and scrolling to, you know, and here’s like a a a shirt that looks good on a person to, oh my God, that looks great on me. And so, that’s that’s recently launched. And so that’s really how we’re thinking about, you know, bringing back the experience and and and actually launching, experiences that make the shopping experience a lot more fun. yeah. And, you know, when we were in Boston, we talked about a couple of other innovations, like from inspiration to agentic AI into our connect experience. The net sum of of that is is really pulling together, you know, inspiration and experiences that are powering our, you know, our stylists and really like highlighting our our the human connection within, our experience that is making, you know, the shopping a lot more fun for our clients.
[04:20] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and to the to the vision thing, you know, I think part part of it part of the that decision paralysis is just, you know, it it it’s tough to choose between things that sometimes they’re similar, but there’s subtle differences, and to be able to actually see it without having to get it shipped and, you know, all that stuff is like it’s pretty So as a as a Stitch Fix customer, as I’ve I’ve shared before, I’m looking forward to that, to to using that as well. I know you guys prepared something for me as well, so I’m gonna I’m actually gonna share that in the show notes so people can can take a look. But yeah, I mean it’s it’s got to save a lot of not only time but also just some of that, okay, what’s what’s of these two options, what’s going to be better, right?
[05:02] Noah Zamansky: Absolutely. And like, you know, when we think about the the experience for the client, you you nailed it. It’s like, you know, two years ago, we kind of had to have that moment of shipping out a fix and, you know, which is an amazing experience on its own. But, with Vision now, it’s, it kind of like short circuits that and allows you to see a lot of different options and gives the client, a a sneak peek or like into the future of what’s possible. And, you know, for me, Greg, it’s been just so fun just to get these images and I I haven’t been able to resist just shopping like, oh, that that’s a cool, you know, hoodie and just and and buying it on the spot. And I think that’s really what, you know, we’re we’re trying to do is is just evolve this model. Right? We’ve got uh such a great great experience with our stylists, but also, you know, supplementing with this this inspirational experience for our clients that allow allows them to really visualize themselves. It’s been a game changer.
[05:57] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and I think um to go down a tangent a little bit, a little bit further here. You know, I think there’s risk in buying stuff online and and, you know, kind of getting So, you know, in in one way, you’re you’re minimizing that. I think the what I like about getting that, you know, that box in the in the mail is sometimes there are some unexpected things that I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen and yet a stylist sees something and it’s like, oh wow, that works. Like again, I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen that. But so being able to see that and preview that in real time, I think minimizes as a as a customer minimizes risk. I would imagine as a business, it also, you know, helps with that whole that whole process as well, right?
[06:38] Noah Zamansky: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It really does. And, you know, from, you know, if we think about it, this the inspiration is driving our clients, really to exhibit that those behaviors. And you talked about the business uh impact. What the impact that it’s having on our clients is, we’re measuring that, you know, clients are that user, are using Vision are, you know, they’re coming back more frequently. They love it. Customer satisfaction is very high and it’s a sticky experience. And so, it allows them to kind of like short circuit that experience, short circuit and accelerate the discovery experience. The other interesting and fun thing is that, you know, because it’s just really interesting and fun to shop this way, our a lot of our clients are sharing with their friends and family. and that we’re seeing that kind of behavior really catch on and, you know, it’s creating a a growth loop from, you know, our clients to their friends and family. And and those uh clients are the recipients are converting at a much higher rate. And so, I think we’re on to something. We’re seeing, you know, it was really early in the when we when we talked in August in Boston. But since then, we’ve been learning a lot about, you know, the this real-time experiment that we’re running with uh with our clients, seeing the seeing the great things that we want to see and we’re really excited, to to really like, push it and, bring it to more of our clients so they can experience it.
[07:57] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and from that, from that sharing perspective, too, I would imagine, you know, as you’re saying, it’s a lot more compelling for me to share a photo of myself versus a photo of a shirt or a sweater or something, right? So it’s like that viral component, you know, kind of it it plays on the emotions too, right?
[08:15] Noah Zamansky: Yeah, and, you know, I I mean I think about it, like, you know, in the old days, old days, you went to a mall with your friends and you tried something on and like, you know, and moving into online retail, there’s been so many great things happening there. But one of the things that, you know, it is a more solitary sort of experience. And so I like to say like shopping is a team sport and I think that is exactly what what that experience affords our our clients is that, you know, that moment to say like, you know, to share something with their loved ones that they’re they’re excited about.
[08:44] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So and I mean, in that way, it’s it’s that it’s that balance of, you know, as you were saying, you know, e-commerce, there there definitely needs to be a predictive and an automated component of it.
[08:56] Noah Zamansky: Yes.
[08:57] Greg Kihlstrom: What kind of the value add is the emotional component. So how do you how do you think about that, the balance there?
[09:02] Noah Zamansky: Yeah, absolutely. you know, we’ve been in the business of predictive modeling recommendations for for 15 years. That’s really been at the cornerstone of why, you know, our our service works so well, right? And our, you know, like our clients trust us and they provide us with a lot of feedback on why they keep things, why they like things, and when it goes wrong, why they they don’t. And so, the more our clients kind of share that information with us, the better the service gets. So that’s like, you know, trust is kind of the foundation that’s just, you know, delivered. And then this inspiration piece is, is really starting to to create that human connection. But for us, we’re so excited by the AI innovation. At the same time, you know, like we’ve got an incredible, community of stylists. And, you know, our clients come to us for that human connection. You know, at the end of the day, like, I really think that in a world that’s accelerating with more AI innovation and making all of our lives so much easier,
[09:57] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
[09:58] Noah Zamansky: that human connection is going to be a luxury, right? And and so, you know, people, our clients want to they they want to connect with brands that, have that that human touch. I I think like, you know, there’s that’s going to become a differentiator. And so in a lot of ways, this is a moment that I feel like Stitch Fix has been preparing for for 15 years.
[10:17] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah.
[10:17] Noah Zamansky: But you know, and on the stylist side, like we have been investing in, you know, counterintuitively, like people ask us like, hey, AI is helping so much in the in the experience. Like, are you pulling back on styles? And it’s like, absolutely not. It’s the it’s the opposite. If you look at what we’ve actually done over the last, you know, 18 months, we launched stylist profiles, which allowed our clients to really connect with the with the stylist and say like, hey, here’s, you know, this is what they’re interested in, this is like their expertise and really build that connection. And with the launch of Connect in August, that’s really, this is our experience. It’s a a chat-based experience that allows clients to chat directly with their stylist and, you know, for an upcoming, you know, styling need or styling advice or just to share feedback in a dynamic chat experience that’s also shoppable. You can share different kinds of, you know, like images and things like that. It’s about building that connection. And so, you know, when you hear stories from our clients, I you know, I love the story about Jenna, one of our clients who’s, you know, like many of our clients are going through, you know, body transformation journeys, with GLP-1 medication. And there’s this opportunity to do an entire wardrobe refresh. And we’re helping we’re helping a lot of our clients go through this. And, Jenna, email, you know, message your stylus and connect and saying, you know, thank you so much for helping me, rebuild my my wardrobe and and rediscover my personal style. You gave me the confidence to really buy things nice things for myself again. And so that connection is we feel is is irreplaceable and it can’t be really be replicated through any kind of automation.
[11:53] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So I mean it’s really, yeah, instead of going in one direction or the other, it’s kind of it’s kind of maximizing each in their own way, right? So like the personal touch plus the the AI and and now the agentic approach as well, right?
[12:07] Noah Zamansky: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like I’m I’m a techno-optimist, right? So I I think that we’re and what we’re finding is that it it is freeing up, you know, the time for for stylists to, you know, apply, spend more time doing the things creative things and like finding moments of serendipity. And, you know, you mentioned agentic and and maybe I’ll just, share a little bit what we’re learning about the AI style assistant, which was another thing we talked briefly about in in August and what we’ve been learning since then. And just for your listeners, the AI styling assistant is it’s an agentic experience. But think about it as like we’re we’re really trying to solve the challenge that our clients have, which is like, hey, I actually don’t know what I’m looking for when I talk when I come to Stitch Fix and I, you know, reaching out to my stylist. How can you help me articulate that and visualize that? I’m going to Palm Springs for E-tail. I need a bunch of outfits. What’s the vibe? Right? And so, we’re engaging clients in a real dialogue, natural language, and generating, when I say multimodal, generating real-time looks and vibes of outfits in real time that the clients can see and then they can rate them. And then package it all together into a essentially a lookbook and a and a note to the stylist. And so the that experience is like is we’re we’re learning is performing super well for our clients. And what’s behind the scenes there is is a lot of different kinds of things going on, right? In terms of the agentic piece, now being able to string together, hey, we understand your style profile, the outfits are great brands, how to, compose it together, how to speak to you, what’s what you’ve used in your in your prior, you know, sorry, what you’ve kept in your prior fixes, the context and the the client history, and then, you know, optimize for creating a request note that is really helpful for the stylist to go and, do what they do best, which is to to style you.
[14:04] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, and I I think the interesting thing there, I mean, one, hearing you describe it, I mean, the technology behind it to your point, there’s a lot of things, there’s a lot of pieces. But it doesn’t sound like a agent, you know, like I think in in my mind, there’s often this very technical, very even like a chat GPT interface kind of thing happening there. But it sounds very, it still sounds human. And and it also isn’t informing the human at the end of the loop, right? the stylist. So it’s like it’s it’s an interesting application, at least from my perspective, in how to do that and also keep the human as part of the process, right?
[14:42] Noah Zamansky: It It absolutely is. And it’s yeah, if you think about it, it it’s it’s kind of putting the tools at the the, you know, at the interface of our our our clients and and there’s and the stylist. There’s so much work happening in the back-end processes with as you mentioned, like, you know, all the coding tools that we’re using to drive efficiency, and to build faster and to streamline the all the, you know, all the operational stuff. But yeah, it’s it is, the interesting thing about it is you as you mentioned, quite rightly, is like, you know, putting it in the hands of our stylists and and clients and learning how they’re reacting to it. And and the performance that we’re measuring is as good or better than just a normal request note from like the metrics that we measure in terms of, hey, this this completion successful outcomes for our clients. And so what’s encouraging to us is it’s it’s kind of it’s very early days, right? The models are we’re we’re working on improving the models and like the relevancy and fine-tuning and thinking about, you know, how we can incorporate new kinds of, you know, media and make that experience even potentially shoppable for the the clients. So there’s so much, possibility there to build upon.
(Outro Music begins)
[15:58] Greg Kihlstrom: So what what would you say is maybe a either an unexpected challenge or maybe a learning along the way in doing that? Because again, what you’re talking about, there’s I think I and I think that’s that’s a great UX or technology in general is when it doesn’t feel from a customer perspective like it’s complex. But I know from, you know, doing this kind of stuff, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes there. So like what’s a what’s a learning from from that?
[16:24] Noah Zamansky: Yeah, I think the the learning for us was just how quickly the the I think we underestimated how quickly the models were moving. Yeah. And we had to essentially reset our like our outlook on the world every three months as the models were were evolving, right? And, I think one of the biggest learnings for us is like, hey, you know, like traditional playbooks, you know, like uh experiment like experimentation, like, coming up with like a customer need and trying to solve that and iterate quickly. That’s still applies, but the thing that we had to learn is like, okay, in a world where the technology is is not there yet, but in the next two to three months will be there. How do you plan for and take those calculated bets and leaps of faith at times, knowing that like the pace of which things are moving in terms of, you know, some of the the boundary conditions for us, what was holding us back was uh image generation time, for example, quality and, the the speed at which, you know, things advanced has been, a big learning for us and and, we’ve done we’ve done it too, Greg, it’s just, you know, trying to think about building, you know, with modularity, Yeah. and flexibility, so that, you know, we can experiment, as new advances come out.
[17:43] Greg Kihlstrom: I’ll make a rare sports reference here. it’s like the Wayne Gretzky quote, it’s like skate to where the puck is headed. So it just reminds me of that because yeah, to your point, I mean, with with, you know, the LLM’s changing rather in some cases I I think there’s case studies of, you know, a little chaotically sometimes. It’s, you got to you got to just trust that it’s going to it’s going to kind of play out to some I’m I’m sure there’s risk, you know, risk management and and stuff like that along the way. But yeah, it’s it’s sort of every everybody’s kind of trusting that these things are going to move at the pace that either they have been moving or that they think they should, right?
[18:23] Noah Zamansky: Yeah, absolutely. And and that’s the interesting thing is like how far out do you go and how much how much risk do you want to take? And like, and sometimes sometimes you get it wrong. But I think we we are yeah, we’ve been taking a more, calculated risks and, you know, I think that, yeah, like I think that the the payoff for us is is a higher, ability to move faster. Yeah. Doesn’t always work, but that I think that’s the game we’re all playing right now.
[18:51] Greg Kihlstrom: Right, right, yeah. Yeah, I mean you every every experiment can’t be successful, right? So it’s you got to if you learn from it, that’s success, right? So yeah.
[18:59] Noah Zamansky: Yes. 100%. And, you know, a lot of the things that like as we were building things like vision, you know, the pipelines and the infrastructure that we built in the in even when the tech wasn’t ready, felt like an investment and and it it takes conviction to believe that things are going to work out. And when they do, it’s um having the infrastructure there and the architecture built for the data sources and the pipelines that do exist and the workflows that do exist, puts you ahead. So that’s kind of a big learning for us.
[19:31] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Well, Noah, always great talking with you. Love what you guys are doing. A couple of last questions as we wrap up here. what’s been a highlight of E-tail Palm Springs for you so far?
[19:41] Noah Zamansky: So far, it’s, it’s been great to catch up with other product and marketing leaders here and, refreshing to see that everyone is grappling with the same challenges and opportunities. And, that’s been really just refreshing and just serendipitous moments to meet people within the industry, but also in other industries has been, a highlight for me. Comparing notes. Yeah. And, yeah, and meeting meeting a lot of great people.
[20:12] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah, I mean what I’ve what I’ve noticed and a few people have said the same to me this year. I feel like last year was way more theoretical and like, what if we did this? And and this year, still still that and and still hype, there’s always hype, but also some real practical, here’s what we did. And I think that’s so powerful to get to be surrounded by that stuff too.
[20:33] Noah Zamansky: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we it feels like we’re in that moment where, it’s becoming very real.
[20:38] Greg Kihlstrom: Right, right, yeah, yeah. Well, uh last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[20:45] Noah Zamansky: Sure. So, I think, some of the fun coding experiments with vibe coding for me has been a way to to keep up with try to keep up with, you know, the speed at which things are are happening. And so, yeah, jumping in and and teaching myself and and just being, learning basically from the speed at which that that you can build things. I built a a quick app for my daughter for her recent, school, trip to Spain and it was a a travel app for her.
[21:14] Greg Kihlstrom: Nice, nice.
[21:14] Noah Zamansky: and journal. And so the other thing and we’re doing that as a as a company too. in a few weeks, we’re doing AI week. We’re not just the tech team, but the entire company is diving into experimentation, building and prototyping and really embracing the tools, that we have, and really skilling up.
