Thread

Online personal styling service launched in 2012 in London.

Summary

Thread is a free online personal styling service, which was launched in 2012 in London. The personal shopping service learns about your style, before serving up the best recommendations for clothes you should buy, with help from the platform’s algorithms and stylists. The company is on track to become a major player on the fashion landscape after securing £16.7m in funding from the H&M group.

History

Thread is a free online personal styling service, which was launched in 2012 in London. The personal shopping service learns about your style, before serving up the best recommendations for clothes you should buy, with help from the platform’s algorithms and stylists. The site uses online stylists, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning, to create a personalised way to shop.

Thread has succeeded in securing a comprehensive offering. Among the hundreds of brands it stocks, there is a healthy mix of luxury- contemporary- and high street options. “If you try to do it with one, it doesn’t work,” O’Neill tells Guardian. “With just humans, it’s not scalable unless you charge a lot of money for it and then if its just algorithms, they don’t understand creativity and taste… by combining the best bits, we create an experience that we think is better than either can [provide] alone.”

Its service works like this: sign up without any payment- browse a selection of different styles and choose- and provide details about your age, fit and price range. Thimble searches through Thread’s wardrobe of app. five hundred partner brands ranging from high street retailers such as River Island and Marks Spencer to luxury brands like Burberry to offer the appropriate choices.

“We’ve been able to design Thread to be an AI-driven company from the beginning,” O’Neill told Evening Standard. “For example: as you use the service, it’s keeping track of what you look like, which clothes you look at: are you browsing for brown brogues or jeans, and based on how you behave, it’s learning to get better and better.

Thread has raised $22 million in a Series B funding round from Balderton Capital, Beringea, Forward Partners, and H&M group’s investment arm H&M CO:LAB, with participation from Maurice Helfgott and Sebastian Picardo. The company intends to use the funding to hire more AI specialists and ramp up its brand marketing efforts. The company has raised more than $40 million in funding so far.

Vision

By combining the expertise of stylists with smart AI, the core team of thread envisioned building a seamless personalised fashion retail experience. One that provides individually tailored outfit ideas and style advice, plus a personalised shop with over 1,000 of the world’s best brands in one place. Without any subscription.

Mission Statement

To make it easier for men to dress well. The retailer’s goal is to prevent shoppers from feeling overwhelmed by too many options and to make shopping for fashionable clothes a seamless process. It uses a combination of human stylist and algorithms to provide personalized recommendations. Shoppers share their style, size, budget and preferred brands, and the more time shoppers spend with the technology, the more the AI learns their interests.

Vision

By combining the expertise of stylists with smart AI, the core team of thread envisioned building a seamless personalised fashion retail experience. One that provides individually tailored outfit ideas and style advice, plus a personalised shop with over 1,000 of the world’s best brands in one place. Without any subscription.

Leadership Team

Founders Kieran O’Neill, Ben Kucsan, Ben Philips

Recognition and Awards

Threads is recognised for being a personal shopping service that learns about your style, before serving up the best recommendations for clothes you should buy, with help from the platform’s algorithms and stylists.

Products and Services

By blending the expertise of stylists with smart AI, Thread built a much better, more personalised shopping experience. One that provides individually tailored outfit ideas and style advice, plus a personalised shop with over 1,000 of the world’s best brands in one place. No subscription. Absolutely free.

References