Being able to shop in your pajamas from the comfort of your living room was supposed to fix all the problems with brick and mortar shopping. Shoppers Avery Heldenfels, Catherine Albrecht and Kelsey Butt talk about their hangups:
“You, I guess you have to get out and go, and find parking, sometimes that’s hard depending on where you go, they can be busy and they don’t always have your size,” Heldenfels says.
“If it’s crowded and also if the salespeople are constantly hounding you then it takes away from the whole aspect of it.” Albrecht says.
“You waste just a whole day sometimes if you’re looking for something specific, so that drives me nuts,” Butt says.
But, these shoppers tell me that online shopping creates its own headaches.
“Online is always difficult because sometimes things look like they’re better quality online or they’re going to fit a certain way and then you get them and they don’t,” Butt says.
“Online, definitely paying for shipping, not being able try on the clothes, not seeing what they look like in person,” Heldenfels says.
While it’s not a life or death problem, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Katrina Lake thought it was one she could solve. And if she could combine the best parts of online shopping with your local mall, she could make a lot of money.
“Part of the ‘a-ha’ moment was when you go into a store you can say like I want something I look awesome on a first date or something like that and it’s so hard to do that in e-commerce,” Lake says. “So you can search for the cheapest black dress or the black dress that’s going to ship to you the fastest, but it’s so hard to be able to say which one am I going to look best in or which black dress is best for me.”
She created a company called Stitch Fix, it’s a personal stylist service that sends you five items of clothing a month chosen just for you. You buy what you keep, and each item costs $50. The service is designed for women who like clothes but are too busy to shop.
That sounds just like everyone Alli Finney knows – she’s a fashion editor at D Magazine in Dallas.
“I definitely think we have a huge executive industry here and we have a lot of women that want to look good,” Finney says. “And I definitely think it’s because the city has a pulse on what’s happening and has a pulse on what’s new and trending and I think we definitely take advantage of that in every way that we can.”
That might be why the company picked Dallas for its third national distribution center.
“Texas is important to us for a couple of reasons,” Lake says. “First and foremost we have many many clients in Texas, and so our Dallas distribution center will serve the vast majority of our clients in Texas, and it’s great to be able to have stylists who are local and who understand Texas culture and what people are looking for.”
The company will hire up to 500 people for the Texas jobs, and, depending on interest, might expand into other image-conscious Texas cities.
It’s not clear whether Stitch Fix is turning a profit, but in its last round of seed funding, investors valued it at over $300 million.
