Google has been fathoming how to sell fashion online, and has come up with its own store, www.Boutiques.com. Just launched, the site is selling womenswear in the US only, but plans are afoot to extend the offer over time. Computer scientists have teamed with stylists to dream up this high-tech web formula for fashion-selling success.
“Boutiques.com is a personalized shopping experience that lets you find and discover fashion goods, by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers—celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers,” explains Munjal Shah, product management director at Google, in a recent blog post. “Boutiques uses computer vision and machine learning technology to visually analyze your taste and match it to items you would like.”
Boutiques is all about Google reinventing itself as an e-commerce destination as well as hitting all the right social media buttons, says Andrew Girdwood, head of media innovations at bigmouthmedia. “It’s interesting because this edges Google even more closely to becoming a destination, rather than just a place to go to get somewhere else,” says Girdwood. “The tech side of Boutiques is also great; they’re really trying to have machines that learn personal taste.”
