Visual Search: the technology to act as a bridge between the retailer and the consumer
BY CRISTINA HERNÁNDEZ | MOBILE WORLD CAPITAL BARCELONA
We all have a series of routines that we repeat each day over the course of our lives. One of them is opening our closets each morning and choosing our look for the day. What for some is a special, exciting and fun moment, for others becomes an operation that one simply must perform before leaving home.
What can one do to keep from always dressing the same way? In magazines, on the street and in bars and clubs we often see clothes we’d like to have ourselves, but when it comes to getting the same thing, or something similar, we don’t even know where to start. Physical stores, with their massive amounts of clothes, and their crowds, often do not offer consumers real solutions. Online or e-commerce stores, meanwhile, are still are in the process of winning the public’s trust. In the end a combination of ignorance and a lack of time makes dressing fashionably an arduous and difficult task.
Wide Eyes Technologies has developed a technology designed to act as a bridge between the retailer and the consumer. Through visual search software for applications and websites, based on Big Data, this startup’s different tools help users to find the items that they are looking for, whether clothes, shoes or accessories.
The technology created by Wide Eyes Technologies allows the user to photograph an article with his mobile device and consult in an extensive database the stores at which he can find a product of the same characteristics. Another possibility is uploading an image of one’s own article of clothing to the application in order to find others that complement it, based on the latest fashion trends. For the fashion industry this tool boasts countless possibilities, as it represents a new way to access e-commerce. By using Wide Eyes Technologies virtual stores can boost their profits and conversion ratios by up to 30%, according to the company.
The startup, which participated in the 2015 edition of the mobile startups forum 4 Years From Now, thus far has marketed three different products, based on the type of need and the potential consumers at whom the sales action is targeted. We Vision, We Recognize and We Recommendare the different faces of a powerful visual search instrument that identifies, looks for, compares and associates. And all this is based on a technology that is very easy to install and adaptable to all types of businesses, from SMEs to multinationals.
Business models like that developed by Wide Eyes are, without a doubt, a way to boost the fashion industry’s economic performance. Until early 2015 the sector also featured another powerful tool, which, acting as a metasearch engine at hundreds of e-commerce businesses, found articles with given characteristics for users. The Find, with the motto “one search, all the stores, any product” used a powerful search engine to offer the consumer a customised experience. The more searches that were run, the more complete was the buyer’s profile on the platform, and the more ad hoc suggestion that could be made. Thanks precisely to the tool’s capacity for personalisation, in March of 2015 Facebook bought The Find, using its technology to refine the precision of its own advertising platform.
In short, thanks to the standardisation of technologies like those offered by The Find and Wide Eyes Technologies, the fashion industry will be promoted and supported in improving users’ shopping experiences, and, of course, the quality of their wardrobes.
