Getting someone to open an email is tough. Most of us have junk folders or promotions tabs to keep the marketing at bay.
But text? That’s a different story – a more personal one. And, aside from some unsolicited political messages, people tend to at least glance at their text inbounds.
And this is the field that Stylust wants to play on.
The text-based shopping platform acts as an assistant to consumers. Grab a screen shot of something you like — or even a photo of your friend’s shoes or a bottle of bourbon sitting on your father-in-law’s shelf. Then, you text it to Stylust where a combination of AI and image recognition, along with human help, send you back a few of the best options available online. Then, it’s up to you. If you approve the purchase, Stylust handles the rest and your next job is unboxing.
Stylust founder and CEO Melissa Bridgeford got the idea for Stylust while working in finance in New York for Guggenheim Partners and Cain Hoy Enterprises.
“I was living and working in New York and working 12 hours a day and really felt this pain point of ‘I’m already texting my Uber driver, texting my Instacart delivery, texting my Postmates delivery, texting my doctors, texting United Airlines,' and I’m like 'why isn’t there a way to text in the entire shopping space?’ ”
Bridgeford bootstrapped the company at first, with help from an outsourced tech team. She officially launched it in 2018 and made her first hire with a little initial seed funding. Stylust has since raised a total of $3 million, with its most recent commitment coming from Florida Founders in late November. As part of the deal, Tom Wallace, managing partner at Florida Funders, joined Stylust's board of directors.
Stylust operates on two channels. One is for consumers, who can simply text an image of anything they want and get a response including the most similar items available online. It does this using visual recognition technology, as well as conversational commerce to provide automated messaging to consumers. Its B2B product, meanwhile, offers retailers a white labeled platform to provide text-based purchasing under their own company banner.
Stylust's B2B product is being used by bourbon-maker Pinhook, rum maker Marsh House Rum, Vide's pre-mixed cocktails and Laughing Glass cocktails. The startup says it provides a 35 percent conversion rate -- well above the 3 percent rate most online marketing can nab.
“If you can just text it in the second you see it, you can just buy it immediately," Bridgeford said. "That’s one of the key values of text commerce. It’s the holy grail of retail: closing the gap between the point of inspiration and the point of consumption.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated online shopping and text-based shopping as consumers spend less time in stores and develop new mobile shopping habits. Bridgeford said that she plans to spend most of the startup's new funding on engineering to improve the shopping experience, with particular emphasis on its white labeled B2B offerings in the wine and spirits sector.
Bridgeford, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School, said she was excited to launch a startup after spending earlier career years in finance in New York.
“The exciting part about building a company is that there’s so much creativity involved in it," she said. "And that was something you don’t get as much of in a finance career. Running a company or a startup is very much like a high intensity workout for your brain.”
