Every woman would have their own sense of style that is certainly not built in one day alone, but is developed through countless episodes of trial and error. Whether it is punk rock glamour or girl next door chic, style is a very personal thing, and articles of clothing are a means of expression for all.
Nowadays, the way people purchase items has changed drastically as well, and no longer do we need to enter a brick and mortar store to leave with a bag full of clothing and accessories in hand. E-shopping is popular these days due to the convenience it offers. With that being said though, the horror of purchasing an ill-fitted outfit is always at the back of one’s mind when buying clothes online.
This is however a risk many undertake daily in pursuit of fashionable clothing. The despair of purchasing an outfit that appears perfect through the screen of our laptop but looking the exact opposite once it has been delivered to our doorstep, is an experience most woman would have encountered—some more than others.
While this experience could deter most from ever purchasing clothes online ever again, there is a company which aims to solve this problem by introducing the concept of a personal stylist. Satchel Clothing, a brand which offers both an online and offline clothing shopping experience, now also allows women to be able to utilise their personal stylist concept through Styled Club.
Fashionable In An Instant
Styled Club is a personal styling service offered by Satchel Clothing and it revolutionises the shopping experience for women, because the 3 full-time stylists as well as 5 freelance stylists are always on hand to help curate the best pieces for their customer’s convenience. As a Styled Club subscriber, an estimate of around 10 clothing items consisting of 1-2 looks are packed into a box by the stylists, and shipped free of charge to you every month.
The personal stylists would be in touch with you via a phone call or email in order to receive feedback and requests. In certain cases, the stylists would also pack the items requested specifically by you, but if you have no specific requests, they will hand-pick the outfits for you instead.
You will have 3 days to try out the items in the box and keep whichever that you like. Styled Club will then personally come to pick up the rest of the items that are unsuitable for you. What’s best about this service is that you only pay for whatever items that you keep and there are no other hidden charges.
This subscription service with Styled Club is flexible and can be cancelled at any time, or likewise, last for as long as the customer wants it to. It is a similar concept to a Netflix or Spotify subscription.
Mechanisms To A Stylist Concept
In order to make the experience a great one for customers, Styled Club’s personal stylist are assisted by a clever system known as the machine learning algorithm. What makes this system unique is that it is able to curate clothing items from a database of thousands.
Anyone who has ever worked in retail would know the hassle of looking for a specific shoe in a larger size, or a dress in another colour. This can be helped with the machine learning algorithm system as it is able to do all that. Besides that, Styled Club also utilises the info from a customer gathered from a style quiz, in order to further complement their service.
The style quiz, which is available on the Styled Club site, essentially brings users through a series of questions including age, body measurements and what is the users’ usual weekend plans. At any point, a user may opt to skip the questions, but in doing so, it may not provide a better accuracy for the box of clothing which the customer will receive.
Following the style quiz, the personal stylists would then curate the clothing items further by hand picking the right items for each customer in order to make it as accurate an experience as possible. Besides that, upon delivery of the box to the customer, they are able to provide their own personal feedback just so the next box would become all the more personalised.
The Online and Offline Complement
Satchel Clothing has a concept physical store located in Bangsar, so customers can always head on over to have a look-and-feel of the items they provide online. After selecting the items they want, they can purchase them online on their phone and then take the items home with them immediately.
After running Satchel Clothing for a year via online and offline, the team learnt how buying patterns differs between the online and offline channel. From what they have observed, a majority of online consumers in Malaysia prefer to spend conservatively online as it presents too much of a risk, making high quality items difficult to be sold online.
“We noticed this buying pattern at our online and offline store. Our conversion rate online is about 0.5-2%. In the physical store however, it was between 20-50%. That is a big jump, but of course, physical stores does not have the scale that an online store has.”
Therefore understanding this problem, Satchel Clothing has now pivoted to offer Styled Club. “Satchel Clothing has now become one of our retail/brand partner amongst others that supplies inventory to Styled Club. It’s as scalable as an online store and as effective from a conversion perspective, as a physical store,” said Anan, one of the co-founders of Satchel Clothing.
Styled Club has been accurate with their customer’s preference thus far and has gained over 2,000 sign ups in about 2 months. “As long as the users have provided their measurements accurately, the clothing would fit perfectly. Our stylists would literally tape measure items before packing them in the box,” Anan assured.
“We also do have plans to convert the store from being a Satchel Clothing concept store to a Styled Club members-only area to meet your personal stylists in person and be styled on location,” he added.
Men Behind This Women’s Clothing Brand
Styled Club is the ultimate women shopping experience, but the founders of Styled Club and Satchel Clothing, Anan Saminathen and Shah Besri, both happen to be men. Hence it begs the question of how these two men found the passion in styling the opposite sex? To solve that question, Rachel Thomas Dulis acts as the brand’s fashion director and she has been instrumental in building the business as well.
The brand started off by offering womenswear as they have a very good relationship with quality international womenswear brands. However, the team has always wanted to style men and were just constantly waiting for the right time.
“For the last 3 months, we have scoured the world and South East Asia to bring in some quality menswear brands and retailers, and we have signed up about 20 brands/retailers as of now,” said Anan. Therefore, the birth of the first personal styling service for men in Malaysia is in the works for Styled Club as well.
“Men has different pain points as compared to women when it comes to fashion. Men loves to dress well but we don’t know how to,” Anan shared candidly. He elaborated that despite the fact that all men want to look good, they do not like the process in getting there.
“Shopping has always been a chore and doing online shopping is absolutely confusing and tedious. With all due respect to the women in men’s life that has been styling us all these while, you gals have been getting it wrong but don’t worry, our stylists would sort them out very soon,” Anan said.
Besides launching the men personal styling service soon, Styled Club is also looking to start operations in other cities in Malaysia namely Penang, Johor Bharu and Kota Kinabalu, and this would ideally begin by the end of 2015.