Blue Ocean Strategy – Stitchfix data driven styling approach

Stitch Fix relies on  data-driven, personal styling service that revolutionized the consumer retail experience in terms of buying apparel. Differentiation achieved by the company using its data driven approach and human stylists had led to company’s success in red ocean and highly competitive e-commerce sector Stitch Fix personalized retail at scale with large consumer base and high repeated purchase and retention.  

Stitch Fix will be focused on growing its customer base, innovating on its proprietary data science capabilities, and expanding into new markets. Stitch Fix shifted the apparel retail ecommerce from a “browse-all” model to a curated, convenience-driven model associated with human stylists. In terms of Blue Ocean Strategy the company eliminated consumer problems in the shopping experience by gathering personal preferences on style, fit, and size to offer a personalized combination of hand-selected items that clients can try on in the convenience of their home and ultimately raised consumer satisfaction.

Stitch Fix reduced the costs of operations through  unit economics and economies scale leading to profitably compared to typical e-commerce businesses. Stitch Fix has created a new market space that is uncontested using the combination of data and stylists, and refining algorithmic recommendations, leading to increased conversions and higher retention. The average Stitch Fix client directly provides over 85 meaningful data points through style profile.

This data combined with other sources enables Stitch Fix to provide highly personalized customer experiences. Stitch Fix also needs to maintain high retention through continual improvement of its algorithms and superior customer service. The company needs to recruit and retain high quality stylists for new product categories and its existing core women’s business in the face of increasing competition for high quality “part-time” workers with the growing popularity of sharing-economy services.

With new online and mobile commerce services being innovated consumer-centric shopping experiences are being developed that go beyond increased speed and convenience. These emerging services were possible due to  understanding from a highly competitive space that has seen many companies closing. Stitch Fix is not the first to try a personalized and curated model in fashion commerce, but it is one of the most successful because of its data driven approach and blue ocean strategy adopter.

Value proposition is the company focusing on the plus styled new design men’s category that is growing rapidly equivalent to women’s category. The company also needs to focus on cutting costs further and increase buyers utility further. The market is rapidly getting crowded as large players also started to launch personalized services.