What She's Wearing

What She’s Wearing

So after the stress of thinking I’d lost the 2 and a half hours worth of work that I did last night on my blog after my laptop crashed, I was ecstatic to find it had been recovered and was in my draft folder :) So this is what I was trying to post last night, I hope you find our idea interesting....


Hi all

It's monday evening and the end of module 2. I'm exhausted but I wanted to update you guys on the rest of last week and the pitching today...

As I mentioned in my last post, we all came up with our own business idea for this task which everyone really believed in. However, we had to make a team decision and pick one idea that we were to develop and present to the panel. Last week we learnt about the importance of letting go of our own ideas in support of the team decision. Although this was difficult to do, we all agreed that the final chosen business idea was innovative, creative and ambitious which was an important part of the brief. We all sacrificed our individual ideas and got behind our new team idea.

So our big online business idea is ..... ‘What She’s Wearing’ (WSW)

No one in the clothes retailing space offers immediacy... until now. WSW is our new ‘point-know-buy’ revolutionary shopping experience. We disrupt current shopping habits by making fashion ‘immediate, relevant and effortlessly accessible’.

WSW is essentially a mobile app which uses image recognition software to identify clothing items and accessories anywhere. Once the item has been recognised, the user is directed to the product on the brand’s website for immediate purchase.

Brainstorming session

The insight behind WSW is that women want to be able to see something they want and buy it immediately, but they cannot! You may ask your friend where their bag is from, but knowing that it’s from Topshop doesn’t really help, you still have to go to the Topshop website and trawl through the accessories section until you find it. The WSW app is the answer to this problem!

The USP of the WSW app is the immediacy of the purchase. ‘Shoot’ whatever you want and be directed straight to purchase. Simple. You can ‘shoot’ an item from the web (e.g. facebook/instagram pictures, on blogs), from an image in a magazine/newspaper, something your friend is wearing, something you see someone wearing on the street or something you see someone wearing on the TV.

The WSW mobile app is also supported by a website, which can be used to ‘hang’ the item up in your virtual wardrobe until payday or until your friend has offered their opinion. Your wardrobe is a private area where only you and your friends can access. From here you can discuss potential purchases with your friends, compare opinions and co-ordinate on potential outfits.

Users can also ‘ask’ the global ‘dressing room’ if anyone knows where they can track down a particular item and consumers can suggest alternatives to each other. The dressing room is a public space where anyone can converse with anyone else. This option may be used if a certain item hasn’t been recognised and the user is not interested in a brand’s paid for alternative suggestion (explained later). Last week we learnt that consumers are much more receptive to recommendations from their friends. Consumers do not want to be told by brands what to buy, and value recommendations from friends much more highly. The WSW website allows brands to sit behind this notion as friends recommend items to one another. The idea behind this was also to create more of a community among fashion enthusiasts where consumers can share fashion discoveries, ensuring longevity for the WSW business.

Getting wearing from all the hard work

Part of the task was to ensure that we identified a clear revenue model. We were taught last week that this can be challenging for many dot com businesses, and as a group we were asked to discuss the revenue models behind various existing online businesses, such as Spotify and Skype. This task was really useful and made me realise that there is a lot more behind these businesses than you may think at first. So our main revenue model was that in circumstances where products could not be recognised e.g. if the item is from a past season or vintage collection, brands can pay to suggest similar alternative items. In addition to this, we would earn commission from brands who make a sale on their website from consumers using the WSW app.

The website and the app can be used separately or together as a commercial or social experience, but used together they completely revolutionise the way people think about and purchase fashion.

The potential investors on the panel thought that our idea was innovative and ambitious but their main concern was that image recognition software was not up to the job and that technology may not ever evolve in this way. However, they all said that if the software was trustworthy, they would definitely invest in us. They were interested in our trajectory for the future of the retail market; we said that our app will be the future of shopping, the high street will die and shops will solely become show rooms for new products. They liked that we looked ahead in order to take advantage of changing shopping experiences.

Team Bjorn Again presenting What She's Wearing

Our team worked really hard on this task and I certainly gave it my all and really enjoyed it. I took on the responsibility of introducing the big idea during the pitch, ensuring I gave the idea the justice it deserved. I was pleased with myself because in presentations and pitches in the past, I have often found myself opting for the safer option of presenting stats and facts, whereas this time I tested my sales side which I really enjoyed and my team assured me that I did it well :)

I have attached our concept book for WSW in an email as I can’t attach it to my blog. Please have a look through it and watch the video which demonstrates the business problem staring me!! :)


Now on to Module 3: Putting an offline business online (progress to be updated shortly)