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Unlikely Fix

I have long been a fan of Stitch Fix UX but never a customer. What they sell is interesting as a concept but I am not among their buyer personas. For a company that gets customer pain so well judging by the style questions they ask at intake, it was disappointing to read this story about their stylists leaving the company. If the employees are not engaged and satisfied with the job that they do, the negative effects impact the the customer the company seeks to serve. 

While the direct buy options seems sensible at first - there should be enough data by now to curate styles to mimic the work of the stylist. The algorithm may even be a good and useful one, but it takes the human touch out of the whole experience. There is a certain type of customer that gravitated to the Stitch Fix service and having a "personal" stylist was likely a big part of the attraction - a human stylist, not an AI that mimicked one. While the direct buy may bring new and different customers into the fold, it will take away from what this brand was all about. Maybe it was not a business model that was meant to make money or scale like the investors would have wanted, but there is a place for it still. The voice of one stylist that this report cites, says it all:

"A lot of it is the asks from our managers, the top down stuff," the second stylist said. "They're asking us to put an athleisure piece in every single box. I get very few people who request that, but it's my boss making me do that. And she will force me to not send as many shoes, she wants me to push more jewelry. They'll tell you to do what's client-right, but then you still get coached on doing what is Stitch Fix-specific."

Being customer-centric is not easy and often not profitable so there is this eventual desire to pull on the levers that make the company more money. The hope is that the customer remain mostly happy but they make investors happier. Over time the model starts to fall apart because the type of workforce that makes all this magic possible can't and won't stick around as the company tries more and more tweaks away from what customers loved them for.

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