Swipe Right: How Fashion Shopping Is Stealing Online Dating’s Most Iconic Move

Leave it to fashion to grab onto an emotionally charged or densely technical technology and turn it into something fun for online consumers.

Witness FashWire, which is asking consumers to swipe right on its new, AI-driven production recommendations feature.

The fashion discovery and shopping marketplace created an artificial intelligence engine that bases personalized product recommendations on user feedback. FashWire is not the first to focus on this type of data. Different platforms already zero in on consumer preferences, from fashion games to quizzes to post-purchase reviews, surveys and other mechanisms. But few have hit the magic formula that can pull this off without annoying users.

Perhaps sensing how dreary some of those efforts can be, FashWire borrowed from the online dating world’s swipe-able “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” feedback loop, tying itself into a behavior that’s already baked into digital culture.

It makes sense. Apps like Tinder and Bumble have spent years training the public to rate potential romantic candidates by swiping one way or the other. And infatuation is infatuation — whether it’s for people or products.

According to the company, the data will inform “Trending Now,” a section that showcases apparel, footwear and accessories every time the app is opened. As the AI learns more about the shopper’s taste, it can tailor the picks more and strengthen predictions about what the user will like.

This feature — the product of a partnership with SnapSoft, a tech company that builds off of Amazon Web Services’ technology — is heading to FashWire’s fashion platform, as well as to its beauty-oriented GlossWire business. The businesses, along with PawWire for pets, roll up into one business-to-business-to-consumer company called The Wires.

Across the fashion and beauty apps, the AI-shaped, curated edit exceeds 60,000 items spanning more than 800 global brands from more than 60 countries. With such an enormous catalog of product for shoppers to parse, AI isn’t an embellishment but a necessity.

“Customers can effortlessly find their perfect dress, shoes, accessory, or beauty product right on the home screen of the FashWire and GlossWire apps,” Kimberly Carney, chief executive officer of FashWire and GlossWire, told WWD, framing AI as a tool that “revolutionizes the shopping experience.”

Brands also get analytics in real time, so they can observe consumer behavior and feedback immediately and switch up product offerings and messaging or make other decisions to drive conversions, repeat purchases and loyalty.

Actionable user preference data is gold in the fashion business, and the industry knows that. So do other operators with fashion ambitions. One of the most notable hit the scene earlier this year as Google Shopping’s spring update introduced style recommendations that online shoppers can rate by swiping to approve or reject.