Move over, Tommy Hilfinger. Levi Strauss & Co has a new chatbot that sells the most essential piece of your wardrobe. On Thursday, the pedigreed fashion brand launched Virtual Stylist, a bot that helps customers compare styles, find sizes, and pick the jeans of their dreams.
“By strategically tapping into emerging technologies like AI (artificial intelligence), we can give consumers a more personal and convenient experience like what they would find in store, thus increasing conversation and driving online sales growth,” Levi’s said in a statement. “This will allow the shopping experience to be consistent and seamless for consumers no matter where and how they shop.”
Virtual Stylist, which Levi’s claims is one of the first chatbots accessible on both Facebook Messenger and the web, uses artificial intelligence to recommend clothing that suits your tastes. Instead of directing them to listings pages like a website might, Virtual Stylist asks questions like, “How would you like your jeans to fit through your hips and thighs?” and, “Which color combinations do you prefer?” to narrow down the selection.
True Fit, the Virtual Stylist’s third-party sizing tool, ensures pants fit perfectly by mapping “millions” of styles to individual sizing preferences. But if that isn’t enough to put your mind at ease, there’s Virtual Stylist’s See It Styled feature, which uses image recognition to pull up galleries of customers wearing the same items. And if you need a second opinion, the Share tool lets you circulate your picks among friends, who can vote for and comment on their favorites.
It might sound like overkill, but Levi’s says it’s trying to win over the more than 60 percent of U.S. buyers who don’t shop for clothes online.
“No matter where the customer chooses to shop, we want to give them a personalized experience that leverages our expertise in fit and style to address the biggest challenge of finding the pair of perfect-fitting jeans,” Marc Rosen, executive vice president at Levi’s, said in a statement. “[New] technologies like our Virtual Stylist are integral to that evolution at [Levi’s].”
