How might small fashion businesses boost their discoverability among GenZ online?
Now a public custom GPT
AI/ML
UX Design
Speculative
2021
Fleak
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Thrifting is on the rise across Instagram in India. It’s a celebrated GenZ trend rooted in sustainability, but access problems remain - particularly in cataloging and discovery.
This project studies the existing thrifting market to solve for easier discovery and inclusivity (on the buyer side), and a smoother seller experience (on the supplier side).
CONTEXT
A BLIND START
In the beginning, I only knew I wanted to study GenZ and the trend of thrifting - I’d observed it around in my college, especially among my juniors. So I started off with imaginative guesses.
4 LEVELS OF WHY?s
SPECULATE
*This is a method we often use in debating to strengthen / question any analysis around how a particular stakeholder behaves
“What’s up with these kids?”
VALIDATE
SECONDARY RESEARCH
I spent time reading online GenZ blogs and consumer reports around thrifting to see if my speculations rhyme.
“What does thrifting mean to them?”
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The joy of unique 'finds'
“I’ll never stop loving the rush of adrenaline that I get when I enter a thrift store not knowing what I’m going to find that day.”
— Female, 19
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7/10 GenZ say it is important to defend causes related to identity
so they are more interested than previous generations have been in human rights.
— McKinsey Consumer Report
-
Positive Impact
“Thrifting taught me that I can positively impact this world in more ways than one. It’s granted me an entryway into a new way of living that feels more productive and purposeful.”
— Female, 24
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Quick. Quick!
49% GenZ rate 'ability to find what I want quickly' among the most important things to them when shopping online / via an app
— Report, IBM Institute for Business Value
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Authenticity on budget
“Thrifting allowed me to find things at very affordable prices that no one else I knew had. I like standing out with my clothes, especially at school, because I tend to be a very quiet person, and [thrifting] was a way for me to express myself”
— Female, 17
-
Proudly 'second-hand'
“I found an inexplicable sense of empowerment and independence in wearing pieces that felt like they were made for me, even if they were previously owned by someone else.”
— Female, 23
-
Personalise.
78% of Indian GenZ will personalise to look good; and 79% will make their own fashion statement to stand out.
— Survey on Indian GenZ, Business Insider
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Diversity is cool
“We each have our own style and way of being, but what binds us is that we accept and understand everyone’s styles”
— Male, 16
-
Ditch the mall
Compared to other generations, 35% more Gen Zs say that they’re shopping somewhere that’s not either a traditional store, a mass store, a club store, or a grocery store.
— McKinsey Consumer Report
HYPOTHESIS:
*condensing insights from secondary research, I made also three simple illustrations to visualize those abstract ideas.
Three key GenZ ideas of ‘Consumption’:
consumption is about access
consumption means having access to products or services, not necessarily owning them. Eg: Online movie streaming
In the context of thrifting, this relates to viewing clothes as things that change hands, as opposed to permanent ownership
consumption expresses identity
Picking something becomes a very deliberately made choice. Therefore, consumption becomes a means to associate with certain values/aesthetics/vibes and takes center stage in the expression of one’s individual, unique identity.
In the context of thrifting, this relates to dressing up to reflect certain ‘vibes’ and personality.
consumption is an ethical concern
consumers increasingly expect brands to “take a stand.”
Brands must be mission-driven and choose specific causes that make sense for them and their consumers.
In the context of thrifting, this relates to promoting thrifting in favor of the environment.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
“How might we make the online thrifting experience for the Indian GenZ better?”
I called my hypothetical solution ‘Fleak’ and set out with defining some things clearly so it sets the tone of the problem statement
SETTING DEFINITIONS
PRIMARY RESEARCH
I rolled out a survey and asked all the GenZ folk to fill in and share with their friends.
I was ready to ask specific questions!
SURVEYING
There popped many opportunities that could become offerings:
- Feedback mechanism against fraudulent sellers
- Making payments+shipping easier for sellers
- Having regulated bidding systems for in-demand ‘drops’
- Developing equitable content discovery algorithms
We came across many game-changer insights, that shaped what key ‘Fleak’ offerings should be.
RESULTS
I decided to focus on ONE key offering first,
from what popped the most in our results:
“Can’t ever find my size”
More intuitive discovery
“Can’t ever find non-binary clothing”
“Have to ‘hunt’ manually through pages ”
“Can’t find something that ‘goes with X’ ”
REFINED PROBLEM STATEMENT:
“How might we make online thrifting discovery more intuitive for GenZ ?”
BRAINSTORM
Alongside thinking of solutions, I like to ‘build-a-case’ for them.
That’s why a lot of my notes look like my debating-prep sheets. It helps me think through all possible stakeholders, their needs, and incentives.
‘Building a case’ also helps me cement my optimism and double-checks the need to build them.
For this one, I tried building a case for ‘an Indian Depop’ after studying about Depop - an online British social-media-like marketplace catering to GenZ that hadn’t entered India yet.
SNAPS FROM MY NOTEBOOK
PROTOTYPE
I used a No-Code tool - ‘Glide’, to test out quick screens.
It uses Google Sheets as a backend database for the app.
It helped me visualise things faster and send out to users for quick feedback.
Most inclusivity problems were solved by increasing the granularity of options:
- Adding non-binary options
- Adding a slider for sizes, so people when searching could pick ‘S/M’ as opposed to strictly ‘S’ or ‘M’
- Adding filters on showing only what’s available and not already sold.
PROPOSAL FEATURES
1
2
I realized discovery was a cataloging problem. Sellers often do describe much needed attributes in captions, but they just weren’t yet “tokenized” and therefore not searchable.
But to solve for ‘intuitive’:
Vibe Tags
could solve for those.
We classify clothes based on materials, sizes, types, seasonality, etc.
Why not on commonly understood cultural tags?
aka ‘vibes’?
Sellers could pick upto 5 tags to describe the aesthetic ‘vibe’ of a piece.
Users could filter on those during search, through easy chips.
Over time with a large enough database, the app could itself classify clothes into their ‘vibes’ using trained classification models learning from all previously uploaded pieces.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
During this project I had the chance to interact with so many younger GenZ folks than me, and talk about their core values and ambitions. I wholeheartedly ‘stan’ them.
It is truly inspiring that so many of them are running tiny, independent empires from their bedrooms - getting friends to model, and doing everything from sourcing, branding, promoting, and shipping - while saving the planet.
It’s powerful to learn that as a collective, they are challenging multi-billion-dollar fashion houses and pushing them to re-think their practices.