A brand new buying platform is giving customers the higher hand on figuring out what celebrities are sporting.
On Wednesday, Bobby Maylack, former chief artistic officer at Cameo, and Emir Talu, a founding staff member at Clean Road, launched OneOff, an AI-driven style discovery platform that blends personalization, social inspiration and e-commerce.
The 2 entrepreneurs joined forces earlier this yr after recognizing a niche out there: a high-retention platform — aka a “Spotify or Netflix for buying” — the place customers return a number of instances a day.
OneOff cofounders Bobby Maylack and Emir Talu.
Courtesy Photograph
“If you wish to be what Spotify [is] to music, you additionally want a social factor,” Talu stated. “Proper now, e-commerce — particularly in luxurious style — feels remoted. Nobody is aware of what you’re shopping for until you inform them immediately, and the expertise itself is fragmented. Historically, you’d go to your favourite model’s retailer, speak to a gross sales affiliate and see what’s new. However discovery has utterly shifted to algorithm-led platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok. Now it’s not about needing to buy — it’s about wanting one thing since you’ve seen it on somebody. You see a glance, join emotionally and assume, ‘I can see myself in that.’ That instinctual need is what drives trendy style consumption, and what in the end [led us to create] OneOff.”
Contained in the OneOff App
The OneOff expertise begins with a fast onboarding course of that takes lower than 5 minutes.
Customers choose the kind of content material they wish to see — menswear, womenswear or genderless — and scroll via a curated gallery of inspiration photos that prepare the AI to acknowledge their private aesthetic.
OneOff grid.
Courtesy Photograph
“Primarily, we affiliate totally different merchandise with totally different kinds,” Talu stated. “So with one click on, customers present 20 to 30 objects that function reference factors for the algorithm to personalize their web page.”
As soon as the system has gathered sufficient knowledge, it generates a personalized feed that includes objects from multibrand retailers — together with Ssense, Mytheresa, Web-a-porter, Moda Operandi and Revolve — and merchandise aligned with the person’s preferences. The platform’s catalogue contains greater than 1 million luxurious objects, starting from beneath $100 to greater than $1,000, spanning on a regular basis necessities to high-end items.
“At Revolve, we’re redefining next-generation retail via connection and discovery,” stated Ryan Pabelona, vp of efficiency advertising at Revolve. “With OneOff, we’re reworking cultural affect into intuitive, shoppable experiences that meet clients the place inspiration begins.”
One of the notable options of the app, although, is the “Verified Highlight” part, which homes verified profiles for figures like Emma Roberts, Winnie Harlow, Rob Lowe, Suki Waterhouse, Brooks Nader, Danielle Guizio and Olivia Jade, to call just a few.
OneOff grid.
Courtesy Photograph
Every profile showcases objects these personalities have truly worn, streamlining product discovery and eliminating the trial-and-error of reverse-image looking out to establish particular items, Talu famous.
He defined that verified profiles are designed to operate in a different way from commonplace person accounts — just like how Spotify distinguishes artists from listeners. “They’ll present path or a theme, and our staff handles the information aggregation and edits,” Talu stated. “It’s a a lot sooner course of than manually managing a storefront or linking merchandise one after the other.”
Every celeb profile additionally serves as what Talu described as a “residing index” of their type, mechanically logging new appears to be like at any time when they’re noticed sporting one thing publicly. “It’s a better method for these busy figures to keep up an up to date profile,” he added. “In the event that they needed to manually add merchandise each time, it might create friction — so we constructed a system that accelerates that course of [while eliminating the trial-and-error] of reverse-image looking out to establish particular items for customers.”
For celebrities and influencers who aren’t but on the app, OneOff’s know-how can nonetheless assist customers store their type — however inside clear boundaries.
“We don’t work with Gigi Hadid but, so we [haven’t] created an official profile for her [nor do we] use her likeness,” Talu stated. “However as a result of she’s such a distinguished style determine, the algorithm understands her aesthetic. If a person searches her identify, it surfaces merchandise impressed by her type — extra like a search outcome than a profile. As soon as we formally collaborate, that will then turn out to be a verified account.”
OneOff grid.
Courtesy
As one of many first celebrities to hitch the app, Canadian mannequin Winnie Harlow stated she pertains to the frustration many consumers really feel when making an attempt to trace down one thing they’ve seen another person sporting — an issue OneOff is “serving to eradicate.”
“I understand how it feels to be on the seek for the right look,” Harlow completely advised WWD. “That’s why I’m so excited to be a part of this platform — it makes that dream a lot extra accessible. Now, anybody can store [for] the precise items they see on the individuals who encourage them.”
Alongside Harlow, celeb stylist Jamie Mizrahi — whose shoppers embody Adele, Jennifer Lawrence, Pedro Pascal and Jeremy Allen White — can be betting large on OneOff, becoming a member of the corporate as artistic director.
In her new function, Mizrahi stated she is going to function an adviser, serving to introduce the platform to customers and the broader style neighborhood.
“As a stylist, my job is all about curation — working with expertise to construct appears to be like, discovering inspiration in what others are sporting and staying linked to what designers are placing out on the planet,” Mizrahi stated. “I’m continually sharing concepts with shoppers and mates — sending hyperlinks, buying and selling screenshots and recommending items throughout Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and textual content. The truth that OneOff brings all of that beneath one roof…is so thrilling. It’s a approach to curate, store and share inside a neighborhood constructed round one thing I already do each day.”
Except for Harlow and Mizrahi, who serve a extra image-driven function inside OneOff, a number of trade heavyweights are supporting the platform behind the scenes, together with Eva Guerrand-Hermès of the Hermès household.
“There’s been a shift in how individuals uncover what to purchase in style over the previous few years,” Guerrand-Hermès completely advised WWD. “We consider OneOff and its staff are nicely geared up to handle the wants of right now’s luxurious style consumers.”
From Beta to Launch
Earlier than OneOff’s official debut on iOS (with plans to broaden to extra working methods sooner or later), Maylack and Talu carried out beta analysis in April to raised perceive the affect of celeb type.
The cofounders listed the highest 100 most-searched figures in style and constructed a searchable engine that surfaced merchandise based mostly on what these celebrities had not too long ago worn — an early proof of idea that confirmed how a lot customers depend on celeb and influencer inspiration.
“We realized the engagement hook was actually robust,” Talu stated. “Tens of 1000’s of individuals checked it out inside weeks. That momentum pushed us to evolve it right into a platform the place retention was doable and the total expertise — discovery, personalization and checkout — lived in a single place.”
As soon as that they had validated the thought, Maylack and Talu started constructing the app in July with an in-house staff led by a former Pinterest alumnus. Talu stated the staff “introduced that very same technical spirit of personalization” to style, integrating AI into almost each layer of the platform.
“The extra AI we constructed in-house, the better our processing and computing wants grew to become,” he stated. “So we developed a number of AI brokers — one for knowledge aggregation and scraping, monitoring what celebrities put on publicly and linking these objects to retail companions; one other that assists with coding; and one which retains stock synced throughout retailers like Farfetch and Mytheresa. By leveraging these brokers, our engineering staff now delivers three to 4 instances the output we had earlier than AI.”
Regardless of the technical complexity, improvement moved quick.
In actual fact, from ideation to launch, the app took roughly three months to deliver to market.
“Our method has all the time been to not over-assume,” Talu stated. “We’d somewhat put one thing in entrance of customers rapidly, get suggestions and iterate. If which means launching a product that’s not excellent, we’re high-quality with that. The objective is to construct in parallel with the client…utilizing actual suggestions to make it higher over time.”
Whereas the app is just starting to roll out, Maylack stated the long-term objective is for OneOff to turn out to be a part of customers’ day by day routines.
“Success for us is when individuals get up within the morning and, earlier than even getting away from bed, they’re scrolling via OneOff alongside Instagram,” Maylack stated. “That’s once we know we’ve constructed one thing significant — when customers wish to have interaction with it continually, even after they’re not essentially making a purchase order.”
