INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
what he or she wants, or what they want is not available, it can be an indispensable tool for connecting them with things they might want to
buy.Now, one of the companies building technology to do this has raised a round of funding to expand its business further into the U.S., and
not just across digital platforms, but to tap further into the opportunities of bringing visual search into the world of physical commerce,
too, by way of smart mirrors and apps for store assistants to better help customers.Syte, a Tel Aviv startup that works with fashion
The Series B was led by Viola Ventures, with participation from Storm Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Axess Ventures and Remagine Ventures.Syte
shoppers in the process of the search
co-founded the company in London with husband Ofer Fryman, Idan Pinto and Dr Helge Voss, said in an interview that the company spent about
and offline have found that a new generation of shoppers are less interested in visiting their storefronts.They are instead shopping by
browsing social media platforms like Instagram and buying from there, which essentially opens those retailers to whole new set of
competitors, and puts them potentially at a great disadvantage, as they are not as well-equipped to speak to that audience or anticipate
other hand, while there are a number of visual search tools out in the market, not all of them are useful enough
addresses both of these issues, and then some
In addition to its camera-based search service, it provides a recommendation engine to retailers, plus tagging services for its back catalog
physical commerce is an interesting turn as well
Smart mirrors have been more of a wishlist item than something that has seen critical mass adoption so far in changing rooms.If the idea
does catch on, I wonder what kind of a digital divide it might create among retailers, though, since the cost of refurbishing changing rooms
to include these, along with all the backend changes that would need to be made, will likely be only the kind of service that bigger or
high-end boutiques will be able to shoulder.More interesting, perhaps, is the idea of app-based tools for assistants, many of whom already
