Stitch Fix: Harvard MBA Hurdles Silicon Valley Gender Barrier

In addition to matching customers with clothes they’re likely to buy, Stitch Fixes’ client profiles provide a wealth of customer data, a highly valued commodity for any business, with particular importance for companies carrying inventory based on predictions of what people will buy. The date-of-birth and occupation questions, as well as “Are you a mom?” certainly have relevance for clothing needs, styles, and fit, but provide valuable customer-demographics insight as well. Stitch Fix also gathers social media data from customers who fill in optional links to Pinterest boards, Twitter feeds, and LinkedIn profiles.

The company employs 60 data scientists, 50 of them with PhDs, Lake says. Data analysis maximizes supply chain efficiency, and, crucial for a company selling ephemeral styles, a window into the future. “Out data science is really good at making predictions about how likely someone is to love something,” Lake says. “The data science team and the stylists working together are much better than either of the two working alone.”

What you won’t find in the Stitch Fix website’s FAQ section is any mention of the algorithm that helps the company match customers with clothing. Stitch Fix is selling the personal touch, and the automation represented by an algorithm might give the wrong impression about the service’s “Total Personalization.” The stylist, Lake maintains, always gets first touch, and can then consult results from the automated data crunching to help identify the best choices.

SOCIAL IMPACT, WITHOUT TRYING

The company’s stylists, spread across the country, now number some 2,000 of the firm’s 3,000 employees. Stylists must commit to a set number of hours per week, typically 15 to 30, but can choose their hours. Many are women who have left the workforce to raise children, Lake says, and others are small clothing boutique owners and former stylists. Lake didn’t set out to provide flexible jobs for women across the land – the business just worked out that way, she says.

Lake’s pre-MBA background helped position her to launch her own startup. As an associate and senior associate for two years for The Parthenon Group, a Boston business strategy company bought by Ernst & Young in 2014, she consulted with e-commerce and retail companies, and she went on to work with dozens of startups during two years as an associate at Silicon Valley’s Leader Ventures, which issues loans to VC-backed enterprises.

The Harvard MBA program then provided “backbone skills,” including leadership and the ability to state a point of view confidently and concisely (as required by the case study method) that she used for her startup’s launch, and continues to employ today, she says. Because she launched Stitch Fix in San Francisco, she didn’t make significant use of the Harvard network, she says.

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Stitch Fix: Harvard MBA Hurdles Silicon Valley Gender Barrier

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