StylePath.com, a comparison shopping site that launched this week, finds shoppers products based on their individual tastes. The site uses patented technology to offer personalized product recommendations tailored to each user’s style profile.
Rather than group products under style categories, such as contemporary or traditional, StylePath.com allows shoppers to create a style profile by rating different items within a single category, says David Hornstein, founder and CEO. Shoppers are asked to give ratings ranging from “Love” to “Hate,” with ratings such as “Like It,” “Whatever,” and “Not for Me” in between. Creating the profile takes about 30 seconds.
Using the profile, StylePath’s artificial intelligence technology finds aesthetic patterns—such as curves, solids, patterns—that match products with similar attributes from thousands of web sites. A shopper can click on “more similar products,” to further narrow the search and to improve future searches by teaching the search algorithm more about her style.
“There are essentially an infinite number of styles because it’s based on your own responses,” Hornstein says. “Each person that creates a profile is going to see a unique set of products.”
The StylePath collection includes home décor, lighting, kitchen/bath fixtures, rugs, jewelry, watches, shoes and handbags, with apparel, art and textiles coming soon. The site features 100,000 products from 1,500 online stores.
“Online search is fine for items like electronics or books, but does a poor job in finding visually determined products,” Hornstein says. “We solve this problem by matching a shopper’s mental image of what they are looking for with actual products online. In this way, shoppers can search thousands of sites with one click and only see products they like.”
StylePath.com’s features also include StyleSpace, a style-based social network that lets users with similar taste share ideas and discuss products, and 3D Decorator, an interactive application that allows shoppers to redecorate virtual rooms to help visualize products in their own homes.
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