AT a traditional tailor shop, the kind that’s been around for centuries as an atelier for bespoke suiting, the personal touch has always been vital. Shoppers have relationships with their tailors, who know their style and exactly what they’d want to wear.
Now that relationship is getting a technological makeover. Knot Standard, a custom-suit startup backed by more than US$25mil (RM104mil) in venture capital funding, has spent the past few years trying to figure out what suit its menswear shoppers want when they visit a showroom in person. After numerous attempts, it has settled on something management calls a “Style Wall”, a way to effectively personalise an entire store for individual customers when they step through the front door.
Here’s how it works: Suit-seeking shoppers book their appointments online, pairing up with a stylist. Upon arrival, a wall of screens in the showroom’s common area is there to guide them through basic ideas, with photos and videos of models wearing the label’s suits. If they’ve said, for instance, that they want an outfit for a black tie wedding, tuxedos and bowties will splash across the screens, providing inspiration for looks. Perhaps that’s when someone determines that midnight blue is absolutely out of the question. Black tuxes only? That’s fine, too.
