We launched a product! Kind of?

We did it! We launched an MVP. Well, I thought we launched an MVP. I’m not really sure what to call what we launched.

MVP stands for Minimal Viable Product. It’s definitely Minimal. I guess you can call it a Product. But is it Viable?

vi·a·ble: capable of working successfully; feasible

It does “work” in a sense, but work successfully? That’s a hard one.

What is this “it” we launched? Cindee, our incomparable data scientist, scraped 20K youtube try on videos, and tagged them by height, weight, product, brand…. Our “MVP” lets you find try on videos using your unique sizing information. This is nearly impossible on youtube. I would know: I’ve spent hours on youtube looking for an American Eagle Mom Jean review in a size 12, given up, and then had the video automatically surfaced for me the next day by the recommendation algorithm. There’s all these amazing people making amazing content that can’t be found. It’s frustrating, and it shouldn’t be.

So I guess we did it? We made it easier to find try-on videos made by someone like you. I can’t help but feel like something key is missing. If this is viable, why does it feel so lifeless? The magic just isn’t there yet.

Chris and I put this into the world, and then took a week off. We escaped into the wilderness in Northern Michigan. I’ve been feeling like I’ve been running on empty for months. Covid happened, lockdown happened, masks happened, heat waves happened, fires happened, we left California for Michigan, and then we took a break. We hiked through the beautiful colors of fall, finding peace while Michigan sheds its leaves and hunkers down for winter. 

We came back, and I took another look at the Product. It’s hard to label it “Viable”.

The truth is, we took the videos off of youtube in the hopes of improving your experience with them. However, in the process we lost the community. It feels like pulling one of those incredible Michelangelo paintings off of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and putting it into a white room at eye level. Sure, the mastery is present and can be marveled at, but the experience of walking into that little chapel is missing. The art isn’t where it was meant to be appreciated. In our case, we pulled it out of the community it was designed for.

We learned something so valuable by doing this. We learned that these videos are about the community built around them. Fashion is about identity. It’s a medium that we use to talk about who we are and what we love. We need to create a place for those conversations to happen. We have the content, now we need the features to let you interact with it, and join the conversation.

I’m not sure we have an MVP quite yet, but it’s definitely an MP! I do think you will find our search helpful for shopping. Seeing how something looks on someone like you is so helpful online. Now we just need to let you interact with that person in the clothes, to bring some life into the product. 

Try it out, let us know what you think.

The work never ends, but that’s what makes it worth doing.