Hacker News Reader

Comment by psychometry | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else surprised that stitchfix has been successful for long enough that they can keep such a skilled and productive data science team around? Especially considering how much churn subscription box companies have, I'm shocked that they're apparently doing so well.

View on HN

They need a skilled data science team. That's the only way for them to have been so successful. When you're a small company, using your data science team to optimize every interaction is key. It's not just the image analysis, but also logistics, inventory, shipping, etc.

Earlier this year Stitchfix had around 8,000 employees and 115 data scientists, and operated at about $55k of revenue per employee.

They are neither small nor particularly successful.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenli1/2020/02/17/stitch-fix...

Do they? I'm pretty sure an intern (or mTurk) could do this manually and more accurately for much less than the salary of whoever wrote this post.

I look at posts like this as a very small view into one of the problems they've worked on. This post really offered little by way of rationale for why they are extracting colors. The earlier post offers a bit more, but not much.

Instead, I think that a post like this describes how they approach a challenge and how they automate work that would require manual annotation. I actually think of this analysis more as decision support (making manual review easier) as opposed to full-on automation.

I'm not surprised.

1. It's a pretty common misconception that StitchFix is subscription only. A lot of their business is ad hoc just pay for a "fix".

2. Also, as far as I understand it, they are just as much a tech company as they are a retailer, if not more.

3. I know someone who works their, and from what they tell me StitchFix seems to really have their act together and just be well run in general.

The do really well in areas like middle America where the options are limited. I am not surprised they are doing so well.

This is what funding allows. You don't desperately need to be a super success because you have reserves feeding that growth.

Bruh you just don’t get how funding works

Reply on news.ycombinator.com