About Company

Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers in the apparel and fashion space through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience.

We believe that each individual has ideal fit and style preferences and the best person to identify, control, and set those preferences is the individual. We’ve developed tools and an experience for the user that brings this all to life.

Project Scope

Project Description:

Stylecard provides people with a personalized shopping experience. If shoppers are able to find exactly the garment they want with Stylecard, this could decrease returns, decrease garments purchased, increase average lifespan of garment, maximize sale of in-stock garments, and optimize manufacturing to prevent overproduction of garments. This project will determine the environmental impact of the pipeline from apparel production to consumer to physical waste and identify how mass adoption of Stylecard might change this impact.

We expect this project to build an understanding of apparel industry fundamentals like traditional manufacturing, just-in-time manufacturing, manufacturer-to-brand shipping, pre-sale disposal of garments (by brands), brand-to-customer shipping and returns, and post-sale disposal of garments (by customers). At each stage in the pipeline we would like to categorize

1. carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas pollution,
2. freshwater use and water pollution (dyes, plastics, etc.), and
3. physical waste (pre-consumer, post-consumer, inefficient production and over production).

By the end of the project, we would like a product that speaks to the environmental impact currently, and the change in environmental impact given the mass adoption of Stylecard.

The primary Stylecard point of contact is the CIO. Regular communication with the entire executive team is expected.

Project Details:

Students will scope which sections of the apparel pipeline they can study in the time frame for the course. Within each section, students will quantify impact in the three categories listed above, i.e., greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste. Given the obscurity of details in the apparel industry, we expect this quantification to include ranges and/or error bars, and that the methodology for quantifying impact in each category.

Once a baseline quantification has been determined, students will build models of potential impact Stylecard could have on each of these categories at each section of pipeline in the scope. Because Stylecard is not yet adopted in masse, we expect these models to have variable impact depending on factors such as return rate, conversion rate, and percentage of purchases made with Stylecard.

Project Goals/Deliverables

1. Identify sections of the apparel pipeline with enough open source data to reasonably quantify environmental impact.
2. Provide methodology for quantifying environmental impact of apparel industry on greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste.
3. Provide estimations of environmental impact impact of apparel industry on greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste.
4. Provide methodology for quantifying environmental impact of Stylecard on greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste.
5. Provide a model (excel sheet, python notebook, or similar) representing how Stylecard's impact changes with respect to decreased return rates and increased conversion rates.
6. Provide a written summary of findings from the goals above.

We can offer weekly video conference meetings and less than 24 hour response time for emails. We expect the the students to be primarily self motivated, but to have questions about sources they have found or can't find, depth of analysis, prioritization of tasks, etc.