NY Launch Pod: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club award-winning podcast and the most interesting new startups, businesses, and openings in the New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney, Hal Coopersmith. In this episode, we speak to Joanna Hartzmark, founder of Revelle. It’s been a year since we spoke to Joanna, but a lot has changed for Revelle. Learn how Revelle is shaping the way that women shop in another episode of How you doing?
NY Launch Pod: So it’s been a bit more than a year. Remind people what Revelle is.
Joanna Hartzmark: Yeah, so great to be back. I can’t believe it’s been already a year. Feels like a whole different company. I mean, at our core we’re still who we always have been. We are trying to help women find clothes that actually fit without having to stress about the inconsistency of the size chart and be frustrated by ordering two or three sizes of the same garment online and desperately hoping that one might actually fit. But as a platform, we’ve really transformed into a holistic shopping experience. So women can now go to our platform to shop right now for jeans. They don’t have to even think about the size number. Our algorithm will help find something that’s going to fit them the way that they want. We’ll tell them which size is going to be the best fit and they’re able to do all of that in one place and really feel like they’ll get something the first time that’s going to make them feel beautiful.
NY Launch Pod: So you mentioned holistic and also jeans. Are you starting with jeans and the plan is to go holistic?
Joanna Hartzmark: Yes. So the experience since we last talked has become more holistic in everything we’ve integrated onto our platform. We are currently selling jeans because we really wanted to make sure that technology was working with a single category. Truthfully. Most women wear jeans, most women hate shopping for jeans. So it was a good category to start with. But the plan is absolutely to expand to other categories and be a place where women can shop for anything with peace of mind on their own terms.
NY Launch Pod: Has the technology changed?
Joanna Hartzmark: The technology has changed both on the user facing side and on the backend. We’ve learned a lot, not just about clothing fit, but also about what fit means to each individual woman. We always knew that at the core of this problem, the reason that so many people weren’t able to solve it is because fit is subjective and it’s impossible to build a purely technical solution that tells women dictates to them that they’re supposed to feel great when they put it on. And so what we’ve really been trying to do is understand how we as a technology can understand that human element of what fit means to each individual woman. So each member has a store that’s completely unique to her and no one else is going to see the same things because we are trying to learn what fit means to her and how she prefers things to fit her own style. All of those things are individual to each user.
NY Launch Pod: And how are you able to measure that? Because I have to imagine, say someone wants something looser or tighter or any other aspect of fit.
Joanna Hartzmark: So I think they’re really two sides to that coin. One is we use a lot of qualitative interaction in order to understand each individual woman’s biases and preferences. So we triangulate a lot of her past shopping behavior, her current preferences, what she says about her body and how she feels about her body to understand what that might mean about her fit preference. But at the end of the day, she is also a major player in the shopping experience. So you can’t, like I said, dictate to a woman how she’s going to feel when she puts something on. So we need to make sure she has the final say and has some control over that process. So we find by making it collaborative, women trust us more and they feel as though we really are on their side. And so as much as we are trying to build that technology to account for all those biases, at the end of the day the woman has the final say.
NY Launch Pod: And there are also two sides to the platform. The user and the companies,
Joanna Hartzmark: The brands themselves,
NY Launch Pod: The brands. How are you able to acquire more users?
Joanna Hartzmark: So our users come to us primarily organically. They’re searching for some solution to this problem oftentimes via Google or something like that. I want to find jeans that will fit my whatever frustration and they’re able to get to us that way. The other way is social media. People, influencers, companies are talking a lot on social media about this problem because it includes not just body positivity and diet culture, but there’s so much nuance into what goes into what makes you feel beautiful when you get dressed every morning. And so social media is a huge avenue that people find us or just follow our page for inspiration and we hope that they’ll remember us when they’re ready to buy a pair of jeans. So those are really our two primary channels where our users are finding us.
NY Launch Pod: And how are you getting data about the brands themselves and nuancing that data?
Joanna Hartzmark: I would call what we have a passive partnership with the brands. So they provide us with data, data feeds of all the information and attributes of the products that they have available. And we use that to ingest into our algorithm to decide what we show or don’t show to users. So they are happy to get additional leads, but they’re not involved in dictating who might see their products. So even if we get a feed from a particular brand or one of their products, we may not expose it to all of our users because our algorithm doesn’t say it will fit certain users. In general, brands should be happy about this because it means the leads that we are sending them or having purchased their product are going to be much more likely one to buy. But more importantly not to return because we’re only going to show it to the people that it really should fit.
NY Launch Pod: And do you have data now over time that return rates are down?
Joanna Hartzmark: Yes. We can show that we have a lower than industry average return rate. I’m not going to quote a number cuz I don’t know the most recent one off the top of my head, but I’m really proud of that, that we’ve been able to show that return rate has been going down over time and it is lower than the industry average.
NY Launch Pod: What is the industry average?
Joanna Hartzmark: Depends on who you talk to. Between 60 and 80% oftentimes these days it’s wild. It depends. Certain brands with their free return policy, people really do order three of one garment expecting to return to and they end up returning all three of them cause none of them fit properly. So that return rate has gotten out of control and is a huge headache for brands. The reverse logistics of getting those products back in their warehouse, getting them ready to resell or maybe not even resell, oftentimes they aren’t even put back on the shelves or back on the site. So getting that number anywhere below 60% can sometimes be seen as a win
NY Launch Pod: If the industry average is 60% approximately, without having to quote you, are you like at 59% or you like
Joanna Hartzmark: I’m looking to get us no below 50 and I’d like to get us into the single digits. That’s going to take quite a lot of tinkering to get us that low. But we are quite lower than industry average.
NY Launch Pod: In terms of users themselves, how often are users coming back? What are they talking about? What’s been their feedback?
Joanna Hartzmark: So what I will say, one of the reasons we do want to expand to other product categories is because at the end of the day, people aren’t shopping for jeans every week. So people aren’t coming back to our site every week. We hope they’ll come back maybe quarterly or maybe even come back just to interact with some of our other content. But we find a good portion of people are coming back at that rate but not again, like I said, every day or something like that. We find that people really love our content and how we talk about this issue, how we frame, how you think about clothing fitting you is very welcoming to people. So they’re very trusting and they give us a lot of really intimate feedback on how they feel about the platform on that level. And so I really feel very proud of that trust that we’ve built. And so at the end of the day, the positive feedback we get most often is just how inspiring it is to have a brand that really seems to be on their side. The biggest negative complaint we get is if things aren’t available that people want to buy. And I definitely want to make sure we get them as much as possible, but as far as negative complaints go, that’s one I love to hear because it means people like using us and they want to use us more.
NY Launch Pod: And have brands always been a passive partner in your words? Or are they more open to providing the data of their clothing to you?
Joanna Hartzmark: So brands have always, until now been a passive partner. That was very important to me early on in order to establish that trust I was talking about, I wanted women to understand that I was trying to help them shop more effectively and feel beautiful in the clothes they buy, not just make them shop more and spend more money. And I was concerned that by partnering more actively with brands, it might dilute that message and make people doubt that authenticity. So it was very important to keep that partnership as passive as possible to build up that foundation. The truth is, as I said, brands benefit from this as much as users do with reduced returns. So we will, as we expand to other product categories, start to build that partnership a little bit more closely because we’ve been able to show brands that we have a benefit and thus have leverage to make sure that we build it in the way that we want. But we’re going to be very careful in how we build any more active partnerships to make sure that our users know that they come first.
NY Launch Pod: And in terms of your users, where are they located geographically?
Joanna Hartzmark: So all over the US I’d say we do center around urban hubs, not just you know, New York LASF, but also Philly, Dallas, Austin. But in those urban and urban adjacent areas are is when we tend to have the most coverage and we do, I’d say from a proportion standpoint, we are the strongest in New York. But that’s probably because I just won’t shut up talking about my own company everywhere that I am. But we do find urban and urban adjacent areas to be the most lucrative for us.
NY Launch Pod: And what about the age demographics?
Joanna Hartzmark: We are in the younger millennial, older Gen Z demographic. One of the best and worst parts of this company is that it appeals to almost every woman we talk to. And so even women my mom’s age want to check it out, which is fantastic. But as far as our target demographic, we’re really in the twenties and thirties of the people who find this the most valuable and whose brands we have the most coverage of from a price point standpoint, but also just from a style standpoint, those are the people that we appeal to the most.
NY Launch Pod: I was going to say, what stops you from covering all?
Joanna Hartzmark: Well that’s the vision, right? That’s the goal. One day I hope to have not just all brands and product categories, but I hope to be genderless. You know, men have this problem as well. It’s a little bit different than the way that women deal with this problem, but the truth is it’s quite universal. And so my vision long term is that I want to improve the shopping experience for everyone everywhere. And so that means that we will have brands that would appeal to my mom or your mom as well as, my little niece. But at the end of the day, if you’re going to build the technology, trying to do everything all at once is a recipe to fall on your face. So I’m trying to stay as focused as I can, which is sometimes hard because it’s so nice when you talk to your mom’s friend and she’s just as excited about the company as your friends are. That’s the high level overview of where we’re at. It’s very exciting.
NY Launch Pod: Well, that is a wonderful note to wrap things up on. Joanna Hartzmark, thank you for stepping back onto the New York Launch Pod and sharing your time with us. How do people find out more about you and Revelle?
Joanna Hartzmark: So if you want to follow me, I’m Joanna Hartzmark Mark on Instagram, and I do post a lot of fun behind the scenes of the ridiculousness of being a startup founder in New York. We are Revelle Nation on Instagram and revellenation.com. Please check us out today and shoot me some feedback in the dms. I love to hear what people are thinking about it. So that’s the easiest way to keep in touch.
NY Launch Pod: And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you could follow us on social media @ nylaunchpod or visit nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode including this one. And if you’re a super fan of the podcast, Joanna, are you a super fan of the New York Launch pod?
Joanna Hartzmark: Of course. I came back twice, didn’t I?
NY Launch Pod: If you are a super fan like Joanna, you don’t have to come back twice but if you do leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it is greatly appreciated and does help people discover the show.
NY Launch Pod: Thank you for listening to this episode of the New York Launch Pod. For more information, please visit nylaunchpod.com.
