The way we shop is facing a revolution.
Instead of going to a store, browsing through a catalog, or searching the internet for your favorite brands, you could shop the way you identify a song using the music discovery app Shazam – on demand, whenever and wherever you are. That’s the vision behind the interactive shopping app Capsule.
This concept has been around in the e-commerce world before. In 2019, Amazon introduced StyleSnap, an AI-powered tool that matches fashion photos uploaded by users with products on the site. Brands like Asos, Wayfair and Target have launched similar tools that rely on computer vision and deep learning algorithms to identify styles, shapes and patterns from images.
But Capsule has more ambitious and far-reaching goals: It wants to become the default destination for online purchases. Instead of relying on its inventory or partnerships with other brands, the company collects data from around 20,000 websites every night, ingests it and uses it to create its product index.
Capsule co-founder and CEO Michele Van Ruiten told Business Insider that the company has set its sights on women’s fashion and aims to dominate the space within two to six months. The ultimate goal is to create “a universal horizontal data layer of commerce that exists on top of the internet,” Van Ruiten said. “This data layer understands products, every product for sale worldwide, what it is, who is selling it, what it’s made of, and what its resale value is.”
This means consumers no longer have to spend time searching online for a specific pair of high heels or a water bottle. “One search takes into account everything that is online,” Van Ruiten said.
Take a photo and buy the dress
Step-by-step instructions on how to use Capsule. Michele Van Ruiten
In practice, Capsule works a bit like Google reverse image search on Hyperdrive. Users simply take a photo of a product – be it an actor wearing a dress they like or a pair of shoes they spotted in a shop window – and upload it to the app. They’ll then be shown the item along with other, similar models they can buy.
The company uses computer vision models to derive details about the items in its catalog, compare products, and connect identical items.
Beyond image search, Capsule can also recommend users a personalized color wheel based on skin, eye, and hair color using proprietary algorithms. It also lets users expand their searches using generative AI. For example, if they upload a picture of a white shirt but want to see it in colors not offered by the brand that makes the shirt, Capsule uses generative AI to recreate it in new colors, allowing users to search for options from other brands.
Last month, Capsule also launched a new text search feature in beta that lets users search for clothing based on a concept they have in mind — be it just a “plain white t-shirt” or a “Carrie Bradshaw-inspired dress” — rather than a specific image.
Eventually, Capsule wants to share data on what users are searching for or how they complement products with brands to drive new product designs. The company still needs to sign up a few million more users before then, but Van Ruiten says the company is already able to predict trends before they land on apps like Pinterest or are announced by fashion magazines like Vogue.
It paves the way for a new, consumer-driven way of shopping.
Consumers no longer want to “recreate things they see online one-to-one,” Van Ruiten said. The average Gen Z shopper, in particular, finds fashion inspiration in countless places in the virtual world – from brands to influencers to viral trends. As a result, they’re starting to see apps like Capsule as a place “where they can take control of product discovery through their own creativity,” she said.
