West Elm recently introduced the West Elm Pinterest Style Finder, a new online tool utilizing artificial intelligence to help customers transition style inspiration into products they can buy at the retailer’s stores and online.
The new tool is an extension of Style + Service, the retailer’s design consultation program offering customers design, installation and registry services. The style finder program uses image recognition technology to analyze Pinterest boards to determine a user’s personal style at home.
“This is yet another example of our e-commerce expertise driving innovative change for our customers,” said Luke Chatelain, vp/innovation at West Elm. “Our free design consultations often start with customers sharing their Pinterest board to best illustrate their vision in terms of colors and style. Pinterest boards are an efficient tool to quickly get us on the same page, and understand what inspires our customers visually.”
The West Elm Pinterest Style Finder is powered by Clarifai’s image and video recognition AI technology. The style finder tool uses images from a Pinterest board, either a user’s own board or someone else’s, to recognize a user’s style and color preferences from the collected array of images. The style finder then filters products from West Elm’s online catalog of nearly 5,000 products, suggesting three options from each product category, including furniture, rugs, curtains, mirrors, decorative accessories and more, that are surfaced in order to offer customers choice and variety.
“Our goal was to automate the process and provide our customers with a seamless experience when seeking design guidance, as well as to streamline the process of searching for home products that best express their personal style,” said Chatelain. “It’s a great resource for us to take direct input from our customers and be able to deliver the personalized products and styles our customers are most interested in.”
