TRUSS’ Post

If you want to sell a Helmut Lang jacket on a resale site, you have to photograph it, write out a description and price it, which isn’t always straightforward. There are different levels of value for a Helmut Lang jacket designed by Lang himself, one designed by an anonymous studio team after his departure and one designed recently by new creative director Peter Do, even though they all carry the same label. For resale businesses, the manual work involved, including inputting product details and research to determine the best price, can contribute to high operating costs that strain profitability. For peer-to-peer marketplaces, the effort can be a deterrent to sellers seeking easy cash from items they no longer wear. The tech start-up Truss says it has a solution, and it’s getting the chance to prove it through a £1 million ($1.27 million) grant from the UK government’s innovation agency as well as support from Depop, Selfridges and The University of Warwick. The idea is that, using artificial intelligence, Truss can identify any garment just from a picture, provide full product details and say what it typically sells for online and how long previous listings have sat based on data scraped from resale sites. Secondhand companies have tried to automate some of this work for years. The RealReal has invested in automating tasks like copywriting and pricing. Ebay lets users type in the title of an item and suggests listing details, including a selling price. Read the full story by BoF's Marc Bain. https://rb.gy/91anai