Capitalizing on the perceptive abilities of AI “Odd Concepts”

Korean company Odd Concepts is using artificial intelligence to help consumers broaden their search for fashion items to match their tastes – even if the clothes are hanging in a store.

Used by fashion e-commerce sites, its cloud-based image-search program works by allowing shoppers to choose clothes online that match their taste, then with its DeepLook search engine it finds similar clothing.

A member company of the Korean government startup agency K-ICT Born2Global Centre, Odd Concepts draws on its expertise with image and video search. This enables shoppers to not only find clothing of a particular style, but also compare prices with similar items on other sites, says CEO Kim Jeongtae.

Since its launch 11 months ago, the company has seen its monthly users rise to 4 million, he says. Of these, 15 to 20 per cent are from Japanese e-commerce sites.

“We chose Japan as our first market because, unlike other east Asian countries, it has a unique closed-off fashion ecosystem,” says Jeongtae. “After three months of knocking on doors, traffic increased by more than 70-fold in six months, which eventually enabled us to secure an investment from a Japanese venture capital firm.”

As well as DeepLook, the company plans to develop an extra search engine that focuses on content.