Which is why to many people it seems strange that, after 1,915 days, we’ve decided to change our name to Snap Tech. The reason?

“Hi, I’m Jenny, the founder of Snap Fashion… we’re actually a tech company.”

It’s incredibly simple. Snap Tech provides world leading visual search technology to publications and retailers. We started out with my thesis in Content Based Image Retrieval Systems, and the majority of our team is tech, not fashion. We are a technology company through and through, and hardcore computer vision is in our DNA. But that isn’t everyone’s expectation of Snap. To some people we’re a fashion platform, an aggregate retailer and, to be honest, not that different from the rest of the fashion pack.

As soon as you have a company name that doesn’t reflect your company DNA, vision and culture, you actually have a big problem.

• Hiring becomes more difficult. You don’t have top tech talent seeking out positions in fashion companies.
• Raising investment becomes tricky because you’re instantly compared to fashion brands and aggregators rather than computer vision and deep learning technologies.
• Communicating your vision and mission can become instantly blurry, as the question is always raised of “oh… that doesn’t sound very fashion to me.”
• And finally you have the shock of what our culture really is; a floor full of super smart computer scientists playing with the latest gadgets, talking software stacks, scalability of server architectures, and cutting edge deep learning techniques, with a tech founder behind the scenes. People expect a fashion-founder and an outsourced technology team, which although it isn’t a bad way of building a business at all, isn’t “very Snap”.

So now I’m proud to say we’re unashamedly Snap Tech. We’re an outstanding visual search and deep learning company, doing some amazing things and I’m lucky to be surrounded by some of the brightest people I know. Our first product is Snap Fashion and that’s still our main focus… but in the future, who knows where we’ll go.

Jenny Griffiths, CEO and Founder of Snap Tech

Snap Tech… the company formerly known as Snap Fashion was originally published in Snap Vision on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here it goes… we’ve just closed our Series A round with Time Inc. Yes that Time Inc… of Time Magazine, InStyle, People, Marie Claire, LOOK, NME… the list continues.

I’m personally incredibly excited about the strategic investment that Time Inc have made, as it will allow both companies to flourish in a competitive landscape. I’ve always had huge respect for Time and the reach and influence of its portfolio within the fashion community. (Hey, I’m an InStyle reader for over a decade and counting, and still fan-girling whenever I set foot inside their offices).

The folk at Time Inc are some of the most innovative and lovely people that I’ve had the pleasure of working with to date. They’re super excited to be working with us, and I feel that we’ll come up with some great things together.

Time Inc. UK CEO Marcus Rich says:

“With Marie Claire, InStyle and Look, our fashion content is renowned, and this investment helps us to extend our relationship with fashion-loving audiences. This investment will deliver strategic benefits to our portfolio and reinforces our focus on the 16- to 34-year-old audience as a key group for our growth.”

Time Inc. UK digital director Neil Robinson, who will be taking a seat on the Snap Fashion board, adds:

“Snap Fashion has the potential to revolutionise online shopping, and this investment will transform the e-commerce capabilities of our fashion brands. We have been hugely impressed by founder Jenny Griffiths and the opportunities we have to take Snap Fashion into new retail sectors and services for advertisers. We are very excited about the new initiatives we will be working on together in future.”

I nearly edited out that bit about me. Probably should have done.

Watch this space — Snap Fashion and Time are about to change the face of publishing and product discovery. No pressure.

Jenny and Team Snap x

* Photo disclaimer: we don’t work in a pub!

However, today might be the proudest day in my career to date. We’ve just launched a new app, and I’ve never been so proud of a product. We’ve never created anything this beautiful before. And for those of you who know me well, it takes a lot to say something this boastful and positive. My usual response is “yeah… it’s not too shabby.” So maybe I should rephrase… our new app is the definition of not too shabby.

So the big news is that Snap Fashion has had a makeover. Why have we done this?

Recently the visual search space is getting crowded. I mean, really really crowded. We’ve all heard pitch after pitch about the latest “Shazam for Fashion” apps cropping up. Don’t worry — I’m not going to tell you about that again.

Snap Fashion was the original search engine for fashion. Launched in 2012, we were the first company in the world to bring the worlds of visual search and fashion together on mobile and web. But times have changed, and people are continuing to shop in new ways. Let me introduce you to the brand new Snap Fashion.

Snap Fashion is all about getting inspiration from the world around you — from a photo in a magazine to just a really cool shade that grabs your attention. Take a photo on your mobile phone, and we give you the tools to be your own stylist.

We automatically analyse the image to produce a colour palette based on that look. You can match it, clash it, mix it up and be bold, letting you decide where to take your style.

Clicking on a colour shows you everything from that shade from over 1,600 brands, from Topshop to Net-A-Porter. Swipe left and right quickly to flick from dresses to shoes to accessories — letting both men and women put together the perfectly coordinated look in a tap.

Tapping on an item lets you buy direct from retailers you trust, add it to your wishlist to receive sales alerts, or “Snap For Similar”. The “Snap for Similar” button conducts a full image analysis on the item, letting you see everything in that shape, colour and texture… another world first. Not too bad, not too bad.

Like I said, I’ve never been prouder of a product. My team are absolutely fantastic and I couldn’t be doing any of this without them. So please help our little cluster of engineers in Euston spread this app globally. If you like what we’ve produced please download it, share it, tell your friends and, most importantly, just use it. Give me grief about what you don’t like, rant and rave about what you love… if anything! You can always prove me wrong about things, I’m all ears.

Thanks for the support,

Jenny