Finding Why Lookscope Should Exist

For those who don’t know, Lookscope is a digital closet app for consumers that helps individuals get the most value out of their wardrobe. It currently has an average rating of 4.3 / 5.0 on the Apple App Store and it is now helping more than thousands of users save time and money (See the app).

User’s closet in the Lookscope App

Introduction

As a startup, our team believes that understanding why our company needs to exist is key to our success. Without it, it would be too difficult to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and describe what we do effectively. Also, from the execution standpoint, it would be impossible to prioritize and focus our energy because there are too many things that demand our attention.

Since the launch of our first MVP in 2018, we have made good progress in improving our understanding of why we should exist. However, the process of making this improvement was not straightforward. One reason why this task was tricky is that at the time I didn’t really understand how to develop a clear value proposition based on evidence. To learn, I used a lot of the popular resources of the startup literature (e.g., Steve Blank books, Paul Graham essays, Y Combinator contents). These resources were very helpful, but I felt that none of the resources described in granular detail how to confirm whether a product or service delivers real value after launching an MVP and then derive an appropriate value proposition. So, I decided to share how we did it to offer a new reference to the startup community.

The rest of the article illustrates the process, which involved the following steps:

1. Check whether our product actually adds value
2. Find clarity around the problems we are solving
3. Understand how our app solves target problems and what the resulting benefits are
4. Derive a clear value proposition

After demonstrating the development of our value proposition, we discuss how we plan to maximize our impact.

1. Checking whether our product actually adds value

Unlike what many seasoned founders would do, when I began working on my startup, I started by building the product. As a first-time founder, the rationale (or excuse?) was that if I can quickly make and launch an MVP (which did not happen), I could test the product concept in the field and get a more truthful evaluation of my product idea than evaluating without a tangible product or high-fidelity prototype. However, because our MVP was designed largely based on my past experiences and intuition, it was crucial that we validate the importance of the product features in the field as soon as possible.

For the validation, we used a combination of two sets of data: 1) conversations and surveys with our users and 2) the ratings and reviews we collected on the App Store. By talking with or hearing from about 60 users through phone interviews, surveys, emails, text messages, and Instagram DMs, we confirmed that our app could delight more people than just those in our social network. We also learned more about what these people were like and why they found the app helpful. 60 is still a small number, but we saw specific themes coming up over and over again, and we were able to act on them to improve the product in targeted ways.

Also, we also paid careful attention to the App Store ratings and reviews. Currently, our app has an average rating of 4.3 out of 5.0 on the App Store internationally and many genuine, positive reviews. We saw these as signs that our app was moving in the right direction, even though we still had a lot of room for improvement. Here are a few of the more helpful reviews:

“I’ve been using Lookscope for one year now and I have to say it’s changed how I see my closet and fashion … Using this app has helped me to clear out the clothes I don’t wear. No longer do I have pieces of clothing that are hidden in my closet. Whether your closet is minimal or large, this app will help you make the most of what you have.”

“Lookscope has helped me get out of my ‘style rut’ by showing me tons of new clothing combinations in my closet. I’ve also saved money on purchasing clothes (for a while at least) because I’m busy wearing these new combinations. I’d highly recommend this app to anyone looking to get organized and save time & money!”

Reviews from our users (Go here to see more)

2. Finding clarity around the problems we are solving

After checking that our app can deliver value to others, we needed to improve our understanding of the problems we were solving. More specifically, we wanted to check whether the problems that we thought we were solving were, in fact, the problems that our users were solving with our app.

More specifically, we wanted to check whether the problems that we thought we were solving were, in fact, the problems that our users were solving with our app.

To do that, we decided to ask our users what their motivation was when they downloaded the app. We implemented a pop-up in our app to ask if they can answer two questions for us. When a new user accepted the request, the pop-up showed a temporary Safari window that displayed a Typeform survey we created. We kept our survey very short because we wanted our users to quickly answer the questions and then go back to the app without exiting it.

The two questions the survey asked were:

• What problem were you trying to solve when you downloaded the Lookscope app?
• What were you trying to accomplish by solving the problem?

The first question helped us understand the immediate situation that the new user was in, while the second question revealed the progress that he/she was trying to make by solving the problem. The idea of asking these two questions was inspired by a technique discussed by Mathilde Collin (Cofounder and CEO of Front) in an episode of the Y Combinator Podcast, which we highly recommend listening.

We collected about 40 responses from our users in about three months. This number is not large, but we have seen that the rate of response increased as our app download rate grew, so we expect to collect responses faster in the future. Also, for the setup, the only thing we needed to do was to create an in-app popup and the Typeform page and then just wait.

A response submitted through Typeform

By analyzing the responses of the survey, we were able to identify the most frequently mentioned problems by comparing the frequencies of common themes in users’ answers. For example, many users mentioned ‘disorganized closet’ as the problem they were trying to solve. Seeing what percentage of the respondents said something related to that theme allowed us to gauge its importance relative to other problems.

After we identified the most popular problems, we tried to understand their causes. For instance, why was the problem happening? What were the relevant contexts that made the problem surface in one’s day or life and become more urgent? We found that the best way to find answers to these questions was asking why’s to users directly via phone call, email or messages. Doing so was very helpful for understanding the target problems more deeply.

3. Understanding how our app solves target problems and what the resulting benefits are

After learning more about our target problems, we needed to understand how our app was solving the problems. By now, being more informed about the contexts and factors of the problems, we could describe why particular features of our app would solve them with relatively high precision. But again, we wanted to gather solid evidence by talking with users, especially those who have been using our app for at least a few months.

By talking with several regular users, we understood how the app’s use fits into their lifestyle and how it benefits them. For example, one of them said,

“I used to wear a lot of t-shirts and jeans to work. I didn’t want to spend the time trying on clothes because it would take more time than I would like in the morning. With your app I can scan through my clothes, generate some random looks and see if anything catches my eye, or go through previously saved looks. Your app has saved me time and allows me to look more stylish.”

As you can see, the user perfectly described the solution and its benefits. He explained that the app made it possible to find an outfit by flipping through new outfit options or reviewing his favorite looks instead of having to try on clothes (solution). Then, he said the app saved him time and helped him look more stylish (benefits).

Having such conversations helped us develop more depth in terms of how much we know about our users.

4. Deriving a clear value proposition

After we understood our target problems and how our solution solves them, we answered a series of questions to develop a clear value proposition for our product. These questions aimed to help find clear descriptions about various aspects of a business idea, before the descriptions can be assembled into a comprehensive value proposition. With slight modification, the questions were:

• Who is your target market
• What your target customers/users are like
• What your product/service is
• What the product/service provides
• How the product/service contrasts to other alternative solutions
• [Added by us] How your customers/users’ day/life changes after using your product/service

These questions are from Harvard Innovation Lab’s Startup Secrets lecture on value proposition by Michael Skok, which we strongly recommend watching.

After answering these questions, we ended up with the following description for our user-side value proposition.

Lookscope’s value prop (user side):

Target users are men and women between 18 and 50 of age who feel that their closet is disorganized or need help with finding new outfit ideas. Our product is a digital closet app that provides a quick and easy way to catalog one’s clothes and accessories and get new outfit suggestions. Unlike other digital closet apps, our app is minimalistic in design and makes it super easy to add items and flip through different outfit options. By using our app, users can look more stylish, save time every day, and utilize the full potential of his/her wardrobe.

Then, as an extra step, we tried to condense this whole description into one simple sentence that describes what we do. After considering many options based on our team’s values and strengths, we came up with this: We help individuals get the most value out of their wardrobe.

Lookscope helps individuals get the most value out of their wardrobe.

5. Thinking about how to maximize our impact

Since we developed our value proposition, we felt it was time to start thinking about how to deliver more value through the value proposition. In other words, how can we do even better at helping our users get the most value out of their wardrobe?

Based on the feedback we received and our observation of how users use the app, we concluded that we need to help with personal shopping more actively. We saw that many of our users were already using the Lookscope App when shopping, and it felt natural to support that use case. But, we still tried to think through why that would be the right next move for our product, and we came up with these three reasons:

1. Assisting users with their shopping in our app can help them avoid buying items of duplicate style.
2. It can also help discover new items that will mix and match well with the items users have so that new ones won’t be under-utilized.
3. If the new items can mix and match well with what users already have, these existing items will be used more often as well.

In the ideal world, each new item purchased through our recommendations will get used lots of times throughout its lifetime in the person’s closet. That way, our users will be able to save time and money from not having to go shopping as frequently as they used to.

Creating impact beyond personal benefits

If we successfully help lots of consumers use their clothes and accessories longer, we think that we could contribute to making the fashion industry more sustainable. Based on our quick, preliminary literature review (e.g., [3]), the life cycle of every piece of clothing can be summarized with five stages: 1) materials, 2) manufacturing, 3) selling/distribution, 4) use, and 5) waste. If our user uses his/her item longer, that will extend the duration of the Use stage of the item. If this pattern scales to involve a large number of items and consumers, we think that the cumulation of these changes could lead to a significant positive impact on the planet. However, our current knowledge on this topic is very limited and we first need to learn more (If you could recommend any resources that would help us learn, it’d be much appreciated!)

Closing

This article discussed how our team developed a clear, evidence-based value proposition for our app and a plan for maximizing our impact. We decided to start actively assisting our users with shopping to help them get even more value out of their wardrobe.

Thank you so much for reading the article, and we’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comments section below or via email.

References

[1] Y Combinator Podcast Episode #96 - Mathilde Collin

[2] Harvard i-lab | Startup Secrets: Value Proposition

[3] Fashion’s Crippling Impact On The Environment Is Only Getting Worse (HBO)