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Fatima Yusuf is founder and CEO at ImagineCreate AI, which creates AI product and fashion imagery for e-commerce.
How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? Anyone who shops online knows how important it is to have good photos to assess the product they want to buy. In fact, 75% of shoppers make purchasing decisions based on product images alone, but the process of creating those images is both expensive and time consuming for retailers. I’m making it easier for brands to create high-quality, personalized images for their website and channels using AI, for a fraction of the cost. What that means for buyers is that we can now see more personalized images of items we are interested in buying on people that look more like us, or in settings that are more contextually relevant for us, before we make purchases online.
One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? There is something new to learn every day; it’s like having 10 jobs in one!
What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? Definitely our fashion photography feature. Being able to turn a flat-lay photo of an apparel item into a lifestyle image on any model, anywhere in the world was a very cool feature to build. It was important to me to make this really easy for our users, so they only need one single image to work from and our system does the rest. It was cool to prompt a photoshoot of a single dress on models of different ethnicities in New York, Paris, London, and more within a matter of minutes. It’s exciting how much more personalized our shopping experiences will become with this tech in the near future. We’re now taking it one step further—our customers can turn those same photos they create on our platform into videos.
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Which emerging retail trend are you most excited about right now, and why? AI virtual try-on and videos! We all like to see ourselves in clothing before we buy it, and maybe even have a friend tell us what they think. I’m really excited about the ability to do this more easily with the power of AI. We’ve built an early version of this capability into our platform and are making it available through a partnership with Shopify. Merchants with our “buyer try-on” product can allow their customers to take a selfie and see the product on themselves directly within the Shop app.
What’s your go-to coffee order? An Americano with milk and no sugar. Pretty basic, but always hits the spot.
Worst piece of advice you’ve received? You can’t start a company without a technical co-founder. I used to hear this a lot and I think it underestimates how much people can learn when they put their mind to it. Know your market, have a clear vision, and believe you can do it. The rest will get figured out along the way. There is no one way to start a business.
What was your favorite retail product when you were 15, and what’s your favorite retail product now? When I was 15, probably my very first hair straightener, which is kind of funny because I always wear my hair more natural and wavy now. Right now, I love my Beis suitcase. I travel often between a few cities and I find it the perfect size to pack all my stuff without having to check in a bag. Plus, it looks great!