Phia’s co-founders were clear about where they want to take their online shopping tool on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco on Oct. 28.
“We want to be the AI agent for shopping,” said Phoebe Gates, one of Phia’s two co-founders and the daughter of U.S. tech and philanthropy figures Bill and Melinda Gates.
Sophia Kianni, the other co-founder at Phia, shares a vision that extends beyond resale shopping in the web browser extension and iOS app that Phia launched in April. The company has raised an $8 million seed round of funding and is now out to prove that it can improve the online shopping experience for resale, apparel and more.
As it pursues those ends, Phia faces a growing field of competition in the emerging arena of agentic commerce, where artificial intelligence (AI) tools research and interact with multiple platforms on behalf of shoppers.
How Phia’s co-founders got started
Phoebe Gates, co-founder of Phia, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt | Image credit: Digital Commerce 360
“We were the girls spending hours wasting time shopping across different sites, figuring out the best secondhand deal, understanding if this was actually a good item to add to our collection or wardrobe,” Gates recalled, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt.
Gates and Kianni started out as roommates at Stanford University, where their common interests ultimately fueled their desire to work together and solve problems in ecommerce. Now they view AI as a major part of their solution at Phia.
“As we saw every single space be absolutely overtaken by vertical agents, whether that was customer service or coding, we felt like there was this giant white space for, like, ‘What should we actually buy and why doesn’t everyone have a personal shopper in their pocket?’ because we were wasting so much money on junk,” Gates explained.
How Phia is using AI
For Gates and Kianni, Phia’s early wins have been about growing its network of users and resale platforms.
“We have over 5,200 brands/partners now, and through purchases that we’ve seen flow through the platform, our return rate is less than 50% of industry average,” Kianni told the audience.
As Phia builds that network, it is also building a database.
“Number one, we now have over 150 secondhand platforms that we’ve integrated into Phia,” Kianni stated. “We have over 350 million items in our in-house search database — one of the largest secondhand databases in the U.S.”
That data underpins insights Phia is in turn able to offer, related to details such as resale value and fit.
“We also now show people the retained value of an item that they’re considering purchasing,” Kianni said. “So if you’re looking at a $500 handbag on Phia, you can completely understand ‘Can you resell that item for $300 or $400?’ or, on the contrary, if it’s a fast-fashion piece and you’re buying it for a hundred bucks, is it only reselling for $10?”
Sophia Kianni, co-founder of Phia, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt | Image credit: Digital Commerce 360
Testing sizing insights in beta
Kianni previewed one of Phia’s newest features, which is “Sizing insights is something we have in beta with a small cohort of our users that we’ll be rolling out,” she said. “I’ve talked to hundreds of women who are like ‘I can’t tell you how many things I return because it just blatantly doesn’t fit me.’”
Currently, Phia’s team is crafting an approach to predict fit, based on its data and user input, ultimately reducing returns.
“If we can see, ‘Hey, you returned that blazer last week from this brand — likely because it was too big — but you kept that one, we can give you better insights, especially if you add your measurements on top of that,” she assessed.
Ultimately, the co-founders hope to incentivize shoppers to be more mindful in their purchasing, being more informed and leaving behind lower carbon footprints as a result. If they are successful, that result will come from creating an easier process, eliminating unnecessary transactions and returns along the way.
Do you rank in our databases?
Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.
Sign up
Stay on top of the latest developments in the online retail industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and YouTube. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.
Favorite