A New Kind of E-Commerce Adds a Personal Touch - NYTimes.com

"Personal" via (shopper and product) profiles + manual curation

"“I think there’s way more data science at work here than people may realize,” said Bill Gurley, a general partner at the venture firm Benchmark, an investor in Stitch Fix, who is on the company’s board. “There’s a 15-page profile, there are over 66 characteristics tracked and there’s a predictive heat score for every single item against every single user,” meaning a way to determine the likelihood that a customer will keep an item. Ultimately, though, a human stylist chooses items from the computer-edited list and packages them into a nice little box with a description of each one and a personal note explaining what you have received and how you might wear it."

A New Kind of E-Commerce Adds a Personal Touch - NYTimes.com