TECHNOLOGY
Stitch Fix Files IPO
San Francisco–headquartered fashion company Stitch Fix filed an initial public offering on Nov. 16, releasing 8 million shares of Class A common stock at a price of $15 per share. It started trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on Nov. 17 under the symbol SFIX, raised $120 million and was valued around $1.5 billion, according to media reports.
Katrina Lake, Stitch Fix’s chief executive officer, started the fashion subscription service in 2011. Through computer questionnaires and the service’s algorithms and consultations with human stylists, Stitch Fix assembles a profile of fashion likes and dislikes for individual members of Stitch Fix. The company later ships regular deliveries of clothes, footwear and accessories to its members for a fee.
On Aug. 22, Stitch Fix announced that it had added more than 100 new premium brands to its merchandise mix. Women’s offerings include Alice & Olivia, Helmut Lang, Kate Spade, Rebecca Minkoff and Theory. Men’s brands include John Varvatos, Steven Alan, Theory and Todd Snyder.
Subscription services such as Stitch Fix remain a good bet for investors, said Syama Meagher, chief executive officer of Scaling Retail, a Los Angeles–headquartered consulting group.
“Investors will make an ROI as long as Stitch Fix can scale up the back end to adjust to the national audience,” she said. “A growing market requires bigger space, distribution centers and a challenge to standardize the customer.”
