Sarafan.ai, the startup using AI to change the way fashion brands promote their products

Influencers have become an increasingly present component in the modern world of marketing. They command an incredible amount of influence, as the name would suggest, across their many followers, often reaching millions of people. It is no surprise that with this gigantic following, money can be made to promote products or even to launch their own brand.

For Instagram stars Logan Paul and Liza Koshy, this has become a very successful business. These stars have utilized Instagram’s latest feature which allows them to make their feed shoppable, and purchase straight from a post. Previously, the most efficient way of doing this was to consistently advertise “Link in bio.” But these days are over, and it doesn’t end there. Thanks to the rising new technology of Sarafan.ai, an Affiliate Program based on AI for fashion brands promotion and for media-websites photo-content monetization, it is now even easier for anyone to profit from a strong online presence and a good fashion sense.

To learn more about the company and what they are doing, we spoke with Andrey Korkhov, CEO of Sarafan.ai.

What does this technology mean for fashion retailers?

Sarafan.AI is an Artificial Intelligence engine that recognizes fashion and beauty products in photos and videos and selects counterparts in the web shops. Our partners are the publishers, bloggers, fashion and lifestyle websites. Partners install Sarafan widget on their sites. It shows similar clothes to the one in the photo. There is only one thing to do for the website visitors – to click on the look they like and go directly to the online shop.

With Sarafan technology, fashion and beauty brands get an opportunity to create native advertising campaigns using online media and to attract targeted traffic: those users who follow the link in the widget are interested in the particular product and are ready to buy.

Also, we provide SaaS decisions for fashion retailers such as fashion trends analysis, automatic catalog filtering, clients recommendations, recognition and comparison of social groups’ content, an App for visual search of fashion item by the photo, cloth recognition for offline shops.

What does it mean for social media users and influencers?

For our partners (media and influencers) Sarafan is an additional method of monetization. The widget can be installed on any website which has photos or videos with a person wearing clothes. We support CPC, CPA, CPM and programmatic models – the choice of the model depends on the type of the website and traffic quality.

Set-up of the widget is a quick and easy process that won’t take long. Media receives a code-script and embeds it into a website. All recognition processes are conducted on the side of Sarafan. For social media users Sarafan widget is a useful tool which helps to find and purchase desired fashion and beauty items in the one click.

Are we likely to see fashion retailers pivot more towards social media platforms to sell their products?

A successful marketing campaign should be complex and combine different online instruments in order to have several contacts with the target audience. And fashion retailers actively use social media to engage with their audiences, who are very lively on these platforms. But still, traditional media sites are a perfect tool to reach new audiences, to make complex branded campaigns and to reach the target audiences. Moreover, traditional media sites are searching for the new instruments to meet readers expectations and grab attention all the time, so we see high potential in this segment.   

Has Sarafan.Tech teamed up with any well-known brands or influencers? And if so, what are the results so far?

Nowadays more than 350 fashion brands use Sarafan advertising tools. The results: the average CTR of widget is 3-4%, the average ROI is 86%.

More than 150 sites all around the world have already installed the Sarafan widget. The most well-known media brands from them are Cosmopolitan, Glamour and Playboy.

The revenue depends very much from the monetization type, platform and traffic quality.

This AI technology is clearly an excellent match for clothes. Do you feel that it could be used in other forms? For example food, would a person be able to see food online and order it from their local food delivery aggregate (eg UberEats, Deliveroo) through a picture?

Sarafan advertising instruments could be used not only by fashion retailers. Our engine learned to make semantic analysis (analysis of the article text) and also we apply the recommendations algorithms and select the optimal content for CPM advertising. For example, if an article is about the New York nightlife we could recommend evening make up options. Also, we can put the attendant items into the recommendation blocks of the widget – like photos or videos with the scene in the restaurant, which could be completed with the advertisement of the restaurant located nearby.

What is the main focus for Sarafan.Tech over the next 6 months?

Our plan is very ambitious: Sarafan advertising widget has to be installed at every website which has fashion or lifestyle photos and videos all around the world. Over the next 6 months we will focus on CPM functionality development for our partners and clients and also elaborate the programmatic buying functions.