Julia K. Dietmar on Fashion, Sustainability and Technology

Intersection. Intersection. Intersection Magazine. Magazine. Intersection Magazine podcast.

Julie Dieckmann, thank you so much for being a part of Intersection Magazine podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Thanks, Nicholas, for having me. I'm very excited to be talking to you about myself. So my, my journey started as a, as a software engineer. I worked as a coder for years before I decided to get my MBA and kind of move more to the business side. So I, I, yeah, and I worked for large companies, small companies, A pretty exciting journey so far. The retail and apparel angle, kind of big, I got into it almost accidentally. So I was working for a company, it was a startup in Silicon Valley that got acquired by Walmart. That's how I got into retail. And Walmart being a huge company, it is, and a pioneer in many innovation around retail. Has been a very, very, very good education for anybody who wants to learn retail and wants to learn about retail practices. So I got my taste of retail there. And I also got a taste of apparel at Walmart because I started working with merchandisers in the apparel vertical and learning about the challenges of selling apparel and how difficult it is to forecast demand and plan assortment and so on and so forth. So that's where I kind of got my taste for it. Afterwards, I got more into this circular economy and secondhand retail for fashion through a marketplace that's based in the US. And there I started working with AI for the first time. It was back in 2014, 2015. We were using computer vision to solve issues with finding products in the catalog just by pictures. With secondhand apparel, you can imagine that items are only recognizable by images, not really by any unique code or SKU number. So it was kind of my first foray into AI, and then I went into a company that was more of a deep tech, very much AI-focused, and we were building AI for retail. Retailers to help them personalize experiences for customers, for their customers. And this was a very, very interesting and fulfilling experience. Back in 2017, we started working on generative AI before it became a big hype. So interesting and so fulfilling working with many apparel brands because 90% of our customers were apparel brands. That I decided to start Open Wardrobe, and that's what I'm working on right now.

Okay. So in terms of the scope of the work of Open Wardrobe, we have, we have a bit of a history in terms of where you're coming from, retail, some of your parts, some of your roles in Silicon Valley, Walmart, one of the largest players in the market. What unique solutions is Open Wardrobe bringing to the space right now?

So what we are all about is mindful dressing. I call it platform for mindful dressing. And what it means is helping consumers— we're very consumer-focused— it's helping consumers and empowering consumers to make better decisions around a task of getting dressed, whether it's using what they already have and helping them utilize the clothing they already own, or helping them making better decisions when they're purchasing so that when they buy an item and bring it into their wardrobe, they use it, they wear it instead of returning it, or even worse, you know, just putting it in, in the back of their closet and never wearing it again. So that's what the platform is about. And the way it works, it's helping you. You can start with digitizing the wardrobe, and we have AI that helps you do that. It's very easy if you take a picture, everything else is recognized, and it's very simple to do that way. We have many other methods of helping you digitize, and then from there you can use our AI to help you be a lot more creative about how you put items together in an outfit. And what is that designed to do? It's designed to spark your creativity about how you wear things in different ways so that you increase utilization of the items you already have, uh, which helps you, uh, be a little bit more sustainable because the more sustainable outfit, as we know, is already the one in your closet, right? So that's one. And then on the other hand, we provide a bunch of tools that are around education, meaning understanding better yourself, your preferences, your style personalities, uh, your body shape, your colors, so that again, when you are making decisions about what to buy and what to bring into your wardrobe, you're making them a lot more consciously instead of trying to fit into something that does not fit you.

So people can get a rough idea why, why, why we need a solution like yours.

Yeah. So every year we throw away 11.3 million tons of textile. It's a huge number and then creates a lot of waste and a lot of wasted materials and resources that we don't have to waste.

Let me put it that way.

So one more statistic that I wanted to mention that might be interesting is that today, already produced, we have enough clothes to clothe the next 6 generations of humans on the planet. So we don't really need any more, right? Yeah. Another, another interesting number is 30% of items, or garments I should say, that are manufactured are never sold. So almost a third. And what happens to them? Most likely they end up on a landfill. Minorities, minority of those items are recycled, but majority of them are either incinerated or, or just thrown out. So all of that basically tells us that there is a massive problem of overproduction and a massive problem of, um, overconsumption that is being used as a kind of a vehicle to, um, you know, we're buying things and then we are either not wearing them or not wearing them enough. And what that creates is it creates wrong signals to the industry to produce even more of stuff that we don't need. So, and by the way, fashion, if fashion was a country, it would be a third largest polluter. In the world. So as an industry, it's very wasteful. So our solution is we're trying to empower consumers to make better decisions. So if you do choose to buy something, we're helping you to make it sustainable, but by showing you how to wear it in different ways. Because for a garment to be sustainable, you need to wear it at least 30 times regardless of the practices that were used to produce it, right? So that, that's one. And then another a huge polluter is the logistics industry, right? The transportation. So if you buy something online, it's shipped to you, and then you return it, you're basically increasing the carbon footprint of that item. And a lot of times, it's one thing that a lot of people don't realize, a lot of times items that are bought online and then returned, they're never restocked. They're actually thrown out. So that's what we're trying to solve.

Okay. You mentioned carbon footprints. Is there, is there a way you can connect your app or your platform to the, you know, this, the whole ecosystem of carbon footprint redemption or resale so that people who in a sense participate with Open Wardrobe can get credits for the usage of the app or for being part of the greater ecosystem to support saving environment, so to speak?

Yeah, it's a really good idea. We don't do that yet, but it's something that we consider heading, but that's not something we don't—

we do right, right now.

Okay, okay, cool. Because I've noticed data— there's data there in terms of what's being utilized, what's not being utilized, how our logistics system is working, how our consumers are making use of these garments, how much is being wasted. And then of course your artificial intelligence angle. I'm interested in what other kinds of technologies you've been able to, to add into your your sustainability fashion angle in terms of Open Wardrobe?

What do you mean? What type of technologies besides AI?

Yeah, AI and data. What, what other?

Those are the two main, main things. So we, we give you, we give you AI to be able to, um, plan better, utilize your items better. And we give you data. We give you a lot of data. We have, um, statistics about your wardrobe that you can look at from many different angles. Like some people love things like cost per wear, and some people love to understand their investments versus usage per category, or maybe even subcategory. We are giving you breakdown on, you know, the, the types of items you have, even the colors you have. So there are lots and lots of data that people that are into it can use it, uh, on their wardrobe to make better decisions.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much, Julie Dietmar, for, for being part of this podcast. How can people reach you?

Uh, we have a website, it's www.openwardrobe.co. It's co, not dot com, and all of the information is there. You can download our app or you can even sign up right there on the website. Okay, hopefully— okay, it's recording. You want to ask the question again?

Yeah, please tell us how people can get in touch with you.

Yeah, just go on our website, it's www.openwardrobe.co. It's not.com, it's co. And all the information is there. You can download the app straight from the website, or you can even sign up for our services on the website as well.

Very easy.

Www open wardrobe.com.

thank you very much. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your work. All right, so.

Intersection magazine podcast.

Amazing. And email me, let me know when it's up. Okay, sounds great. I'll be in touch with the recording. Okay, bye.