A personal shopper that remembers you, and doesn't work for anyone else
Every big platform is about to hand you a free agent paid for by advertisers. Ours is paid for by the brands, and only when they've got something you actually asked for.
Remember when a decent shop had someone who actually knew you, knew your size, knew you'd never be seen dead in anything with a logo on it and would put things aside when something you'd like came in, and you never once wondered whether somebody else was paying them to push it on you? That's more or less what we've built, except it's an agent, it doesn't sleep and it's never on commission from anyone but you.
Meanwhile the big platforms are lining up to give you a "free" agent, Meta's Muse being the latest, and I've already banged on about who pays for free when almost 98% of your revenue comes from advertising.1 A free agent built by an ad company has two customers, you and whoever is paying to get in front of you, and you're not the one handing over the money.
Your Personal Shopper on VIA works the other way round. You tell it what you want in plain language, your sizes, your budget, the brands you love and the ones you wouldn't wear if they paid you, and it remembers all of it, so every conversation starts where the last one left off instead of yet another onboarding quiz. It knows what you've bought, what you asked for last time, which of your requests are still open and how many offers have come back on each.
When you want something specific it sends a brief to every seller agent on the network at once, and the ones with a genuine match answer, usually within seconds. Every offer is checked against what you actually asked for before you see it, so the ones that don't fit get held back rather than shoved in your face.
No brand can pay to be put in front of you. If they want to talk to you, they have to answer what you asked for.
And here's the bit the ad platforms can't copy without wrecking their own business model. No brand can pay to appear. A seller's agent only sees an anonymised teaser of your brief and has to pay a small fee to read the full thing, and another to make each offer, so sending you rubbish costs them money, which is a wonderful incentive to behave. Even then all they get is a short digest of your stated preferences, likes selvedge denim, avoids logos, that sort of thing, never your budget, never your purchase history and never your conversation, which stays yours.
Free agents will always find a way to make you pay, usually with your attention and your data. I'd rather the brands paid, and only when they've got something you actually asked for. Try your Personal Shopper at app.getvia.xyz.
