Models Who Look Like the Customer Lift Conversion with Slava Furman of The Noli Shop
Slava Furman is the CEO and founder of The Noli Shop. The brand started as an activewear brand in 2015 and rebranded to ready to wear in 2023, built around the style of his mom, who he says was always the most stylish person in the room. We talked with him at Shoptalk Fall in Nashville.
A Brand Built Around His Mom
When the brand turned to his mom as its muse, the customer turned out to look a lot like her.
“They were in their 60s, they wanted to be stylish, they wanted to be seen, they wanted to be complimented,” he says.
The thread from Noli Yoga to The Noli Shop, in his words, is the need to be seen and to get dressed with intention.
Models Who Look Like the Customer
The team is small and everyone does a little of everything, and Slava credits AI with stretching what that team can handle. The business has tripled in the last couple of years. His favorite use is testing.
“Instead of, you know, having multiple photo shoots that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each, we can very quickly determine that with A B testing and using you know somebody that looks like the customer as a model on the website,” he says.
The answer surprised the team. The customer wants to see herself in the clothing, not a size zero twenty-year-old model, and the change raised the conversion rate.
“They’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that they they appreciate that, you know, in our marketing emails we use women who look just like them,” he says.
He was just as direct about where AI falls short. You get out of it what you put into it, and a basic query returns a lackluster result. His definition of AI slop was “a third arm” coming out of somebody’s back.
Phone Support at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday
The customer is used to calling a store and asking a sales associate about sizing, so The Noli Shop moved its customer service toward the phone.
“Everybody, you know, who writes our review, let’s say on Trustpilot, says, I love how responsive they are. I love that I could pick up a phone, you know, at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday and talk to somebody,” he says.
It shows up after the sale too. The Noli Shop has taken a second warehouse to keep up with demand, it holds a fifty percent repeat customer rate, and the average time to a second order is twelve days. Jewelry just launched, and customers are asking for shoes.
His hot take tied it together. Going against the flow sometimes pays, and meeting the customer where she is beats reducing the human element with AI.
Find The Noli Shop at thenolishop.com.