At Fashion Latte we provide intuitive and innovative solutions to the information-overload problem in the online apparel shopping industry.

We develop products that are highly tuned to the needs of our customers: online shoppers and online retailers. We address the needs of the consumer, who today is clearly in the need for a tool that makes online catalogs more accessible and intuitive to browse. Simultaneously, we address the needs of online retailers by helping them index their catalogs in ways that help present their consumers with apparel they are more likely to buy.

Our goal is to be a pioneering company that brings ideas from computer vision and machine learning to revolutionize the way consumers interact with apparel from online catalogs.

Fashion Latte was founded in 2008 by three Ph.D. students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They come from a diverse set of backgrounds and expertise but are united by their passion for fashion. Fashion Latte is the brainchild of co-founder Esther Resendiz. Esther is an avid online shopper and in early 2008 was frustrated with the lack of intuitive and powerful tools to discover fashion online. She found it taxing to keep up with the latest trends and after visiting one online store too many decided it was time she did something about it. She roped in two of her friends and labmates, Bernard Ghanem and Sanketh Shetty, and pitched the idea to them. The team saw value in utiliziing their expertise in data mining, computer vision and machine learning to build a product that would make online apparel shopping more intuitive and fun. Within a month all three of them were pitching their vision to the team at Illinois Ventures. Impressed with the idea Fashion Latte was selected to be part of the iV10 program where it went from idea to venture in a matter of 10 weeks.

Fashion Latte was incorporated as a C-corp on 11th July 2008. A prototype of the flagship product was demonstrated at the iV10 demo day in September 2008 and at Tech Cocktail Champaign-Urbana in early 2009. In the meanwhile, the Fashion Latte business plan won the U of I business plan competition organized by the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership. It was also the recipient of a grant from Illinois Entrepreneurship Center.

In the summer of 2009, Fashion Latte launched www.fashionlatte.com, built on a very flexible API that makes available an extensive product graph built using advanced computer vision and machine learning technology. The API is simultaneously available to developers to power the next generation in user-facing Fashion applications. We are also exploring partnerships with online retailers to use our technology to enable greater visibility and interactivity of their inventory with their customers.