This is the "cold start" problem, which they mention in the post ("What do we do about clients who recently signed up and have no past history on the service?") along with how they attempt to mitigate it. It's not surprising that their approach doesn't work for all users (as it would appear that it didn't in your case). I'm curious though, how much feedback does their system need in order to converge? E.g., how many ratings would you need to provide before receiving well-fitting clothes?
Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. Most of the clothes they sent are from their own brands which makes me wonder what is new about this model. Anybody retailer can ship their clothes if they are willing to process the returns for free.
I'm not in B2C or really any consumer play, and haven't looked at SF closely. But: I assume it's an execution play.
Anybody can sell their books and electronics online (well, they could before Amazon started, yet amazon exceeded). Anybody can make clothes, yet Inditex is a monster. And why is there more than one restaurant. SF's claim is that their tech is a differentiator, and they are a tech company (unlike, say, Target or Blue Nile).
There are a couple of thoughts about "in store brand": their business plan may have required tighter control and visibility into the dimensions and materials of their product (dimension for the reasons discussed in the article and its footnotes; material because stuff that is tried on not in store and returned may need to be more durable, I don't know). It makes the plan more complex, but perhaps improves execution enough that it's worth the expense.
In the long run, if they really have a tech advantage they have the option of expanding beyond just in-house product or simply splitting into sub brands, or both.
I've found too often that by the time I figure out it doesn't fit and needs to be exchanged, other sizes are sold out. It's doubly annoying because I either have to eat the cost of an item which doesn't fit or eat the cost of sending it back and losing the discount they give you for keeping everything.
I like stitchfix quite a bit, but I'm starting to become a bit disillusioned after seeing the small bag of clothes dropped at the Salvation Army which didn't fit or I didn't like and which it was cheaper to keep than return. At least I have a mortgage and this itemize deductions, so I can write those clothes off my taxes!
