Growing up, Ramat Gan native Yael Vizel was never interested in clothes. Little did she know that a few years later she would go on and found a start-up with the goal of revolutionizing the online shopping experience by providing the first virtual fitting room.
Zeekit – which means chameleon in Hebrew and allows users to try the outfits they see online on their own pictures – was acquired by Walmart in May. While the exact details of the deal, including its monetary element, were not disclosed, some have estimated that the giant US retailer chain has spent at least $200 million, securing Vizel a spot among Israel’s hi-tech stars.
The 37-year-old journey towards success began early.
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“I grew up as an athlete – a swimmer – and a ballerina,” she said. “These two very different hobbies provided me with useful skills for my professional career – the ability to be competitive and hard worker and at the same time be a person of details and appreciation for art and science.”
The daughter of a lawyer and an engineer, she went on to serve as an officer and a commander in the Israeli Air Force “in both tech and operational positions, which ‘trained’ me to be a leader, take big daily decisions and operate according to the military-style mantra that ‘failure is not an option’”, she noted, describing her army service as “very influential.”
“I was the first female commander at most of the positions I’ve held, which taught me that there are no barriers – if you’re good, achieving the goals and a hard worker,” she added.
In university she continued to be a trailblazer, enrolling in an electrical engineering program at the Technion in Haifa, one of the seven female students out of 150 men.
“The Technion wasn’t only an engineering school for me, but also an entrepreneurship playground,” Vizel said. “I participated in every entrepreneurship competition, program and course, which helped me gain the basic skills of the entrepreneurial journey.”
In the meantime, fashion continued not to be her cup of tea. But ultimately, it was her dislike for going shopping that inspired her to start the company.
“Zeekit was created in order to help me find the right clothes for me easily, without ‘wasting my time’ trying clothes on, return items that don’t fit me and be able to see myself dressed up with thousands of styles with just a swipe,” the entrepreneur remarked.
The start-up was established in 2014. Vizel and her business partners Nir Appleboim and Alon Kristal created a virtual tool to show how a specific piece of clothing would look on a person, employing similar technology to the one that she used to turn 2D images into 3D graphics for military mapping.
“Developing a technology that can virtually dress up any person with an endless amount of items, which just have regular pictures of them (e.g like in regular catalogs that we see online) is an extremely hard technology mission,” Vizel noted.
“That’s also the reason for not having a strong competitor for Zeekit – we’re the only company worldwide which actually cracked the virtual dress-up technology ‘code,’ and at scale,” she added. “It took us several years to only develop this revolutionary technology, but once it was ready – we became the largest ‘factory’ for digital clothes globally, generating millions of dress-ups daily.
SOON ZEEKIT started to work with major brands and retailers, including Adidas and ASOS. The partners found out that using Zeekit’s technology significantly improved their sales and reduce the return of purchased items.
When the pandemic hit, online shopping skyrocketed. For Zeekit it was a game changer.
“COVID has turned e-commerce into a strategic selling channel for all retailers and brands in all the good’s categories,” Vizel remarked. “Apparel is both an extremely important category for all the large retailers, and at the same time the category that customers have the hardest time with. That’s the reason for the booming interest Zeekit has had during COVID.”
The start-up also began to receive different offers to be acquired. Ultimately, the deal was closed with Walmart, which will leave the company in Israel with Vizel at the helm.
“Walmart is the ultimate company to be acquired by and a dream which absolutely comes true,” she said. “Walmart is the largest retailer which operates both a gigantic e-commerce and physical stores businesses and Zeekit’s technologies can potentially be integrated in both.”
Asked how she feels about the disparities between men and women in the hi-tech sector and being an exception, Vizel said that she believes the situation will change.
“More women gradually get into tech and entrepreneurship, and the more success stories of female CEOs we’ll see more women being compelled to take these leadership positions,” she remarked. “Being an exception is both challenging and exciting – I liked these two aspects at the same level.”
Her next step, the CEO said, is to continue to lead Zeekit within Walmart.
And as much as she did not grow up passionate about fashion, the connection with the field was ultimately in her blood.
“My grandfather had a textile factory when he immigrated to Israel from Romania after the World War II,” she revealed. “In a way, Zeekit is the modern and digital variation of his textile factory.
“He visited our office once, making jokes that ‘no one works here but everyone is just playing on their computers,’” she added.