Privileged Shoes helps shoppers find a shoe they never thought to search for

Company

Privileged Shoes makes statement footwear for shoppers who want to be seen. Its range spans boots and booties, flats, heels, platforms, pumps, and wedges across the Privileged, Jennifer Chou, and Lemon Drop labels.

The catalog favors expressive detail: dramatic silhouettes, floral prints, embroidery, bold color, and towering platforms. A Privileged shoe is meant to give an outfit an attitude, not simply to finish it.

Situation

Shoppers rarely begin an occasion purchase with a product name. They begin with a moment — a wedding reception, a birthday dinner, a concert, a vacation, a night when an ordinary shoe will not do.

Filters narrow by size, color, price, and shoe type, but they cannot interpret someone who wants to be unforgettable in a silver dress and would rather have the steadiness of a platform than a slender heel. With hundreds of styles across six silhouettes and three labels, a shopper also tends to stay inside the category they already know, and never sees the one that would have suited the evening better.

That is a discovery problem, and it compounds: nobody searches for a silhouette they have not pictured. Privileged wanted a way to turn personal style and event context into a short, considered list before browsing turned into scrolling.

The more original the catalog, the less likely a shopper is to imagine the right search term.

Solution

Privileged added BuyScout® as an always-available occasion stylist, working from the store's own catalog and approved guidance. It asks short questions about the event, the outfit, how much drama the shopper wants, the color, whether they prefer a heel or a platform, and their size, then returns a small set of available options and says why each one fits.

For a garden celebration or a romantic look, that might be the Xoanna, a bootie covered from toe to shaft in dimensional fabric flowers. A shopper dressing for a concert could be shown the Xenia, a ruched vegan-leather thigh-high boot. Someone who wants dramatic height without a slender heel is pointed to the Zeth, a wedge with an adjustable ankle strap, and can weigh its five colors against the rest of the outfit.

The conversation is not confined to the category the shopper opened. BuyScout® moves from heels to platforms or boots when another silhouette suits the occasion better, which is how a shortlist ends up holding a shoe the shopper would never have searched for. It also answers the practical questions that follow — sizing, materials, availability, shipping, returns, and care — and hands the unusual ones to the Privileged team.

What the agent handles

• Asks what the shopper is dressing for before recommending a shoe
• Turns event, outfit, and color preference into a short list of available styles
• Crosses silhouettes when a boot or platform suits the occasion better
• Answers sizing, materials, availability, shipping, returns, and care questions

Results

Conversion among shoppers who engaged with BuyScout® rose by approximately 18%, and the add-to-cart rate among shoppers who received an occasion-based recommendation by approximately 24%.

Discovery widened alongside it. Approximately 31% of assisted add-to-carts came from a shoe category the shopper had not browsed before opening the chat. The gain was not only faster filtering. More shoppers left with a bold, unexpected pair that made sense for their particular evening.