TIMING IS EVERYTHING

“If you are hearing a repeating internal ping that’s telling you to do something, you should do it,” says MaryLiz Lehman, founder and CEO of GoodPix, a technology platform for the styling community. “My only regret is that sometimes I didn’t act on these pings sooner.”

Lehman’s storied career in the digital space began just as the business world was becoming comfortable with the words “internet” and “intranet.” After years of consulting Fortune 100 clients on their digital transformation and then completing her MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Lehman surprisingly opened a brick-and-mortar boutique, Perchance.

“I believe there’s magic and power in physical retail,” she says, “mostly because of the relationships. When you know a customer, you’re better able to curate for them because they can share things they can’t when purchasing online. We thought of our retail as a service, and we differentiated ourselves with our curation, offering brands like Veronica Beard, Mackage, and Loeffler Randall before they were household names.”

Perchance quickly became a go-to in Chicago’s Southport Corridor, so much so that Lehman expanded the brand to include e-commerce, a separate children’s store, and a second location in the Gold Coast. However, when a pipe burst during the 2014 polar vortex and dumped 30 floors worth of water into Perchance’s Gold Coast store, Lehman was forced to pivot.

“Eighty percent of our sales at Perchance had come from the top 20 percent of our clients who valued our relationship-based ‘clienteling.’ In fact, we had never even met our top client because she lived in Canada. She could have shopped anywhere but she loved our honest and personalized recommendations that we delivered using PowerPoint, email, and phone calls. I had always wished I could blend the best of online and the best of offline. When we had to close the store, it gave me the time to build out this software for retailers.”

So, Lehman joined 1871—Chicago’s tech innovation hub—and she learned how to code.

“We then launched Pixavo, an all-in-one mobile commerce platform for relationship-based sales teams, and within a few months, we had several New York-based brands and their 1,500 sellers on-boarded. But timing is everything when it comes to successful launches,” she says. “We realized that while the salespeople loved and wanted the technology, their CEOs weren’t quite ready for this—we were a couple of years too soon. Ultimately, Pixavo evolved into GoodPix, which I launched in, of all times, March 2020.”

“GoodPix is a subscription-based software that powers hundreds of the top stylists and styling groups around the world to style outfits and make recommendations to their clients. It’s also a way for stylists to make a commission from partner retailers,” Lehman explains.

While there are competitive software platforms that offer a similar service, GoodPix is the only one that allows a stylist to keep their client on the stylist’s website.

“Our competitors let stylists link to a product, but the link then takes the user away from the stylist’s site,” Lehman explains. “GoodPix keeps the customer on our client’s site. We’re the only one who does that.”

This month, Lehman is unveiling GoodEdit, a sister product to GoodPix that will be consumer-driven. “With GoodEdit, anyone can come directly to the site,” says Lehman. “GoodEdit will be a place for consumers to get styled and wardrobed through our stylists. They can get a wardrobe strategy, their colors done, and their closet digitized.”

“My retail experience taught me that people want curation,” Lehman observes. “They’re overwhelmed with all the choices they have. By making personalized recommendations that clients can trust, GoodEdit will help clients develop a wardrobe strategy based on body types, lifestyle, and personal style to find pieces that really work. The future of retail is to be more personalized, and service-based. It needs to be laser-focused on the customer and powered by an expert, not an algorithm or influencers who may not reflect that particular client’s needs. Consumers today don’t want as many things—they want what they have to be great quality and that can be used in multiple ways.”

As an entrepreneur, Lehman can’t help but ask what’s next. Today, sitting in her sun-lit home office overlooking a landscape beginning to take on fall’s hues, she admits that it’s hard to turn off her mind.

“It’s just sort of who I am,” Lehman says. “My mind never stops moving or imagining or thinking about how I can make things better. That’s the challenge. Having clarity and actually deciding on what’s next is the hard part. I thrive on building and helping other businesses scale and create extraordinary client experiences— that’s the part I love most.”

To learn more about GoodPix, visit goodpix.co. To learn more about GoodEdit, visit goodedit.co.