Raffael Schulz, founder and CEO of Hochzeitsportal24 and now founder of the newly launched app, Bridify, is no stranger to the bridal industry. With over 15 years in the branch, Raffael has launched a brand new app to drastically reduce the frustration of the wedding dress search and help brides find their dream gown a whole lot faster and easier.
Bridal Times had the great opportunity to catch up with Raffael to tell us more about the Bridify app, it’s overall benefits and why modern brides should be thrilled to download it.
What inspired you to launch Bridify and who is it for?
The initial inspiration for Bridify came to us at this year’s bridal fashion fairs in Munich and Essen. In conversations with manufacturers, we found that they have two problems that are currently not being solved sufficiently. Market or trend research is very difficult, and in a strongly online-oriented advertising world, it has become more complicated to reach a large number of brides effectively and efficiently. We can solve both with Bridify.
The app is used by the bride and at the same time helps the designers, manufacturers, and retailers.
How are you able to support with market and trend research?
Currently, there is an incredible amount of time between designing bridal dresses and receiving genuine feedback from brides. Often, the next collection has to be designed before the B2C sales numbers are in. Market research is very difficult, and designers must rely heavily on their intuition to determine which dresses and designs might sell well.
We want to support this process with data as early as possible. As soon as the images for the current collection are available, we can quickly determine which dresses and designs are really popular with brides and which are not.
With so many apps on the market, how is Bridify different?
Yes, it’s true that there are over 1.8 million apps available in the App Store alone. However, there is no app that exclusively deals with current bridal dresses. Most brides have to resort to general apps like Pinterest, Instagram, or the classic Google search for inspiration.
Bridify is a specialized app exclusively for bridal fashion. We show the bride thousands of bridal dresses from established international brands, newcomers, and smaller, more specialized designers in a playful and interesting way. In this way, the bride can find THE bridal dress in the app and try it on offline in the bridal fashion store.
Steve Jobs said about the revolutionary iPod, it’s “A thousand songs in your pocket.” Bridify is “Thousands of wedding dresses in your pocket.”
What were the first steps you made to make sure brides needs would be met with Bridify?
Since we have been dealing with thousands of brides every day for 15 years with Hochzeitsportal24.de, we know what currently bothers brides in their search for a wedding dress. We have had many conversations with brides about what can be improved and have also involved brides in the design and development process.
So we knew early on that the app would be well received by brides. However, we were still very nervous before the launch of the app.
Some brides looked at over 1000 dresses within 80 minutes or opened the app 8 times in the first 48 hours. When we saw that, we were very relieved and knew that Bridify would be a hit.
What are some key features brides will love most about Bridify?
For brides, it is important to see a wide selection of dresses and at the same time not to fall in love with a wedding dress that is no longer available in their country. This is one of the biggest problems with Pinterest. Brides find dresses from other countries or from collections that are no longer produced.
We have already been able to obtain over 50 current collections from well-known designers and brands with over 2000 wedding dresses for the app.
The bride can be sure that every wedding dress is available in her country. She immediately sees the brand, collection, and name of the dress. With one click, she can immediately find the closest bridal boutique that carries this brand.
What should designers and dress manufacturers know or understand about the Bridify App?
We can only work with what we receive from the manufacturers. Good image material is crucial. Further data and detailed information help the bride with the selection, and we can provide the manufacturers with much better data evaluations. For example, which neckline is currently in vogue and which styles/highlights are best received by the bride.
How important is it to keep up with the shopping habits of modern brides of today?
Very. The market has changed enormously in recent years. Even more in marketing and advertising than the dress purchase itself. Bridal fashion has a special position in the fashion industry. The pure purchase will continue to take place largely offline for a very long time.
But the way brides inform themselves, how they become aware of brands, and how decisions are made has changed significantly, and the trend will continue to intensify. If a brand wants to be successful, it must constantly adapt. Even what worked five years ago can already be obsolete.
How do you think technology or even AI will shape the wedding industry for the future.
The speed at which new technologies are being adopted has increased rapidly. And AI is taking it up a notch. In the last 12 months alone, AI has made a massive leap.
The traditional editorial department will be massively disrupted by AI in just a few years. Already, AI tools like ChatGPT are an excellent guide for wedding planning.
Artificial intelligence will also be enormously important in the search for bridal gowns. In just a few weeks, Bridify will release an AI algorithm that shows brides the dresses they will probably like based on their previous interactions.
But that’s just the beginning. What is possible and will be possible of AI would probably go way beyond the scope of this interview.
Now with the launch behind you, what is next?
After the successful launch in the DACH market, we want to quickly expand internationally.
The markets most manufacturers asked for are the UK, France, Spain, and Italy. Therefore, we will bring Bridify to these countries next. In the medium term,
Bridify will also be offered in the USA, as this is an incredibly exciting market with a lot of potential.
We also have some really exciting ideas on how we can deliver better data for the industry using machine learning and AI, such as customer cluster analyses and trend data based on these customer clusters. There is still so much potential here, and we are looking forward to generating completely new types of data with the manufacturers.
For further information on the app, visit Bridify in the German language or visit your App Store to download the Bridify App.
(The app is available in English and German and can be downloaded in all European countries.)