Once I had the first prototype running, I showed it to a few of my friends.
The response was actually quite encouraging.
They thought the virtual try-on was an interesting idea, and that gave me enough confidence to think:
Maybe I should try to turn this into a real business.
But then I started running into some practical problems.
I needed to start monetising the website fairly quickly, because I was also running out of my initial Google Cloud credits.
So I tried Google AdSense as one possible way to generate some revenue from the website.
But after multiple attempts, I was rejected because the website didn't have enough original content.
Then I started looking more closely at the Amazon Affiliate model.
I realised there were some challenges there too.
There were restrictions around using product images and content, which made me increasingly uncomfortable from a long-term business perspective.
And even when someone did purchase through Amazon, I wasn't convinced the pricing was competitive enough compared with some of the emerging online shopping platforms.
Then I faced another important problem:
How do I actually take payments securely?
If I wanted Strylez to become a real online fashion business, I needed proper ecommerce functionality—secure payments, orders, inventory, fulfilment, customer management and all the things that come with an actual online store.
At that point, I realised that trying to build all of this myself from scratch wasn't the smartest approach.
The virtual try-on technology was my differentiator.
I didn't need to reinvent ecommerce infrastructure.
So I made an important decision:
I decided to pivot Strylez and build it on top of an established ecommerce platform—Shopify.
That pivot changed the direction of the business.
Instead of trying to build everything myself, I could focus my time and energy on the part I believed could make Strylez different:
the virtual try-on experience.
And that became the next chapter of the journey.