#7: Launch a SaaS like Botika or WeShop next week with Open Source
Dive into the growing market of AI photoshoot tools, and learn how to build your own with these resources!
Most successful SaaS products, like Slack, Shopify, Zoom, Dropbox, and HubSpot, weren’t first of their kind; They didn’t invent their fields - they just made existing ones better.
“AI fashion photoshoot” tools?
AI fashion photography tools use a concept called “virtual try-on” to generate high-quality on-model clothing visuals, without the hassle of traditional (and expensive) photoshoots. You upload a picture of the clothing, select a target (human) model, and the AI is able to generate a professional on-model visual in seconds:
In fast-fashion eCommerce, this cuts the cost of hiring a studio, photographers, models, and stylists - helping brands scale their visuals while saving up to 90% on production.
It’s a new opportunity!
Being one of the largest and most competitive categories in eCommerce across the world; fast fashion is built on speed, volume, and razor-thin margins. Professional photoshoots take a decent chunk off that time and margin; and with brands dropping 100s of SKUs every month, the logistics are a nightmare.
Another interesting market is that of dropshippers where winning products can go from viral to outdated within weeks - which isn’t enough time to get a product shipped and shot.
That’s one of the many reasons why researchers have been working on the “virtual try-on” challenge for years - finding ways to realistically map clothes onto models with natural lighting, fit, and movement. And while it took many breakthroughs to lay the foundation, only very recently has the tech finally become mature enough to be viable for real-world use.
Innovators like Botika, WeShop, Pebblely Fashion, and OnModel are bringing this technology to the market; with standard plans averaging at about $50/month. Botika especially stood out to me with its crisp user experience, formidable quality, and insane traction - 1000s of customers, and a recent $8M seed round to keep that up.
Alright, so how can we build this quickly?
Most virtual try-on models usually involve three key phases:
Image pre-processing: The AI takes in a person’s (model) photo and the garment image, sometimes using a “cloth-agnostic mask”, ie. hiding original clothing to better isolate the body.
Garment warping & blending: The garment image is then superimposed on the person. Older methods warp garments based on pose but struggle with complex positions. Newer AI models (e.g., CatVTON, Leffa) use neural networks and diffusion models to blend garments more naturally.
Image generation & refinement: Finally, a denoising UNet generates a refined image, similar to how Stable Diffusion refines AI-generated art in stages for a polished look.
Here are the best recent open-source implementations to execute this:
Leffa by Zijian Zhou
CatVTON by Zheng Chong
FitDiT by Boyuan Jiang
PromptDresser by Jeongho Kim (prompt-control is a key differentiator)
Worried about building signups, user management, payments, etc.? Here are my go-to open-source SaaS boilerplates that include everything you need out of the box:
SaaS Boilerplate by Remi Wg
Open SaaS by wasp-lang
Launching soon? DM me if you’re looking for a high-converting landing page, sales deck, or any other GTM collateral to get your product in front of the right people.
How will my SaaS stand out in the noise?
The relatively fresh market makes it easier to differentiate on core principles and achieve product market fit:
Increase switching cost: This could mean deep integrations with niche ecom platforms, inventory management system, ad platforms, and social commerce tools - anything that makes your product indispensable.
Enhance your existing Product: For example, a product description generator, dropshipping product importer, or ad creative generator - could all integrate AI photoshoots into their workflow.
Offer platform level advantages: This includes privacy-first offline support for enterprise, a mobile app for on-the-go usage, or an API-first solutions for brands that want deep customization. In fact, a developer-friendly API could become the default choice for ecom SaaS looking to integrate AI fashion photoshoots.
TMI?
I’m an ex-AI engineer and product lead, so don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions!
P.S. I started this free weekly newsletter to share open-source / turnkey resources for recreating popular products (like this one). If you’re a founder looking to launch your next product without reinventing the wheel, please subscribe :)