Smart Matching: How Shadar Finds Exactly What You Want
Snap a photo, describe a style - our AI matching engine does the rest. Here's how it works under the hood.
You see a pair of shoes on a friend. You snap a photo. Within seconds, Shadar shows you vendors nearby who carry that exact style - or something strikingly similar. It feels like magic. It's actually vector math.
When you submit a request - whether it's a photo, a text description, or both - our system generates an embedding: a 256-dimensional vector that captures the essence of what you're looking for. Color, style, category, texture, context - all encoded into a single mathematical representation.
On the other side, every vendor listing on Shadar has its own embedding, computed when the item is first posted. We use pgvector to store these embeddings directly in our database, enabling lightning-fast similarity searches across thousands of listings using cosine similarity.
But raw similarity isn't enough. A perfect visual match from an unreliable vendor isn't useful. So our matching engine applies a composite ranking that combines three signals: embedding similarity (how close the match is), vendor score (from our Vendor Intelligence system), and delivery feasibility (can this vendor actually get it to you quickly?).
The result is a ranked list of vendors, ordered not just by who has the closest match, but by who can deliver the best overall experience. A slightly less perfect match from a top-rated vendor with fast delivery might rank higher than a pixel-perfect match from someone with a history of delays.
We chose this approach over traditional category-based search for a reason. West African fashion doesn't fit neatly into predefined categories. An Ankara print blazer might be 'menswear,' 'African fashion,' 'formal,' and 'contemporary' all at once. Embeddings capture this nuance naturally, without requiring rigid taxonomy.
As more requests flow through the system, our matching improves. We track which matches lead to accepted offers and which don't, feeding this signal back into the ranking algorithm. The system learns what 'good match' means to real buyers in real markets.
Ready to discover fashion your way?
Download Shadar and start getting offers from local vendors.
More from the blog
Building Trust with AI: Fraud Detection and Vendor Scoring
How Shadar uses AI to keep the marketplace safe - from anomaly detection to continuous vendor performance monitoring.
How AI Powers Every Shadar Experience
From smart matching to fraud detection - a look inside the four AI systems that make Shadar's marketplace intelligent.
AI-Predicted Delivery Times: No More Guessing
How our delivery prediction engine combines vendor history, traffic patterns, and distance to give you accurate ETAs.