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Turns Out Shoppable TV Is Closer Than Ever Those who love shopping and tv equally will love LookLive even more.

By Entrepreneur Staff

This story appears in the June 2016 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Looklive

Dying for that bag Kerry Washington was toting on last week's Scandal? Need the sweatshirt you saw Kanye wearing on Instagram? LookLive has you covered. The Amsterdam-based startup spent two years developing tech that identifies exact items of clothing worn by your favorite characters and stars. CEO Christopher Archer explains how they did it.

Companies have been promising shoppable TV for years. What's been the holdup?

The technical integration is easy peasy, but the challenge is the metadata, and how you get it. If I'm watching The Voice, how do I know what jacket Pharrell is wearing? The broadcaster and network don't know -- they'll tell you to call the costume designer. It's just impossible to do this at scale. When we started, we said that if we can't figure out how to identify items independently, we're going to shut down.

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