PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD For clothing retailers, online sales have been an ill fit. While apparel offers the largest sales value of e-commerce sectors, clothing sales via the Web remain at just 7 percent, a far cry from computer and book sales, which average 50 percent and 61 percent, respectively. To add to those stats, on average 25 percent of garments purchased online are returned, an additional 16 percent of clothes bought online fit poorly—and nearly 80 percent of those consumers will develop a case of buyer beware and not purchase a second time.
Enter Estonia startup Fits.me, which fashioned a virtual fitting room so savvy Web shoppers can try on clothes online—therefore reducing return rates and boosting retailer profits. The design project took shape after a €1.3 million second-round funding spearheaded by the Estonian Development Fund and three years of research from the likes of Tartu University, Tallinn Technical University and Human Solutions GmbH to complete the first prototype.
A virtual mannequin is created after a customer enters his measurements. (Source: Fits.me)
Fits.me's Virtual Fitting Room is designed to reassure consumers that, basically, clothes purchased online will fit properly. To do this, the consumer inputs his measurements, and robotic mannequins go through numerous body shapes to find the physical form that best bears resemblance to the consumer's body type. Images of different clothing sizes on the mannequin are then provided to find the best fit.
The clothes fitting-simulation model was dubbed one of CNBC's top 20 breakout brands for 2011, and retailers like Otto, Soul Revolver and Hawes & Curtis have rolled out the Virtual Fitting Room model, with the latter company showing a 57 percent increase in the conversion rate of those who've used the prototype compared with those who opted for the retailer's traditional style/size guide, says Fits.me.
German retailer Quelle noted a 28 percent decrease in returns from customers who utilized the Fits.me model against those who did not, according to an article by Internet Retailer. Fitting for a company with a CEO (entrepreneur and co-founder Heikki Haldre) who stated the “Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room is the disruptive technology that will enable online apparel retailers to successfully compete with traditional brick-and-mortar clothing shops.”
The Fits.me virtual fitting room lets customers see how different size clothing will fit. (Source: Fits.me)
Initial concept versions of printing 3D models of a consumer's physical form were tossed around and ultimately abandoned as the switch to robotics was made, according to an article by Fast Company Magazine. Fits.me currently has a male model virtual mannequin, but will deploy a female counterpart in the near future; a Fits.me virtual fitting iPhone and iPhone application is also in the works.
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