Here’s the set up: you shop online for a pair of jeans and find the perfect pair, but how do you know how the style will fit? Unless you’ve tried on the same style by the same brand, your only option is to buy the jeans and try them at home. If they don’t fit, return them.
Los Angeles tech company Styku hopes to change that with its new Fit Visualizer widget, which retailers can add to their existing e-commerce site.
The Fit Visualizer asks the shopper to answer a few fit questions (height, height, body shape), then it will recommend a size. Want a better idea of how the jeans will fit? You can tell Fit Visualizing to compare the jeans to a brand you already own. You will see an overlay of the shape of your favorite jeans compared to the style you’re looking to buy. You can adjust the sizes on the new pair to find the closest match. Fit Visualize will even show you a heat-map rendering of how the new pair will fit you (red zones=snug, green=loose).
The company called this “size and fit prediction service” SmartFit and there’s a demo video to show you how it works.
Last December, e-commerce was the bright spot in a largely lackluster holiday season, according to market-research company ShopperTrak, which found that spending increased 2.4 percent despite a whopping 14.6 percent drop in consumer foot traffic. Clearly shoppers are comfortable with shopping online.
But Styku argues that if retailers can assure shoppers’ concerns about fit, there would be even higher sales and fewer returns. The company says SmartFit’s comparison method will increase sales by more than 50 percent and decrease returns by as much as 52 percent. And it’s been design to work for a wide range of categories, including men’s and women’s tops, bottoms, denim, dresses, suits and activewear.
Styku was founded by Raj Sareen. In addition to serving as chief executive Styku, he’s also a director of Tukatech, the Los Angeles–based apparel technology company founded by his parents.
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