#dressingrooms

Dress-up Time, Sparkle & Shine! ✨

Let’s face it. Trying on clothes is one of the things I hate the most. Regardless of where I do it--in a store or at home--it takes time away from other things I would rather be doing. That said, I recognize it can be a necessary evil, lest I purchase something that doesn’t fit. And then there is the dreaded return, which takes even more time.

Thankfully, thought leaders in AI and AR have been working hard since early this century to minimize the inconvenience. I am just wondering why it has taken so long for it to finally be getting its proper showing on the runway.

The Magic Mirror debuted in 2007, a device whereby a person could see themselves in the mirror, but with outfits superimposed. It offered users the ability to completely speed up the process, at least to see if something might look good on them. But according to Emerging Tech Brew, Levi’s beat them to the punch a couple of years before that with Intellifit, effectively creating a virtual fitting room.

But those were for in-store applications. Futurists quickly tried to picture how this could work in the land of online shopping. The problem is that it has been slow coming. Even Amazon has been remiss in not seizing the opportunity to lead in this regard, having only developed a virtual try-on model in 2020. It hasn’t exactly become a daily attraction, though.

Then there’s Walmart, with its strategic acquisition of Zeekit in May 2021. Zeekit allows users to try on clothes, but most importantly, it also promises to cut down on returns by 36%. Walmart is now rolling out this technology on several of its proprietary brands, and plans to add other national brands to the mix.

And while we explored this topic initially on 22 February this year, it’s worth revisiting it given the actual deployment. This can and will be a game-changer, not just for Walmart, but for online clothes shopping in general.

The bulk of the efforts thus far with Zeekit has been in women’s apparel, bolstered no doubt by the fact that womenswear is more than twice as big as the menswear market (with $295 billion in sales for women in 2019, compared to $114.1 billion for men). Furthermore, finding clothes that fit is often more challenging for women if only because of greater size and shape variability among them.

But it is the promise of cutting down on returns that makes Zeekit such a wise purchase. Users can upload their own photos, and presumably their various measurements. Zeekit then does the rest. Online apparel shopping may soon be as easy and painless as buying a book.

Well, one can hope. I’d be down with it, for sure.

Once again, we can probably thank COVID for providing the impetus to make Zeekit an attractive purchase. Fitting rooms were shut down in many locations for months, and we were left with the feeling of trying on something that another did is just disgusting. Sure, we did it all the time before COVID, and never thought anything of it. But in the post-COVID era, not to mention e-commerce, solving this problem as well as that of returns is critical for any retailer’s success.

If I were Amazon, I’d be doubling down on getting their proprietary software developed and deployed across the board. Amazon rose to the top apparel seller position last year primarily because of COVID, but that was only because of convenience and safety concerns. If they want to keep that position, they will have to overcome the fitting room problem, which will then help solve returns. Anyone recall my blog about that earlier this semester? Yeah. Amazon burns and buries far too much merchandise.

Try this on for size, Amazon. Let’s face it. You have just been given your call to action. It’s going to be interesting to see who shows up best-dressed for this battle.

Dr “Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall“ Gerlich