Styku: 3D Virtual Fitting Room

Styku is an online fitting room for apparel sold through eCommerce vendors. The 3-D technology allows consumers to vitually try on the clothing they want to buy on a website by creating their own avatar. They can virtually try on clothes from home or from their mobile devices. This application has the potential to dramatically increase sales, reduce returns and provide confidence for consumers that are hesitant about purchasing their clothes online.

Offline apparel sales decreased considerably due to the recession but online retail sales continued to grow by 8% annually. Only 9% of clothing sales in the United States are made online and this is because consumers are skeptical about the clothes not fitting properly and the costs of having to return an item that does not fit. Online consumers return around 30% of the clothes that they buy online and this causes large losses for the online retailers because the items become obsolete. Online retailers have been looking for ways to strengthen the online shopping experience by investing in e-commerce technology. But the main problem stopping online sales from growing is the lack of an online fitting room or a technology that will reassure consumers about their purchases online.  There are new technologies that claim to be virtual fitting rooms however they don’t fulfill the main purpose of a fitting room, which is to make sure that a piece of clothing fits properly on your body. There are technologies where the consumer uses a webcam with their computer and then the flat images of the clothing are placed on top of the image of the consumer. This is similar to looking in the mirror and placing the clothing on top of your body. This allows you to see how the clothing matches your hair and your skin tone but it does not show you how the clothing will look on you when you put it on.  I previously mentioned an example of this called UPCload.  I also mentioned meemee.com which the virtual models start to become 3D but are not fully 3D like an avatar. It also does not take into consideration all the measurement of your body to create the virtual model.

The Styku virtual fitting room application asks you for all of your measurements except height. Online retailers can offer the application on their website. The video below shows how the process works.

http://events.nrf.com/summit11/public/Booth.aspx?IndexInList=&Upgrade=&FromPage=&BoothID=122518&Task=PressReleaseDetails&PRID=887

styku.com